AWS details local zone expansion as Amazon on high alert

The AWS (Amazon Web Services) cloud spin-off has confirmed its global expansion plans to: AWS. Local regionsan initiative launched in 2019 to bring low-latency cloud infrastructure services closer to major population centers and industrial hubs.

The move will help AWS double down on its edge computing efforts as businesses of all walks of life seek to process and store data closer to their end users.

“The cloud edge is expanding and is now available almost everywhere,” Prasad Kalyanaraman, vice president of infrastructure services at AWS, said in a statement.

AWS Local Zones are somewhat related to cloud and Availability Zones, except they don’t have the full suite of AWS services – but they do provide compute, storage, database, and other basic services Closer to where large enterprises need very low “one digit millisecond” latency to process and transfer data.

This is especially important for video streaming, real-time gaming, augmented and virtual reality, and machine learning use cases.

For example, Netflix is ​​expanding its reach beyond live content and More animations She is working on the computer visual effects† Until now, animators, producers and artists had to use special devices in their offices, but now Netflix wants to dump the necessary computing power into the cloud.

“To give our artists a great work experience, they need low-latency access to their virtual desktops,” said Stephen Kowalski, director of digital production infrastructure engineering at Netflix. “AWS Local Zones brings cloud resources closer to our artists.”

The story so far

First AWS Local Region Relaunched in Los Angeles in 2019And in the years since, Amazon has rolled out 15 more territories in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Kansas, Las Vegas, Miami, Minneapolis, New York, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Portland, and Seattle.

Last December, Amazon announced that it would add more than 30 new local areas around the world by 2022. While it mentioned which countries would benefit, it confirmed specific cities in Europe, the Middle East and East, Africa, Asia-Pacific and Latin America. These include:

Amsterdam, Netherlands); Athens, Greece); Auckland, New Zealand); Bangkok, Thailand); Bengaluru (India); Berlin, Germany); Bogotá – Colombia); Brisbane, Australia); Brussels, Belgium) ; Buenos Aires, Argentina); Chennai (India); Copenhagen, Denmark); New Delhi, India); Hanoi, Viet Nam); Helsinki, Finland); Johannesburg, South Africa); Kolkata (India); Lima, Peru); Lisbon, Portugal); Manila, Philippines); Munich, Germany); Nairobi, Kenya); Oslo, Norway); Perth, Australia); Prague, Czech Republic); Querétaro (Mexico); Rio de Janeiro, Brazil); Santiago, Chile); Toronto, Canada); Vancouver, Canada); Vienna, Austria); Warsaw, Poland).

There may even be a number of reasons why a business needs to reach more local areas. A growing number of privacy regulations mean that many companies have to adhere to strict data localization requirements, which may simply mean that data is stored in data centers in a particular country. But it could also mean that companies need to run some of their business from on-premises data centers, while simultaneously leveraging specific AWS cloud services. On-premises may be particularly suitable for these mixed cloud scenarios.

Ultimately, AWS Local Zones are intended to support the rapidly growing edge computing movement by bringing AWS infrastructure closer to the action and giving enterprises more options when setting up their infrastructure.