AWS launches first Australian Local Zones location in Perth

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has launched their first AWS Local Zones location in Perth, enabling customers the ability to deploy applications to end users or on premises data centres in the metro area.

There are now 29 AWS Local Zones around the world, and AWS has plans to launch 23 more globally, including a location in Brisbane.

AWS Local Zones places AWS compute, storage, database, and other services near large population, industry, and IT centres⁠. They are designed to enable customers to run workloads with low latency requirements while connecting to the rest of their workloads running in AWS regions. This helps with use cases like video analytics, online gaming, virtual workstations, live streaming, remote healthcare, and augmented and virtual reality.

The Local Zones can also help customers operating in regulated sectors like healthcare, financial services, mining and resources, and public sector that might have preferences or requirements to keep data within a geographic boundary. 

AWS manages and supports AWS Local Zones, whereby customers do not incur the expense and effort of procuring, operating, and maintaining infrastructure in various cities to support low latency applications. AWS Local Zones customers include Curtin University, HBF and Woodside Energy.

AWS Local Zones can also help organisations migrate additional workloads to AWS, supporting a hybrid cloud migration strategy and simplifying IT operations.

The launch of AWS Local Zones location in Perth is the newest addition to AWS infrastructure in Australia, including the AWS Asia Pacific (Sydney) Region, seven Amazon CloudFront edge locations, six AWS Direct Connect locations, and the announced AWS Asia Pacific (Melbourne) Region.

AWS Australia head of WA, SA and QLD Enterprise, Sarah Bassett, said, “Speed matters in business, and we’ve designed AWS Local Zones to deliver low latency capabilities for organisations to improve the performance of their digital applications, process large amounts of data faster, and drive productivity gains.”

“The launch of AWS Local Zones location in Perth is a continuation of our investment to support organisations running all types of workloads by bringing secure, extensive, and reliable cloud infrastructure closer to our customers.”

Western Australian minister for Innovation and the Digital Economy, Hon. Stephen Dawson, said, “AWS’s investment to launch its first Australian AWS Local Zones location in Perth is a big win for Western Australian organisations and the economy.”

“An AWS Local Zones location in Perth opens up more opportunities for Western Australian businesses to innovate and develop new services enabling better experiences for their customers and our citizens.

“Having world-class cloud infrastructure here in Perth will drive our state’s innovation agenda and strengthen the diversification of our economy. We’re pleased that AWS’s continued investment in our state supports the next generation of innovators.”

Curtin University chief information officer Jason Cowie said, “Curtin University is on a journey to build a cloud-based digital platform, powered by AWS, which will enable us to move out of our on-campus data centres to ensure we can take full advantage of digital services.”

“An AWS Local Zones location in Perth gives us more choice in where we host our workloads – whether to bring cloud closer to our students using AWS Local Zones or supporting large-scale IT migrations across our global campuses using the AWS Region in Sydney. Today’s announcement brings us one step closer to operating 100% on AWS, while enhancing our security and operational resiliency.”

Non-profit health insurer HBF chief information and transformation officer Sanjeev Gupta said, “The launch of the Perth AWS Local Zones location will help HBF to deliver future applications that require ultra-low latency.”

Australian-founded global energy company Woodside Energy is another company benefitting from the AWS Local Zone. The company’s chief digital officer Ben Wilkinson said, “An AWS Local Zones location in Perth will give us the low latency capabilities we need” for their solutions, allowing them to improve their business operations.

Perth-based IT consultancy and AWS advanced consulting partner Mechanical Rock said the new Local Zones will be a “game-changer.”

CEO Hamish Tedeschi said, “AWS Local Zones will enable us to help more customers run latency-sensitive applications closer to their offices and sites, while addressing data residency preferences for our healthcare, financial services, and government customers.”

Perth-founded location intelligence company Nearmap CEO and managing director Dr. Rob Newman said, “The AWS Local Zones location in Perth gives us more options to reduce latency to drive better user experiences for our customers in Western Australia accessing high-resolution aerial imagery and location data.”