Amazon Web Services has announced plans to launch new AWS Local Zones in Brisbane and Perth. These AWS Local Zones will complement AWS’s existing infrastructure in Australia, including the AWS Asia Pacific (Sydney) Region, the upcoming AWS Asia Pacific (Melbourne) Region, and Edge locations in Sydney, Melbourne, and Perth.
AWS Local Zones are a type of infrastructure deployment that places AWS compute, storage, database, and other services at the edge of the cloud near large population, industry, and information technology (IT) centres—enabling customers to deploy applications that require single-digit millisecond latency closer to end users or on-premises data centres. AWS Local Zones allow customers to use core AWS services locally while seamlessly connecting to the rest of their workloads running in AWS Regions with the same elasticity, pay-as-you-go model, application programming interfaces (APIs), and toolsets.
Most customers get the necessary latency required to support their applications’ performance by running them in AWS Regions. However, for applications that require ultra-low latency, customers want AWS infrastructure closer to their end users or on-premises data centres to support a seamless experience. The new AWS Local Zones will give customers in Australia the ability to offer end users single-digit millisecond performance designed to suit applications such as remote real-time gaming, media and entertainment content creation, live video streaming, engineering simulations, augmented and virtual reality, machine learning inference at the edge, and more. AWS manages and supports AWS Local Zones, meaning customers in Australia do not need to incur the expense and effort of procuring, operating, and maintaining infrastructure to support low-latency applications. AWS Local Zones also allow customers with local data residency preferences in Australia to run parts of their applications in on-premises data centres and seamlessly connect to AWS while ensuring ultra-low latency for these types of hybrid deployments—all while using familiar AWS APIs and tools.
The new AWS Local Zones in Brisbane and Perth will join 16 existing AWS Local Zones across the United States and an additional 30 AWS Local Zones planned to launch in 25 countries around the world over the next two years—delivering single-digit millisecond latency performance at the edge of the cloud to hundreds of millions of people worldwide.
“We know that delivering ultra-low latency applications for a seamless user experience matters for many businesses and industries, so we are excited to bring the edge of the cloud closer to more customers in Australia to help meet their requirements,” said Iain Rouse, Director and County Leader Worldwide Public Sector at AWS in Australia and New Zealand. “AWS Local Zones will empower more public and private organisations, innovative startups, and AWS Partners to deliver a new generation of leading edge, low-latency applications to end users, taking advantage of the cost savings, scalability, and high availability that AWS provides. The new AWS Local Zones are a continuation of our investment to support customers of all kinds and commitment to accelerate innovation by bringing cloud infrastructure to more locations in Australia.”
Telstra Purple is an AWS Advanced Tier Partner, certified in migration, DevOps, containerisation and as a member of AWS’s Managed Services Provider Program. “Telstra is working with leading enterprise and government customers to drive transformation for the digital economy. We leverage our network infrastructure, and combine it with our edge, cloud, security, and Telstra Purple-delivered professional services, along with apps and devices to deliver digital innovation to customers in mining, agriculture, transportation, supply chain, retail and many other industries,” said Angela Logothetis, Group Owner for Cloud, Edge and Industry Networks at Telstra. “AWS is one of Telstra’s strategic partners and the expansion of AWS Local Zones in Perth and Brisbane will enable us to deliver the benefits of local public cloud services to more organisations in more industries – simplifying the experience and delivering greater agility to customers.”
“AWS Local Zones have the potential to deliver significant local capability for organisations in Brisbane, and enhance the speed at which we can deliver digital initiatives to benefit our citizens,” said Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads (TMR) Chief Information Officer Sandra Slater. “Queensland TMR strategically collaborated with AWS to establish our mass migration approach to the cloud and help implement our digital business strategy to meet Queenslanders’ growing expectations for better user experiences. In working with AWS, we’ve already reduced operational expenses, unleashed data analytics capabilities, benefitted from rich security features, and enabled greater team collaboration and innovation. Access to low-latency infrastructure in Brisbane can help us to improve programs like the Cooperative and Automated Vehicle Initiative which leverages sensors, cameras, radar trackers, and other tools to help prepare for the arrival of new vehicle technologies with safety, mobility and environmental benefits on Queensland roads. These technologies generate huge amounts of data. Over 12 months, TMR’s pilot involving 350 cooperative vehicles generated about 10TB of data, with three million real-time messages processed on AWS.”
“We’re excited by AWS’s Local Zone investment as it signals continued growth for Queensland’s dynamic tech community,” said Matt Fairhurst, CEO and Founder at Skedulo. “Over the years we’ve received invaluable technical expertise and support from AWS that helped us expand our COVID-19 testing and vaccination administration solutions to governments, non-profits, and commercial customers in Australia, and further abroad to the U.S. and Canada. We’ve now delivered over 55 million vaccine appointments globally and are looking to double our local headcount to more than 200 people over the next 18 months to support Skedulo’s growth. Today’s announcement will help us deliver infrastructure and security at scale and provides more opportunities for local R&D, all of which is key as our business continues to grow global.”
“Today’s announcement from AWS brings us even closer to our goal of delivering a digital platform set to transform experiences for our students and staff here in Western Australia,” said Jason Cowie, Chief Information Officer at Curtin University.
“AWS Local Zones will give us more access to compute, storage, and other services, without needing to forgo speed. Our project is unique in that we want to build a fully digital platform that shapes the next generation of experiences for our Curtin community. To build the future requires great talent and collaboration and we’ve chosen to do this with AWS and their partners because of their skills and capabilities. We welcome their continued investment in Western Australia and the flow on effect this will have for the local IT industry and the organisations that benefit from it.” said Cowie.
“We welcome the news of new AWS Local Zones in Perth and Brisbane, which will bring the cloud even closer to our customers and help us to elevate their business success,” said Preeti Bajaj, Managing Director at Modis Australia. “With AWS expanding its presence across Australia, many of our customers will benefit from migrating workloads to the cloud as they can achieve faster data processing with ultra-low latency, and seamlessly connect to local workloads which is key to unlocking business opportunities.”
