AWS launches second infrastructure region in Canada

With the new launch in Canada, AWS now has 105 availability zones across 33 geographic regions

Amazon Web Services (AWS) launched its second infrastructure region in Canada, the company said in a release.

With the AWS Canada West (Calgary) Region, AWS noted it was the first major cloud services provider to open an infrastructure region in Western Canada.

Customers will also have access to advanced AWS technologies, including data analytics, security, machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI). AWS also released a new economic impact study highlighting that the company is planning to invest an estimated $17.9 billion in Canada through 2037 via the new AWS Canada West (Calgary) region and the existing AWS Canada (Central) region in Quebec.

“With the launch of the AWS Canada West (Calgary) region, customers and partners across Canada now have additional infrastructure to deploy applications with greater resilience, availability, and lower latency, while enabling more customers to innovate with advanced technologies like artificial intelligence to help fuel economic development across the country,” said Prasad Kalyanaraman, vice president of infrastructure services at AWS.

“Our government is committed to positioning our domestic industries for long-term growth and sustainability. The powerful digital infrastructure being established by Amazon Web Services near Calgary, Alberta will support Canadian developers, startups, large enterprises and academic institutions in their work by enabling access to AWS’s powerful advanced cloud technologies,” said François-Philippe Champagne, Canada’s minister of innovation, science and industry.

AWS’s active customers in Canada include Bell Canada, BlackBerry, Calgary Sports and Entertainment, CI Financial, the National Hockey League (NHL), Natural Resources Canada, Neo Financial, Nutrien, RBC, SECURE, Sun Life, TELUS and University of Calgary, among others.

With the addition of the new region in Canada, AWS now has 105 availability zones across 33 geographic regions, with plans to launch 12 more availability zones and four more AWS Regions in Malaysia, New Zealand, Thailand, and the AWS European Sovereign Cloud.

AWS Regions are composed 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, AWS said.