AWS plans to invest billions in Taiwan for a new cloud region by 2025, adding to 105 availability zones globally.
TakeAway Points:
- Amazon plans to open a new infrastructure region in Taiwan by early 2025, with three availability zones to accommodate the growing demand for cloud services.
- Over the next fifteen years, AWS intends to invest billions in Taiwan, after making large investments in Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand.
- The report stated that the new AWS region in Taiwan will consist of three availability zones at launch, adding to AWS’s existing 105 availability zones across 33 geographic regions globally.
- With a 31% market share, AWS dominates the cloud space; rivals like Microsoft and Google are also quickly growing throughout the Asia-Pacific area.
AWS Grows in Taiwan
Amazon Web Services (AWS), the cloud computing arm of Amazon, announced on Wednesday its plans to launch an infrastructure region in Taiwan by early 2025. This move aims to address the “high demand for cloud services” in the Asia-Pacific region, according to the company.
According to the report, the new AWS region in Taiwan will consist of three availability zones at launch, adding to AWS’s existing 105 availability zones across 33 geographic regions globally. An availability zone is a geographically isolated location with one or more data centers that have independent power, cooling, and physical security.
Prasad Kalyanaraman, Vice President of Infrastructure Services at AWS, stated,
“The new AWS region in Taiwan will enable firms to capitalize on the cloud and build with AWS technologies like compute, storage, databases, analytics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence.”
This development will provide developers, startups, companies, non-profit organizations, and institutions in various sectors such as education, entertainment, and financial services with more options for running their applications and serving end users from data centers located in Taiwan. AWS emphasized that this will ensure customers who wish to keep their content in Taiwan can do so.
Major Capital Projects
AWS plans to invest billions of dollars in Taiwan over the next 15 years, as part of its broader strategy to expand its cloud infrastructure in the Asia-Pacific region. This announcement follows AWS’s recent commitment to invest an additional $9 billion in Singapore over the next five years to enhance its cloud infrastructure and services in the country.
In March of the previous year, AWS committed at least $6 billion by 2037 to a new region in Malaysia, and in October 2022, it announced plans to launch a region in Thailand with a $5 billion investment over 15 years. AWS also opened a region in Jakarta, Indonesia, in December 2021.
Competitive Environment
AWS’s expansion in Taiwan is part of a broader trend among tech giants investing heavily in the Asia-Pacific region. Google recently announced a $2 billion investment in Malaysia to build its first data center and cloud region in the country.
Microsoft has also committed to making AI and cloud-related investments in several Southeast Asian countries, including Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia. According to Synergy Research Group, AWS led the cloud infrastructure services market in the first quarter of this year with a 31% market share, followed by Microsoft Azure.
