-
AWS Asia Pacific (Taipei) Region will enable customers to run workloads and securely store their content in Taiwan while serving end users with even lower latency
-
New Region reflects AWS’s long-term commitment to meeting high demand for cloud services in Taiwan and across Asia Pacific
-
AWS plans to invest billions of dollars into Taiwan to support the new Region
Amazon Web Services (AWS), an Amazon.com company, announced it will launch an AWS infrastructure Region in Taiwan by early 2025. The new AWS Asia Pacific (Taipei) Region will give developers, startups, entrepreneurs, and enterprises, as well as education, entertainment, financial services, and nonprofit organizations, greater choice for running their applications and serving end users from data centers located in Taiwan, ensuring that customers who want to keep their content in Taiwan can do so. As part of its long-term commitment, AWS is planning to invest billions of dollars in Taiwan over the next 15 years.
“AWS is committed to helping customers of all sizes and across all industries accelerate their digital transformation with the highest levels of security and resilience available,” said Prasad Kalyanaraman, vice president of Infrastructure Services at AWS. “The new AWS Region in Taiwan will enable organizations to unlock the full potential of the cloud and build with AWS technologies like compute, storage, databases, analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence to drive innovation and transform the way businesses and institutions serve their customers. We look forward to helping customers and AWS Partners in Taiwan deliver cloud-enabled applications to accelerate growth, productivity, and innovation with lower latency from data centers located in Taiwan.”
Also Read: CIO Influence Interview with Jeremy Morrill, Chief Product Officer of Portnox
“We appreciate AWS for offering a diverse array of innovative cloud services to both local and international enterprises. Taiwan boasts a well-established industrial cluster, particularly excelling in sectors such as semiconductors and information and communications technology,” said Mr. Jung-tai Cho, Premier of Executive Yuan. “We anticipate that the new AWS Region in Taiwan will foster a mutually beneficial, prosperous, and sustainable relationship. This investment is poised to catalyze the growth of related industry chains, generate high-quality employment opportunities, and advance sustainable development initiatives.”
The new AWS Region will consist of three Availability Zones at launch, adding to AWS’s existing 105 Availability Zones across 33 geographic regions globally. With today’s announcement, AWS has plans to launch 21 more Availability Zones and seven more AWS Regions in Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, Thailand, and the AWS European Sovereign Cloud. AWS Regions consist of Availability Zones that place infrastructure in separate and distinct geographic locations. Availability Zones are 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.
AWS offers the broadest and deepest portfolio of services, including analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), compute, database, Internet of Things (IoT), machine learning (ML), mobile services, storage, and other cloud technologies. The AWS Asia Pacific (Taipei) Region will enable customers with data residency preferences or requirements to store their content securely in Taiwan to achieve even lower latency, and serve demand for cloud services across Asia Pacific. Customers from startups and enterprises to public sector organizations and nonprofits will be able to use advanced technologies from the world’s leading cloud to drive innovation.
Customers welcome the AWS Region in Taiwan
Organizations in Taiwan are among the millions of active customers using AWS in more than 190 countries and territories around the world that choose AWS to innovate, drive cost efficiencies, and accelerate launch time. Organizations in Taiwan that choose AWS to run their workloads include Acer, Cathay Financial Holdings, Chunghwa Telecom, Gamania, KKCompany, Maicoin, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), Trend Micro, and more.
Cathay Financial Holdings (CFH) is a leader in financial technology in Taiwan and continuously introduces the latest technology to create a full-scenario financial service ecosystem. Since 2021, CFH has built a cloud environment on AWS that meets security control and compliance requirements. “Cathay Financial Holdings will continue to accelerate digital transformation in the industry, and also improve the stability, security, timeliness, and scalability of our financial services,” said Marcus Yao, senior executive vice president of CFH. “With the forthcoming new AWS Region in Taiwan, CFH is expected to provide customers with even more diverse and convenient financial services.”
Chunghwa Telecom is a leader in cloud network services in Taiwan. Chunghwa Telecom offers broad 5G bandwidth, fast network speeds, and is one of the world’s leading mobile Internet providers. It has also invested in international submarine cables around the world, providing high speed, low latency and largescale private 5G connection to enterprises. It also leverages generative AI platforms such as Amazon Bedrock to build innovative services and create intelligent applications for various industries. “AWS is an important collaborator to Chunghwa Telecom. The development of an AWS Region in Taiwan will further drive the development of Taiwan’s information industry,” said Dr. Ivan Lin, president of Chunghwa Telecom. “Chunghwa Telecom will leverage AWS’s infrastructure and cloud technologies, and combined with our own experience running information systems and offering multiple AWS competencies, we’re looking forward to providing our customers with even lower latency, high bandwidth, and high-security direct connection services.”
Gamania, a leading Taiwanese online game developer, publisher, and operator, leverages the robust and scalable infrastructure of AWS to seamlessly run multiple game products under its brand, ensuring a highly reliable and secure gaming experience for their vast global player base. “Security and accessibility are critical for player satisfaction, and we rely on AWS to ensure uninterrupted gameplay throughout a game’s lifecycle,” said Marco Chien, Gamania Taiwan COO. “The announcement of the new AWS Region in Taiwan will enable us to leverage the industry’s leading cloud services with low latency while storing data domestically, ensuring a seamless and uninterrupted gaming experience for our players. We are excited about the opportunities this presents, as it allows us to accelerate innovation and uncover new pathways for growth and expansion.”
KKCompany Technologies is one of Asia’s leading AI multimedia technology groups, with businesses covering its music streaming platform KKBOX, an AI-powered streaming solution in BlendVision, and cloud intelligence service Going Cloud. KKCompany has extensive experience serving major clients throughout Asia in cloud migration and digitization. The company offers consulting services in generative AI, multimedia technology, digital transformation and more for enterprises, operating under both B2C and B2B models. “KKCompany has been a long-term collaborator with AWS, collaborating to drive AI digital transformation in the industry,” said Steve Wang, KKCompany chairman and CEO. “We are thrilled to see AWS establishing data centers in Taiwan, which will strengthen our technical base in Taiwan and support our ambition to become a world-class software technology group.”
Also Read: Significance of 5G on Enterprise Mobility and Network Management
AWS Partners also welcome the new AWS Region
The AWS Partner Network (APN) is a global community that leverages AWS technologies, programs, expertise, and tools to build solutions and services for customers. The APN has more than 130,000 partners of independent software vendors (ISVs) and systems integrators (SIs) from over 200 countries around the world. AWS Partners build innovative solutions and services on AWS, and the APN provides business, technical, marketing, and go-to-market support to customers. AWS ISVs, SIs, and consulting partners help enterprise and public sector customers migrate to AWS, deploy mission-critical applications, and provide a full range of monitoring, automation, and management services for customers’ environments. AWS Partners in Taiwan include CKmates, eCloudvalley Digital Technology Group, Going Cloud Co., Ltd., MetaAge Corporation, Netron Ltd., Nextlink Technology, and many others.
eCloudvalley Digital Technology Group is an AWS Premier Tier Services Partner with a team of cloud experts with 500+ certificates. “eCloudvalley Group has always embraced our mission of being a cloud evangelist, driving the adoption of cloud technology across Taiwan’s industries,” said MP Tsai, CEO of eCloudvalley Group. “With a decade-long close collaboration with AWS, we are honored to help more and more customers and industries move to the cloud, while being part of customers’ digital transformation journey on AWS. We believe that the launch of the AWS Region will further support Taiwanese companies’ digital transformation and innovation in Taiwan with its world-leading cloud technology, while industries with higher local data residency requirements, such as finance and healthcare, will be able to further advance their cloud transformation journey.”
Nextlink is an AWS Premier Consulting Partner and certified Managed Service Provider (MSP) providing cloud services and solutions. “AWS’s investment in local infrastructure will help drive the digital transformation of Taiwanese companies, boosting the development of various industries spanning from traditional industries to emerging digital sectors,” said Shasta Ho, CEO of Nextlink Technology Inc. “The new AWS Asia Pacific (Taipei) Region will address customer needs in data localization, low latency, compliance, and high-performance computing workloads. We look forward to leveraging AWS’s world-leading cloud technologies to power customers’ digital transformation journeys, while contributing to the diversification of Taiwan’s economy.”
AWS investment in Taiwan
Since 2014, AWS has launched two Amazon CloudFront edge locations in Taiwan. Amazon CloudFront is a highly secure and programmable content delivery network that accelerates the delivery of data, videos, applications, and APIs to users worldwide with low latency and high transfer speeds. In 2018, AWS established its first of two AWS Direct Connect locations in Taiwan, allowing customers to establish private connectivity between AWS and their data center, office, or colocation environment. In 2020, AWS launched AWS Outposts in Taiwan. AWS Outposts is a family of fully managed solutions delivering AWS infrastructure and services to virtually any on-premises or edge location for a truly consistent hybrid experience. AWS expanded its infrastructure footprint in Taiwan again in 2022 with the launch of AWS Local Zones in Taipei. AWS Local Zones are a type of AWS infrastructure deployment that places compute, storage, database, and other select services closer to large population, industry, and IT centers, enabling customers to deliver applications that require single-digit millisecond latency to end users.
To support the growth in cloud adoption across Taiwan, AWS continues to invest in upskilling students, local developers and technical professionals, nontechnical professionals, and the next generation of IT leaders in Taiwan through offerings like AWS Academy, AWS Educate, and AWS Skill Builder. These programs and learning centers help learners of all backgrounds and experiences prepare for careers in the cloud. Since 2017, AWS has trained more than eight million people across the Asia Pacific-Japan region on cloud skills, including more than 100,000 people in Taiwan.
Also Read: How Machine Learning is Transforming Threat Detection
Commitment to sustainability
Amazon is committed to reaching net-zero carbon across its operations by 2040, 10 years ahead of the Paris Agreement, as part of The Climate Pledge. Amazon co-founded The Climate Pledge in 2019, and as part of that commitment, the company is on a path to match all of the electricity used by its operations with 100% renewable energy by 2025, five years ahead of the original 2030 target. See Amazon’s public methodology for more on its approach. Amazon has been named the largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy for the last four years — a position it’s held since 2020, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Amazon now has more than 500 renewable energy projects globally. Additionally, AWS will be water positive by 2030, returning more water to communities than it uses in its direct operations.
[To share your insights with us as part of editorial or sponsored content, please write to psen@itechseries.com]
