Amazon has launched the AWS Asia Pacific (New Zealand) Region, providing organisations in the country with the option to run applications and store data locally.
The company will invest more than NZ$7.5 billion to build, connect, operate, and maintain its data centres in New Zealand.
“The new AWS Region in New Zealand will help serve the growing demand for cloud services across the country and empower organisations of all sizes to accelerate their digital transformation,”
said Prasad Kalyanaraman, Vice President of Infrastructure Services at AWS.
“With this launch, businesses can now leverage advanced AWS technologies, from core cloud capabilities to artificial intelligence and machine learning, all while meeting local data residency requirements. By investing in New Zealand’s digital infrastructure, we’re proud to support the country’s economic growth, foster innovation, and help position it as a technology hub in the Asia Pacific region.”
The new region consists of three Availability Zones, bringing AWS’s global total to 120 across 38 regions. Amazon has also announced plans for further regions in Chile, Saudi Arabia, and the European Sovereign Cloud.
The New Zealand region is designed to meet local data sovereignty requirements and will be powered from the outset by renewable energy through a partnership with Mercury NZ’s Turitea South wind farm.
Amazon said the project is expected to contribute about NZ$10.8 billion to New Zealand’s GDP and support more than 1,000 full-time equivalent jobs annually across sectors including engineering, telecommunications, and facility operations.
The company has also signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the New Zealand government to provide cloud skills training for 100,000 people, with more than 50,000 already trained.
Existing AWS customers in New Zealand include Kiwibank, Xero, TradeMe, TVNZ, Mercury NZ, Contact Energy, and the University of Auckland, as well as government bodies such as the Ministry of Transport and Land Information New Zealand.
Partners working with AWS locally include Accenture, Deloitte, Datacom, and MongoDB.
The company has been expanding its infrastructure footprint in New Zealand for several years, establishing subsea cable connections in 2016, CloudFront edge locations in 2020, and an AWS Direct Connect location and Local Zone in Auckland in 2023.
It estimates its cloud infrastructure is significantly more energy-efficient than on-premises alternatives, with the potential to cut carbon emissions when workloads are optimised on AWS.
The new AWS region will allow organisations to store data securely within New Zealand, improve latency for users, and support demand for cloud services across the wider Asia Pacific region.
Featured image credit: AWS
The article first appeared on Fintech News Singapore
