Cloud solutions such as Amazon Web Services can be a cost-effective way for businesses to obtain a highly scalable online presence.
However, for performance (and privacy) reasons, many Australian business owners require their website and other data to be physically hosted in Australia.
As an Australian user of AWS, one of the recurring conversations I continue to have with other Australians is if (and when) will Amazon Web Services add an Australian region to their service offerings?
The Current Situation
Currently Amazon EC2 (AWS’ virtual server solution) is available in five regions – two in the USA, Ireland, Singapore and Tokyo.
Amazon CloudFront (AWS’ content delivery network) currently uses 19 edge locations throughout the US, Europe and Asia, however they don’t currently have one in Australia.
The most recently added edge location was Sweden.
Why no Australia Region?
In my opinion, there are a lot of factors to take into account when evaluating adding a new region. For example:
- consumer demand in that region
- reliability and redundancy of networking/datacentre infrastructure
- costs of this infrastructure
- availability of government grants
Personally I think the main reason AWS isn’t already in Australia is because of our high networking and datacentre costs. I also can’t imagine the Australian Government offering any grants for this either – although I’d love to be proven wrong on this!
I’m guessing that there are quite a few Australian customers already using AWS, so consumer demand is probably not the cause.
Some Progress
In May AWS sent out a survey to their Australian clients:
Dear AWS Customer,
Amazon Web Services currently serves customers in over 190 countries. As part of our ongoing effort to provide better services and support to our global customers, we are conducting a short (17 question) survey to better understand your needs and requirements.
We sincerely appreciate your time and feedback.
Best regards,
The Amazon Web Services Team
After receiving the survey I tweeted it, and so far almost 40 people have clicked on the link (and hopefully filled in the survey).
If you haven’t already, please complete the survey so Amazon are aware of our demand for AWS in Australia!
The Future
I think if Amazon is to have a presence in Australia, the first step would be adding an Australian-based CloudFront edge location. This would help them evaluate costs, and if things work out then Amazon could introduce their other services such as EC2 and S3.
Your Thoughts?
Why do you think AWS doesn’t have an Australian region?
How likely is it that we will see AWS in Australia?
I don’t know about you, but I have my fingers crossed!
10 replies on “Amazon Web Services (AWS) in Australia?”
[…] by Australians because Amazon doesn’t currently have a presence in Australia (more on that here)[…]
They will be having a tour here in Sydney. I’ve already registered. This could be a sign of them deploying here in Australia. See link below.
http://aws.amazon.com/apac/events/2011/07/14/awsevent-sydney/?trk=LinkedIn_Directads_First-Ever
Good point LiNo.
I’m already registered to attend the Melbourne AWS event on July 12.
I suspect that these events are a good way for Amazon to gauge the interest levels (demand) of AWS in Australia, but I wouldn’t expect any announcements at the events regarding AWS deploying a region to Australia.
So here we are some 9 months later. I’ve heard nothing of an Australian data center, have you?
Hi Ian,
There is an AWS Lean Cloud event in Sydney next week.
I also met Werner Vogels (AWS Chief Technology Officer) in Melbourne earlier this week, and AWS now have (at least) 4 full time staff in Melbourne now.
Those things could indicate progress towards and Australian datacentre, however there are no guarantees!
This looks very promising: Equinix brings expansion plans forward, Accelerated roadmap fuels Amazonian-scale speculation.
Cannot wait to move all my services onto home soil!
Is Amazons policy to keep the launch day a secret as well as the location of the data center?
Chris, based on previous AWS region launches, the general public won’t know about a new region until its actually launched and available for use.
It’s finally happened: CloudFront / Route 53 Edge Location in Sydney, Australia
[…] June 2011, I suggested that: …if Amazon is to have a presence in Australia, the first step would be adding an […]