Amazon Web Services (AWS), which is expanding its infrastructure footprint, announced plans to transform an existing Osaka region in Japan into a fully-fledged cloud region. The region will have three availability zones and will be available for use by the end of next year.
AWS defines a “region” as a geographic area that contains at most two availability zones. These availability zones in turn contain one or several datacenters. Each datacenter can house hundreds of thousands of servers. AWS shares information about its cloud regions here.
AWS launched the Osaka region almost two years ago as a small region with one datacenter. Harunobu Kameda (senior product marketing manager at AWS), stated that the Osaka region was initially launched in order to “complement” its Tokyo region, which is nearly 250 miles away.
Kameda wrote that “[T]he Osaka Local Region supported customers with applications that required in-country, geographical diversity for disaster recovery purposes that couldn’t be served with just the Tokyo Region alone.”
Only AWS-approved customers could use the Osaka area as a local region. The Osaka region will open to all AWS customers once it is refurbished as a full area, which AWS expects to happen “early 2021.”
Kameda stated that the Osaka Region will offer the same wide range of services as other AWS Regions, and will be available for all AWS customers when it launches. “Customers will have the ability to deploy multi-region systems within Japan. Users located in western Japan will also be able to enjoy lower latency than they currently enjoy.”
The new region promises to be a boon for AWS partners serving customers in the rapidly growing Asia Pacific Market, says Chris Smith, vice president of Cloud Architecture at Unitas Global. This provider of enterprise-class cloud management service, is a provider of this region.
Smith stated in an emailed statement that “The Osaka region’s expansion from a local to a fully-fledged region will allow AWS partners like Unitas Global to continue being competitive in providing full public clouds management services to clients with a presence or need for the region.” As always, AWS expansion allows our managed services expand.
AWS currently has 22 regions operating (eight in the Asia Pacific), and 69 availability zones. AWS is currently developing four additional regions, each with 13 availability zones.