AWS launches Malaysia's first cloud infrastructure region, shares US$6.2 B investment strategy

Source: AWS blog post. Kuala Lumpur skyline.

Amazon Web Services (AWS), an Amazon.com, Inc. company, has launched the AWS Asia Pacific (Malaysia) Region, giving organisations in Malaysia greater choice for running their applications and serving end users from AWS data centres in Malaysia.

Each Region is a physical geographic location where AWS has a cluster of data centres, offerinf customers cloud infrastructure with security, performance, and scalability. It enables local data residency while providing businesses with low latency access to advanced technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and generative AI.

As part of its long-term commitment, AWS is also planning to invest an estimated US$6.2 B in Malaysia through 2038. The investment is expected to create a ripple effect across Malaysia, creating employment opportunities across the data centrersupply chain, accelerating productivity gains, empowering digital transformation, and upskilling the workforce in cloud and generative AI skills.

"AWS’s RM29.2 billion investment underscores the robust confidence global investors have in our economic policies and potential. AWS’s advanced cloud solutions will play a crucial role in accelerating our national digitalisation agenda, enhancing public sector efficiency, fostering innovation across all sectors and ensuring we have the right digital infrastructure in Malaysia to future-ready our nation's economy,” said YB Rafizi Ramli, Malaysia’s Minister of Economy.

“We see cloud as the foundation for innovation as it enables businesses and governments to innovate at scale, and in a more sustainable way. The economic impact of AWS’s investment is profound, with thousands of high-quality and high wage jobs being created, directly contributing to Malaysia’s economic growth. This collaboration will also drive technological advancements and spur new business opportunities especially for AI-driven startups, ensuring a prosperous future for all Malaysians.”

The construction and operation of the new AWS Region is estimated to add approximately US$12.1 B to Malaysia’s gross domestic product (GDP) and will support an average of more than 3,500 full-time equivalent jobs at external businesses annually through 2038. These jobs, including construction, facility maintenance, engineering, telecommunications, and others within the country’s broader economy, will be part of the AWS supply chain in Malaysia.

“The launch of an AWS infrastructure Region in Malaysia provides access to new and emerging technology for Malaysian entities and businesses of all sizes, boosting our country’s capabilities for digital innovation,” said Tengku Zafrul, Minister of Investment Trade & Industry (MITI). 

“This milestone is a significant step towards fulfilling the vision of Malaysia’s New Industrial Master Plan 2030 to build a highly skilled, innovative, prosperous, inclusive, and sustainable economy. We recognise the transformative power of digitalisation, cloud computing and AI as key drivers in Malaysia’s effort to become a manufacturing and services hub within Asia. 

"As the largest investment made by an international technology company in Malaysia, the AWS infrastructure Region will help ensure Malaysia remains competitive on the global stage.”

“The new AWS Region in Malaysia enables organisations across Asia Pacific to unlock the full potential of the world’s most extensive and reliable cloud, helping customers deploy advanced applications with a broad set of AWS technologies like AI and ML,” said Prasad Kalyanaraman, VP of Infrastructure Services at AWS.

AWS Regions are composed of Availability Zones that place infrastructure in separate and distinct geographic locations. The AWS Asia Pacific (Malaysia) Region consists of three Availability Zones located far enough from each other to support customers’ business continuity, but 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 to achieve even greater fault tolerance.

With the launch of the AWS Asia Pacific (Malaysia) Region, AWS has 108 Availability Zones across 34 geographic regions, with announced plans to launch 18 more Availability Zones and six more AWS Regions, including in KSA, New Zealand, Taiwan, and Thailand. 

Malaysian customers using AWS include Astro Malaysia, Axiata Group, Bank Islam Malaysia, Bursa Malaysia, CelcomDigi, the Department of Broadcasting Malaysia (RTM), GX Bank Berhad (GXBank), Johor Corporation, PayNet, and Petroliam Nasional Berhad (PETRONAS). 

Malaysian public sector customers include Asia Pacific University (APU) of Technology & Innovation, Beeducation Adventures  (BeED), Department of Statistics Malaysia (DOSM), Ministry of Higher Education Malaysia (MOHE), Pos Malaysia, and Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB). 

AWS Partners in Malaysia include Accenture, Aerodyne, Axrail, CelcomDigi, Deloitte, eCloudvalley, Exabytes, G-AsiaPacific, GHL, Kyndryl, Maxis, Radmik Solutions, Silverlake Axis, SoftwareOne, Tapway, Uberfusion, and VSTECS.

G-AsiaPacific is a cloud advisory company based in Malaysia and operating across Asia Pacific, and a Consulting Partner in the AWS Partner Network. 

“The new AWS Region in Malaysia presents a fantastic opportunity for us to build even better service offerings for our customers across the public sector, financial services, education, and beyond,” said Mark Goh, CEO and co-founder at G-AsiaPacific. 

“With AWS, we can help our customers establish critical data governance and compliance policies, while meeting local data residency and security requirements. AWS’s advanced technologies are helping our customers experiment and iterate faster at lower cost, accelerating innovation across increasingly diverse industries. We plan to nurture more highly skilled cloud talent to better leverage the latest AWS capabilities and drive growth in Malaysia’s vibrant digital economy.”

With AWS, Exabytes has been able to transform to become a one-stop cloud solutions and managed services provider, and scale its business to focus on cloud-first digital transformation services. 

“With AWS’s comprehensive cloud services and cloud migration programs, we are confident to grow our Exabytes Enterprise Business by more than 40% in FY2024,” said Eric Foo, Executive VP and Head of Enterprise Business, Exabytes Group and an AWS partner.

“We strongly believe that the launch of the new AWS Region in Malaysia will accelerate our growth further as we migrate more customers’ workloads to AWS and modernise their applications to optimise costs, improve user experiences, and simplify their digital transformation journeys.”

Kyndryl, a global IT infrastructure services provider, and AWS’s Premier Tier Services Partner, collaborated with AWS to establish its first Mainframe Modernization Center of Excellence (CoE) in Malaysia to jointly help enterprises update, modernise, and migrate legacy mainframe applications to a cloud-native environment. 

“We deeply appreciate our strategic partnership with AWS and the value it brings to our customers' digital transformation through cloud,” said Effendi Azmi Hashim, MD, Kyndryl Malaysia and Indonesia.

“In addition to leveraging AWS to help businesses streamline their applications on the cloud, our first Mainframe Modernization Center of Excellence in Malaysia marks a milestone in our collaboration to accelerate innovation and growth across the region. The new AWS Malaysia Region is a welcome development that is pivotal for our shared goal to help our customers become more competitive and digitally advanced.”

Since 2017, AWS Malaysia has trained over 100,000 individuals in Malaysia in cloud skills. AWS continues to invest in upskilling developers, students, and the next generation of IT leaders in Malaysia with sought-after cloud skills through AWS Skills to Jobs Tech Alliance and AWS training and certification programmes like AWS Academy. 

AWS Academy provides higher education institutions around the world with a free, ready-to-teach cloud computing curriculum that prepares students for industry-recognised AWS certifications and in-demand cloud jobs. AWS Academy currently runs courses in 49 universities in east and west Malaysia, including Asia Pacific University of Technology and Innovation (APU), Tunku Abdul Rahman University of Management and Technology (TAR UMT), and Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, that cover cloud foundations, cloud architecting, cloud operations, cloud developing, and data engineering, as well as specialty certifications related to machine learning, cyber security, and other domains. Since 2018, more than 25,000 students have been trained by the AWS Academy programme.

In July 2024, AWS and PayNet announced Program AKAR, powered by AWS re/Start, a new cloud skills initiative in Malaysia that aims to bridge the growing skills gap in Malaysia’s digital economy. Program AKAR is the first financial services-focused cloud skills programme that has been curated specifically for entry-level talent in Malaysia, and – through a 47-day training course culminating with the AWS Cloud Practitioner Certification – equips university students with transferrable skills that can be leveraged for careers in financial services. 

PayNet and AWS welcomed the first cohort of learners from Asia Pacific University in July 2024. These students will be given opportunities for internships with organisations across PayNet’s payments network upon completion of the programme.

AWS is further helping organisations such as PETRONAS accelerate their digital transformation through AWS Skills Guild, a consultative programme that helps companies build an organisation-wide cloud enablement initiative rooted in skills application and community development. PETRONAS is training their employees on cloud fundamentals through self-paced, online training courses. 

AWS was the first international cloud service provider to sign a Cloud Framework Agreement with the Malaysian government in 2022 as part of its long-term commitment to support Malaysia's digital transformation.