AWS to open cloud region in Malaysia

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is opening a new cloud region in Malaysia, giving organisations the ability to store data in the country and reduce the latency of cloud applications.

The cloud giant is also planning to invest $6bn in Malaysia by 2037 as it continues to expand its footprint across the Asia-Pacific region. It is expected to launch new cloud regions in New Zealand and Thailand as well.

The Malaysia cloud region will consist of three availability zones at launch, adding to AWS’s existing 99 availability zones across 31 geographic regions globally.

Malaysian prime minister Anwar Ibrahim said the new cloud region is AWS’s largest international technology investment to date in Malaysia, advancing the country’s vision of a highly skilled, innovative, prosperous, and sustainable economy.

“Bringing access to world-class AWS infrastructure, advanced technologies, and cloud skills programmes 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,” he added.

AWS has a mix of public and private sector customers in Malaysia, including Cybersecurity Malaysia, POS Malaysia, PayNet, Axiata Group, as well as startups and small businesses like Carsome, Omesti Berhad, and StoreHub.

PayNet, Malaysia’s national payments network and shared central infrastructure for the financial market, is using AWS to run critical banking workloads, including the company’s MyDebit cashless payments system.

“As the nation’s operator of real-time retail payments infrastructure, we leverage AWS to meet the reliability, security, scalability, and compliance required by our customers,” said Farhan Ahmad, group CEO at PayNet.

“The launch of an AWS region in Malaysia provides us with lower-latency access to cloud services to help ensure our customers have a seamless payments experience. We’re excited to see how this development can pave the way for other companies in the region to innovate with speed and uncover new opportunities,” he added.

Pos Malaysia, Malaysia’s national postal and parcel service provider, is also planning to migrate the vast majority of its IT infrastructure to AWS by 2023.

“As we continue on our digital transformation journey to deliver a better customer experience, our collaboration with AWS has been instrumental in streamlining our processes, reducing IT costs by 50%, and driving greater organisational agility,” said Sumesh Rahavendra, chief strategy and digital officer at Pos Malaysia.

“We are excited about the launch of an AWS region in Malaysia and look forward to incorporating deep analytics and machine learning initiatives into our operations to help further develop our products and services, enabling us to deliver smiles to the last mile.”