KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 22 — Amazon Web Services (AWS), an Amazon.com Inc company, today launched the AWS Asia Pacific (Malaysia) Region with plans to invest about US$6.2 billion (about RM29.2 billion) in Malaysia through 2038.

In a statement issued in Seattle today, the company said that starting today, developers, startups, entrepreneurs, and enterprises, as well as government, education, and non-profit organisations, will have greater choices for running their applications and serving end users from AWS data centres located in Malaysia.

"The construction and operation of the new AWS Region is estimated to add approximately US$12.1 billion (RM57.3 billion) to Malaysia’s gross domestic product and will support an average of more than 3,500 full-time equivalent jobs at external businesses annually through 2038.

"These jobs, including construction, facility maintenance, engineering, telecommunications, and others within the country’s broader economy, will be part of the AWS supply chain in Malaysia,” it said.

With the launch of the AWS Asia Pacific (Malaysia) Region, AWS has 108 availability zones across 34 geographic regions, with announced plans to launch 18 more availability zones and six more AWS Regions in Mexico, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, Thailand, and the AWS European Sovereign Cloud.

It said the AWS Asia Pacific (Malaysia) Region consists of three availability zones located far enough from each other to support customers’ business continuity but near enough to provide low latency for high availability applications that use multiple availability zones.

"Each availability zone has independent power, cooling, and physical security, and is connected through redundant, ultra-low-latency networks,” it said.

AWS customers focused on high availability can design their applications to run in multiple availability zones to achieve even greater fault tolerance.

"With today’s launch, AWS is proud to support Malaysia’s digital transformation and help accelerate its role as a regional hub for artificial intelligence (AI),” said AWS vice-president of infrastructure services Prasad Kalyanaraman.

Meanwhile, Investment, Trade and Industry Minister Tengku Datuk Seri Zafrul Abdul Aziz said the launch of an AWS infrastructure region in Malaysia provides access to new and emerging technology for Malaysian entities and businesses of all sizes, boosting our country’s capabilities for digital innovation.

He said this milestone is a significant step towards fulfilling the vision of Malaysia’s New Industrial Master Plan 2030 to build a highly skilled, innovative, prosperous, inclusive, and sustainable economy.

"We recognise the transformative power of digitalisation, cloud computing and AI as key drivers in Malaysia’s effort to become a manufacturing and services hub within Asia.

"As the largest investment made by an international technology company in Malaysia, the AWS infrastructure region will help ensure Malaysia remains competitive on the global stage,” said the minister.

AWS offers the broadest and deepest portfolio of services, including analytics, computing, database, Internet of Things, generative AI, machine learning, mobile services, storage, and other cloud technologies.

Customers from startups and enterprises to public sector organisations and non-profits would be able to use advanced technologies from the world’s leading cloud provider to drive innovation, meet data residency preferences, achieve lower latency, and serve demand for cloud services in Malaysia and across the Asia Pacific. — Bernama