AWS rolls out Amazon Q Business in AWS Asia Pacific (Sydney) Region

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has rolled out Amazon Q Business, a generative AI-powered assistant, in the AWS Asia Pacific (Sydney) Region.  

Q Business uses enterprise access controls to ensure users access content securely, according to their permissions. It is designed to provide employees with quick, accurate and relevant answers to questions based on their organisation’s data, with citations and references to the source material for increased transparency.  

Employees can also use Amazon Q Business to generate content with support for details like embedded images, scanned PDFs and tabular search on small tables.

Amazon Q Business, which is used by customers and partners in Australia like Arcanum AI and Ingram Micro, connects to over 40 enterprise systems, including Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Microsoft 365, and Salesforce. 

Amazon Q Business will be available to customers and partners using cross-region inference profiles. Cross-region inference automatically routes inference requests to the optimal AWS Region, prioritising the source region to minimise latency and enhance user experience.

This approach helps with performance, including during peak demand periods. Charges are only incurred on the source region of the request, with no routing costs. Customers with data residency preferences can opt to run and store Amazon Q Business workloads exclusively within the AWS Sydney Region.  

AWS Australia and New Zealand’s director of solutions architecture, Nam Je Cho, talked-up Amazon Q Business's claimed benefits for workplace productivity, providing secure, comprehensive answers with citations and intelligent document summarisation.

“Teams can now access and analyse information faster than ever before, enabling data-driven decisions that drive business value,” said Cho. “From streamlining customer service to accelerating research and development, Amazon Q Business helps organisations optimise their processes while maintaining enterprise-grade security.”  

Ingram Micro's senior GM of cloud for ANZ, Phil Duke, said the technology distributor and solutions aggregator is excited to bring Amazon Q Business to its network of partners in Australia and New Zealand.

"We believe that AI-powered apps and solutions can enable our channel partners to boost their operational efficiency and deliver enhanced value to their customers," he said.

"Amazon Q Business has potential to help our partners streamline their workflows, improve decision-making processes, and reduce time spent on routine tasks. With Amazon Q Business AI apps our partners will be able to create customised solutions which in turn may help them address specific business challenges and scale their operations effectively."

AWS has invested more than $9.1 billion in Australia since the launch of the AWS Asia Pacific (Sydney) Region in 2012. AWS launched the AWS Asia Pacific (Melbourne) Region in 2023 and also announced plans to invest more than $13.2 billion in local infrastructure, which t claims will support more than 11,000 jobs annually by 2027.