Amazon plans to build a billion-dollar data center in Vietnam

Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers customers a wide range of digital solutions, such as data storage and processing. Like its major competitors – Microsoft and Google or Alibaba Group Holding and Tencent – AWS is racing to build massive, multibillion-dollar data centers in Asia.

In an interview with Nikkei, Phil Davis, AWS’s regional director for Asia-Pacific and Japan, said his company has recognized a new opportunity: “We’re seeing a lot of countries. Smaller countries may not need metadata centers. They need more regional data centers.”

Amazon has announced it will build 10 local regional data centers in 6 countries: Australia, India, New Zealand, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam.

Amazon’s local data centers are smaller than its metadata centers, which the company calls AWS Regional Data Centers (AWS Regions).

These regional centers comprise a cluster of data center facilities, providing customers with redundancy and resiliency. Amazon has spent billions of dollars building these centers.

Mr. Davis said AWS will continue to build more regional centers and the company has announced it will add metadata centers in Auckland and the Indian city of Hyderabad.

By building more regional data centers, Davis said, AWS will be able to strengthen its position in the Asia-Pacific region.

Regional centers will allow AWS customers to run services such as real-time gaming and live video streaming, as well as new apps — including autonomous driving and virtual reality — throughout the region.

Customers will be able to “build and deploy apps that require just a few milliseconds of latency,” Davis said. Local data centers can help users better comply with regulations and data sovereignty requirements. Currently, Vietnam is also planning to introduce open rules governing the use and transmission of data.

Since Amazon pioneered cloud computing 16 years ago, AWS has grown and brought in huge profits for Amazon.

# References: By Vietnam Insider