AWS to invest US$6bil in Malaysia by 2037 for its Infrastructure Region

• Enable customers to run workloads and securely store data in Malaysia
• Reflects commitment to being picked as Cloud Service Provider for MyDigital

[Editor's Note: We've added additional quotes from the Minister of Communications and Digital, CEO of MDEC and CEO of MRANTI to the story]

Amazon Web Services (AWS), an Amazon.com, Inc. company, today announced a US$6 billion (RM25.5 billion) investment into building an AWS infrastructure Region in Malaysia. The investment will be spread over 15 years to 2037 and is seen as Amazon’s commitment to Malaysia for being selected as a Cloud Service Provider (CSP) by the government as part of the Malaysia Digital Economy Blueprint (MyDigital) announced in Feb 2021. Amazon was one of four CSPs along with Google, Microsoft and Telekom Malaysia.

“AWS has committed to the largest international technology investment to date in Malaysia, which will advance our Malaysia Madani vision of a highly skilled, innovative, prosperous, and sustainable economy,” said Anwar Ibrahim, Prime Minister of Malaysia.

In Jan, AWS made a similar commitment to launch its second such region in Melbourne, Australia with a US$4.5 billion (RM20.15 billion) investment to 2037. It released an economic impact study at the same time. No such study was released for Malaysia.

Within Southeast Asia, in Dec 2021, AWS made a similar commitment in Indonesia, with a US$5 billion investment over 15 years.

[RM1 = US$0.223]

The new Malaysian AWS Region will give developers, startups, entrepreneurs, and enterprises, as well as government, education, and nonprofit organizations, greater choice for running their applications and serving end users from data centers located in Malaysia while meeting the needs of customers with data residency preferences in Malaysia.

“Bringing access to world-class AWS infrastructure, advanced technologies, and cloud skills programs to Malaysia will unlock opportunities for local businesses of all sizes to build and expand globally, cultivate a highly skilled workforce, spur new job creation, and deliver long-term economic growth. Today’s announcement is a vote of support for Malaysia's leadership in the global digital economy, and we look forward to deepening our collaboration with AWS to advance our nation’s cloud-first ambitions,” Anwar  said.

"Today marks a momentous milestone for Malaysia as AWS announces plans for its first infrastructure region here. This affirms the confidence of global investors in our digital economy ecosystem," echoed Fahmi Fadzil, Minister of Communications and Digital.“The AWS Region will be a vital component that forms the backbone of our digital economy, providing reliable, secure, and scalable platform to businesses, governments, and enterprises, enabling greater agility and faster innovation”.

“The new AWS Region reflects our deep and long-term commitment to customers and organizations in Malaysia, as well as our commitment to serving sizeable and fast-growing demand for cloud services across Southeast Asia. We are proud to support Malaysia’s digital transformation with the highest levels of security and reliability available on AWS cloud infrastructure,” said Prasad Kalyanaraman (pic), vice president of Infrastructure Services at AWS. “We look forward to helping Malaysian institutions, startups, and companies deliver cloud-powered applications to fuel economic development across the country and to spur job creation, skills training, and educational opportunities in the communities surrounding our data centers.”

The new AWS Region will consist of three Availability Zones at launch, adding to the existing 99 Availability Zones across 31 geographic regions globally. With today’s announcement, AWS has plans to launch 15 more Availability Zones and five more AWS Regions including Canada, Malaysia, New Zealand, and Thailand.

AWS Regions consist of Availability Zones that place infrastructure in separate and distinct geographic locations, with enough distance to significantly reduce the risk of a single event impacting customers’ business continuity, yet near enough to provide low latency for high availability applications that use multiple Availability Zones. Each Availability Zone has independent power, cooling, and physical security and is connected through redundant, ultra-low latency networks. AWS customers focused on high availability can design their applications to run in multiple Availability Zones and across multiple Regions to achieve even greater fault tolerance.

"We look forward to our continued collaboration with AWS in Malaysia to advance our Malaysia Digital national strategic initiative. With today’s milestone announcement, we also affirm our commitment towards further facilitating global investors to land and expand from the nation,” added Mahadhir Aziz, CEO of MDEC.

AWS Malaysian customers welcomed the investment and commitment into Malaysia as well.

“Maxis aspires to be the one-stop shop for all IT and connectivity services in Malaysia, and we see AWS as a key factor in helping us achieve this goal,” said Goh Seow Eng, CEO at Maxis. “We look forward to providing businesses in Malaysia with greater access to world-class cloud solutions to accelerate cloud adoption and empower businesses to be better equipped for Industry 4.0, in line with the government’s cloud-first ambition.” Maxis signed an agreement with AWS in 2019.

Petroliam Nasional Bhd (Petronas), a global energy and solutions provider with presence in over 50 countries, has been an AWS customer since 2014. “With the launch of the AWS Region in Malaysia, we look forward to further strengthening our collaboration with AWS to develop scalable solutions, deliver greater value to our stakeholders, and play a part in achieving Malaysia’s vision to become a regional leader in the digital economy,” said Tengku

Muhammad Taufik, president and group CEO at Petronas.A customer since 2020, Azlan bin Ahmad, chief information officer at TNB, Malaysia’s incumbent electricity provider said, “We welcome the launch of an AWS Region in Malaysia, which will help boost the efficiency and agility of industries, helping companies deliver a wider range of services to improve the lives of local citizens.”   

Dzuleira Abu Bakar, CEO of Malaysian Research Accelerator for Technology and Innovation (MRANTI) noted how AWS Region in Malaysia will accelerate the rate of innovation in the country, raise the stature of Malaysia’s R&D for commercialisation, help draw in the right talent to Malaysia.

“MRANTI is committed to connecting investors and innovators to accelerate ideas to impact. In this regard, we look forward to collaborating with AWS and Malaysian institutions, startups, and companies to deliver cloud-powered applications to fuel economic development across the country and to spur job creation, skills training, and educational opportunities for communities,” she said.

Commitment to sustainability
As part of The Climate Pledge, Amazon is committed to reaching net-zero carbon across its business by 2040 and is on a path to powering operations with 100% renewable energy by 2025, five years ahead of the original 2030 target. In 2022, Amazon set a new corporate record for the most renewable energy announced by a single company in one year and remains the largest corporate buyer of renewable energy—a position it’s held since 2020. Amazon now has 401 renewable energy projects globally, including 164 wind farms and solar farms, and 237 rooftop solar projects on Amazon facilities. Once operational, Amazon’s global renewable energy projects are expected to generate 56,881 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of clean energy each year. Additionally, AWS will be water positive by 2030, returning more water to communities than it uses in its direct operations.