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AWS (Amazon Web Services) detached cloud company has confirmed global expansion plans for: AWS On-premises, a 2019 initiative launched to bring low-latency cloud infrastructure services closer to major population centers and industrial hubs.
This move will help AWS redouble its existing efforts in edge computing as companies across the spectrum look to process and store data closer to their end users.
“The edge of the cloud 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 the cloud and availability zones, except that they don’t have the full suite of AWS services – but they do provide compute, storage, database, and other essential services close to large companies that have very low “single-digit milliseconds” latency to process data and transferred.
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-action content and more animation, it’s working on 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 provide our artists with a great work experience, they need low-latency access to their virtual workstations,” said Stephen Kowalski, director of digital production infrastructure engineering at Netflix. “AWS Local Zones are bringing the cloud resources of our artists closer.”
The story so far
The first AWS Local Region was relaunched in Los Angeles in 2019, and in the years since, Amazon has deployed 15 more regions to 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 regions globally by 2022. While it indicated which countries would benefit, today it confirmed specific cities in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia Pacific and Latin America. These include:
Amsterdam, Netherlands); Athens, Greece); Auckland, New Zealand); Bangkok, Thailand); Bengaluru (India); Berlin Germany); Bogota, Colombia); Brisbane, Australia); Brussels, Belgium) ; Buenos Aires, Argentina); Chennai (India); Copenhagen, Denmark); New Delhi, India); Hanoi, Vietnam); Helsinki, Finland); Johannesburg, South Africa); Kolkata (India); Lima, Peru); Lisbon, Portugal); Manila, Philippines); Munich, Germany); Nairobi, Kenya); Oslo, Norway); Perth, in the state of Australia); Prague, Czech Republic); Queretaro (Mexico); Rio de Janeiro, Brazil); Santiago, Chile); Toronto Canada); Vancouver, Canada); Vienna, Austria); Warsaw, Poland).
There may be a number of reasons why a company needs to reach out to more local areas. The growing number of privacy regulations means that many companies have to adhere to strict data location 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 manage parts of their business from on-premises data centers, while at the same time benefiting from specific AWS cloud services. Premises can be particularly suitable for such mixed cloud scenarios.
Ultimately, AWS Local Zones aims to support the rapidly growing edge computing movement by bringing AWS infrastructure closer to the action and giving businesses more options when setting up their infrastructure.
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