As promised in March of last year, Amazon today has announced the launch of its AWS Region in Malaysia. It is the company’s first infrastructure region in the country, which aims to support customers across industries to securely run applications on AWS, meet data residency needs, reduce latency, and serve cloud demand across Asia.
In its recently published blog post, Amazon says the AWS Region in Malaysia is the thirteenth in Asia Pacific, joining the existing Regions in Hong Kong, Jakarta, Melbourne, Mumbai, Osaka, Seoul, Singapore, and others. The company emphasised that this will play a pivotal role in supporting the Malaysian government’s Madani Economy Framework, which aims to improve the living standards of its citizens by 2030 while supporting innovation in the country and across ASEAN.
At the same time, Amazon also announced a significant investment of US$6.2 billion (RM27 billion) in Malaysia through 2038 as part of its long-term commitment. The new AWS Region is projected to contribute approximately US$12.1 billion (~RM53 billion) to the country’s gross domestic product and will support over 3,500 full-time equivalent jobs annually through 2038.
Since opening its first office in Malaysia in 2016, Amazon says it has continuously invested in infrastructure and technology to support the country’s digital transformation. By 2017, the company had established Malaysia’s first Amazon CloudFront edge location, expanding to four locations today to enhance performance and availability for users.
Additionally, it opened two Direct Connect locations to improve application performance and reduce networking costs. In 2020, the company also introduced AWS Outposts in Malaysia, allowing businesses to deploy its infrastructure on-premises for low-latency applications.
Amazon revealed that several key organisations in Malaysia are leveraging AWS for various workloads. These include PayNet, Pos Malaysia, online brokerage Deriv, Asia Pacific University, and local drone technology provider Aerodyne Group. Furthermore, it also initiated several cloud skills programs, such as Program AKAR, AWS Academy and AWS Skills Guild with Petronas, which aims to build cloud expertise in the country.
Meanwhile, it’s been recently discovered that Amazon’s first data centre in Malaysia is already taking shape in Cyberjaya. Its construction and completion date is still unknown at this time, but a filing with Bursa Malaysia Securities Bhd suggests that the facility is expected to be completed by the second quarter of 2027.
