AWS to invest USD 4.4B, sets up new AWS Asia Pacific (Hyderabad) Region
2 years ago Rituka MAmazon Web Service (AWS) on Tuesday announced an investment of USD 4.4 billion (about Rs 36,300 crore) by 2030 in building its second data center cluster in Hyderabad, India.
Amazon.com Inc Company is launching its second AWS infrastructure region in India – the AWS Asia Pacific (Hyderabad) Region. With a rapid increase in data consumption and cloud adoption by companies, data centers in India are becoming significant. Data centers are an important element of the digital ecosystem. Currently, the data center capacity in India is 870 MW. Rating agency Crisil estimates this to double, bringing it to 1700-1800 MW by 2025.
The new AWS Asia Pacific (Hyderabad) Region will provide developers, startups, and companies among others to; “run workloads with greater resilience and availability, securely store data in India, and serve end users with lower latency.” Moreover, this region aims to support over 48,000 full-time jobs annually. This will be funded through an investment of over USD 4.4. Bn (approximately Rs. 36,300 crores) in India by 2030.
This investment includes CAPEX on the construction of data centers; operational expenses related to ongoing utilities and facility costs, and purchases of goods and services from regional businesses. According to the statement, the estimated jobs will be part of the AWS supply chain in India. This will include construction, facility maintenance, engineering, telecommunications, and jobs within the country’s broader economy.
The region will allow access to advanced AWS technologies promoting innovation, data analytics, security, machine learning, and artificial intelligence (AI).
AWS Availability Zones
Currently, AWS has 96 Availability Zones across 30 geographic regions; including announced plans to launch 15 more Availability Zones and five more AWS Regions in Australia, Canada, Israel, New Zealand, and Thailand. The AWS Asia Pacific (Hyderabad) Region consists of three Availability Zones. Availability Zones are independent locations within an AWS Region that are isolated from failures in other Availability Zones. They place infrastructure in separate and distinct geographic locations. This ensures inexpensive, low-latency network connectivity to other Availability Zones in the same AWS Region.
Apart from the Hyderabad Region, the AWS Asia Pacific (Mumbai) Region is operating in India since June 2016.
Bytes on the announcement
Prasad Kalyanaraman, Vice President of Infrastructure Services at Amazon Data Services Inc says; “The launch of the AWS Asia Pacific (Hyderabad) Region supports India’s digital transformation. This is part of our long-term investment in the country since opening our first office in 2011. Customers and partners in India will now have the additional regional infrastructure. This will enable them to deploy applications with greater resilience, availability, and even lower latency,â€ÂÂ
Adding further, he says; “we are proud to invest in the future of the Indian technology community and workforce. We are committed to helping organizations across industries increase agility and drive innovation.”
Further, Rajeev Chandrashekhar, Union Minister for Electronics & IT; and Skill Development & Entrepreneurship, stressing on PM Modi’s $1 trillion digital economy vision says; “the ‘India cloud’ is set for big expansion and innovation”. He added, “AWS’s investment in expanding its data centers in India is a welcome development. We believe this will help catalyze India’s digital economy.”
Bringing out relevance to the Centre’s upcoming National Cloud and Data Center Policy; he envisions a significant increase in India’s cloud computing capacity. Chandrashekhar added, “We look forward to a greener and more sustainable data centers to power India’s expanding economy.”
Furthermore, KT Rama Rao during the launch welcomed AWS’s commitment. This move will strengthen the State’s position as a progressive data center hub in India. Adding, he says; “We recognize the power of cloud computing. This is why we have collaborated with AWS to improve e-governance, healthcare, and municipal operations. We believe this will benefit the citizens of Telangana. We are pleased that the new AWS Region in Hyderabad will spur more innovation and growth for many organizations in India.”
