AWS has announced plans to open a second infrastructure region in Australia in the second half of 2022.

The new region in Melbourne will have three Availability Zones at launch, enabling organisations in the public and private sectors to gain lower latency, greater fault tolerance and resiliency for cloud workloads.

“Over the last decade, customers in Australia have relied upon the cloud to transform businesses, educational institutions, and government agencies, and with another AWS Region coming to Asia Pacific, we look forward to helping accelerate these transformations,” said Peter DeSantis, the Senior Vice President of Global Infrastructure and Customer Support at AWS.

The Availability Zones will add to the existing 25 in eight AWS Regions across Asia Pacific, including China, India, Japan, Korea, and Singapore. Availability Zones are connected via redundant, ultra-low-latency networks and include independent power, cooling, and physical security.

“We welcome the investment of one of the world’s leading tech companies into Melbourne – the new AWS Region will draw on our highly skilled talent, culture of innovation, and renowned capabilities in growing employment fields such as cloud computing,” said Tim Pallas, Victorian Minister for Economic Development.

The new region is expected to strengthen Australia’s tech reputation and contribute to their economic recovery.

“Having safe, secure and resilient infrastructure is paramount to providing the best banking experiences for our customers. As more traditional banking services continue to become available online, our annual investments in technology and innovation will continue to meet this demand, underpinned by our ongoing development of cloud-first, resilient, and modern platforms,” said Mark Vudrag, the Executive General Manager for Global Technology Services at the Commonwealth Bank of Australia.

For reliable infrastructure, Amazon is investing in the Hawaiki Submarine Cable, a 15,000km transpacific cable system that provides a low-latency, high-bandwidth connection from Australia to New Zealand and the United States.

“A new AWS Region here in Melbourne will allow us to further scale our innovation, and continue to transform our research and development projects that protect, prioritise, and benefit people across the city, state, and country,” said Professor Bronwyn Fox, the Deputy Vice Chancellor of Research and Enterprise at Swinburne University of Technology.

Hundreds of thousands of customers use AWS services in Australia each month to accelerate innovation, increase agility, and drive cost savings, including Australia Post, National Australia Bank,Kmart Group, Qantas, Atlassian, and Canva.

“AWS is like rocket fuel for startups. With a second local AWS Region and AWS’s incredible enablement programs for startups such as Activate, we will be able to continue to evolve our service capabilities and accelerate our growth,” said Alex Birch, the CEO and Co-Founder of XY Sense.

XY Sense has been involved in the AWS Partner Network, which includes tens of thousands of Independent Software Vendors and Systems Integrators around the world, building innovative solutions and services on AWS.

“With the new region in Australia, we expect that we will be able to expand our business and hire more highly skilled tech employees, further supporting the local workforce,” said Thor Essman, the CEO of Versent.

Over the last decade, Amazon has invested more than US$2.2 billion (AU$3 billion) in Australia, establishing its first infrastructure in Sydney in 2012.

“The announcement of the Asia Pacific (Melbourne) Region will allow us to leverage enhanced cloud skills to deliver secure, highly available, and disruptive solutions to our customers,” said Rob Hillard, Chief Transformation Officer for Deloitte Asia Pacific.

The new region, which consists of Availability Zones, will run in an environmentally-friendly way, as Amazon aims to reach net zero carbon across all operations by 2040.

Amazon has invested in two renewable energy projects in Australia, adding 165 MW of capacity and generating an expected 392,000 MWh annually, which is enough to power 63,000 average Australian homes each year.