AWS to launch first New Zealand data centre region by 2024

AWS has revealed plans to open a new data centre region in New Zealand by 2024, investing NZ$7.5 billion (around £3.9 billion) over the next 15 years and creating 1,000 jobs.

The company said that its new Asia Pacific (Auckland) Region will help more of its customers run their applications by serving end users locally, providing even lower latency, and ensuring customers can choose to securely store their data in New Zealand.

The Auckland region, which will be owned and operated by a local AWS entity, will be made up of three availability zones, joining the existing 81 zones across 25 geographic AWS regions at launch.

AWS estimates this will create 1,000 new jobs as part of a NZ$7.5 billion investment, which the company also believes will generate approximately NZ$10.8 billion (around £5.6 billion) over the next 15 years.

“Our investments reflect AWS’ deep and long-term commitment to New Zealand,” said Prasad Kalyanaraman, vice president of Infrastructure Services at AWS. “We are excited to build new world-class infrastructure locally, train New Zealanders with in-demand digital skills, and continue to help local organisations deliver applications that accelerate digital transformation and fuel economic growth.”

Globally, the company said that it has plans to launch 24 additional data centre sites across eight regions in Australia, India, Indonesia, Israel, Spain, Switzerland, the United Arab Emirates, as well as the new AWS Region in New Zealand.

AWS set up its first local entity in New Zealand in 2014 and opened new offices this year in Auckland and Wellington to support a team of over 100 employees. Customers previously had to rely on the AWS region in Sydney, which was launched in 2012, although it announced in December it was going to open its second infrastructure region in Australia in Melbourne by 2022.

In July, Google Cloud announced it would also open a new cloud region in Melbourne, its second in Australia and 11th in the APAC region overall. The company said that cloud customers in Australia and New Zealand are set to benefit from low latency and high performance of their cloud-based workloads and data.

Google also announced that it would open a new Google Cloud Dedicated Interconnect location in New Zealand as part of its new investment in the region. The company has said it hopes both its Melbourne and Auckland sites would deliver geographically distributed and secure infrastructure to customers across New Zealand.