Penang (Malaysia)
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is planning to invest $6 billion in Malaysia by 2037 as it revealed the launch of an infrastructure region.
“AWS has committed to the largest international technology investment to date in Malaysia, which will advance our Malaysia Madani vision of a highly skilled, innovative, prosperous, and sustainable economy,” Prime Minister of Malaysia, Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim said.
“Bringing access to world-class AWS infrastructure, advanced technologies, and cloud skills programs to Malaysia will unlock opportunities for local businesses of all sizes to build and expand globally, cultivate a highly skilled workforce, spur new job creation, and deliver long-term economic growth.”
AWS vice president of infrastructure services Prasad Kalyanaraman said the new region reflects its deep and long-term commitment to customers and organisations in Malaysia, as well as serving sizeable and fast-growing demand for cloud services across Southeast Asia.
“We are proud to support Malaysia’s digital transformation with the highest levels of security and reliability available on AWS cloud infrastructure,” he said. “We look forward to helping Malaysian institutions, startups, and companies deliver cloud-powered applications to fuel economic development across the country and to spur job creation, skills training, and educational opportunities in the communities surrounding our data centers.”
The new AWS Region will consist of three Availability Zones at launch, adding to the existing 99 Availability Zones across 31 geographic regions globally.
AWS has plans to launch 15 more Availability Zones and five more AWS Regions in Canada, Israel, Malaysia, New Zealand, and Thailand.
AWS Regions consist of Availability Zones that place infrastructure in separate and distinct geographic locations, with enough distance to significantly reduce the risk of a single event impacting customers’ business continuity, yet near enough to provide low latency for high availability applications that use multiple Availability Zones.
The new AWS Region will enable customers with data residency preferences to store data securely in Malaysia, enable customers to achieve even lower latency, and serve demand for cloud services across Southeast Asia.
Customers using AWS include Astro Malaysia Berhad, Axiata Group, Bank Islam Malaysia, CelcomDigi, Johor Corporation, PayNet, and Petroliam Nasional Berhad (PETRONAS).
Malaysian public sector customers include Asia Pacific University of Technology and Innovation, BeEducation, Cybersecurity Malaysia, Department of Statistics Malaysia, Ministry of Higher Education Malaysia, Pos Malaysia, and Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB).
Malaysian startups and small businesses, including Baba Products, Carsome, Omesti Berhad, and StoreHub, are building their businesses on AWS to rapidly scale nationally and around the world.
Malaysia-based AWS Partners include Axrail, eCloudvalley, Exabytes, G-AsiaPacific, GHL, Maxis, Radmik Solutions Sdn Bhd, Silverlake Axis, Tapway, Uberfusion, and Wavelet.
Maxis is a converged solutions provider and an AWS Advanced Tier Services Partner.
In 2019, Maxis signed a strategic collaboration agreement with AWS to deliver industry-leading cloud technologies enabled by 4G to help organisations improve productivity, performance, and innovation.
“Maxis aspires to be the one-stop shop for all IT and connectivity services in Malaysia, and we see AWS as a key factor in helping us achieve this goal,” Maxis CEO, Goh Seow Eng said.
Silverlake Axis is an enterprise technology, software, and services company and an AWS Software Partner.
“Silverlake Axis’s collaboration with AWS has helped us create a future vision of our digital solution by modernising 25 omnichannel applications such as transactions, loans, payments, and digital engagement,” Silverlake Axis group managing director Andrew Tan said.
“We can now offer customers various combinations of digital solutions with pay-as-you-go pricing, which provides a customised and seamless customer experience across all channels and any device.
“An AWS Region in Malaysia will be transformative for the technology services industry, providing secure, high-performing, resilient, and regulated infrastructure for digital banking workloads or insurtech businesses. This will help us accelerate the launch of new features and let our customers pivot quickly to leverage the benefits of the cloud.”
