Kia ora, Auckland! — An AWS Region is coming to New Zealand

Today, I’m excited to announce our plans to open a new AWS Region in New
Zealand! The AWS Asia Pacific (Auckland) Region will have three
Availability Zones and allow AWS customers and partners the ability to
run workloads and store data locally in New Zealand.

The AWS Asia Pacific (Auckland) Region will join eight existing AWS
Regions and 25 Availability Zones across Asia in Australia, Greater
China, India, Japan, Korea, and Singapore. AWS customers already use 81
Availability Zones across 25 geographic AWS Regions, and with today’s
news, AWS has announced plans for 24 more Availability Zones and eight
more AWS Regions in New Zealand, Australia, India, Indonesia, Israel,
Spain, Switzerland, and the United Arab Emirates. You can learn more
about our regions by visiting the AWS Global Infrastructure
website.

I’m excited about our new Region in New Zealand because it builds on the
long-term commitment we made to the country eight years ago when AWS
opened our first office in Auckland. Today, AWS has tens of thousands of
active customers and AWS Partners across the country using our services
to innovate quickly, increase operational efficiencies, and take their
ideas to the world. These include Air NZ, ANZ, BNZ, Contact Energy,
Datacom, Deloitte, New Zealand Department of Justice, New Zealand
Department of Conservation, Education Perfect, Halter, Kiwibank, Lancom,
New Zealand Ministry of Health, New Zealand Ministry of Justice, Orion
Health, Sharsies, Spark, The Clinician, TVNZ, UneeQ, University of
Auckland, Vector, Vodafone, Xero, and many more.

Opening an AWS Region in Auckland brings our deep portfolio of services
closer to our customers in New Zealand, further improving our already
rapid responsiveness. In addition to the security, availability,
performance, scalability, and flexibility benefits that set AWS apart,
customers rely on our global footprint. AWS uses the concept of a
Region, which is a physical location around the world where we cluster
data centers. We call each group of data centers an Availability Zone
(AZ), and each AWS Region consists of multiple, isolated, and physically
separate AZs within a geographic area. Unlike other cloud providers who
define a region as a single data center, the multiple-AZ design of every
AWS Region offers advantages for customers since each AZ has independent
power, cooling, and physical security and is connected through
redundant, ultra-low latency networks. As of this year, all our Regions
have three or more Availability Zones. Opening an AWS Region in Auckland
delivers Kiwis the highest levels of security, compliance, and data
protection, with the proven performance and reliability that only AWS
provides.

AWS also works with a strong community of partners in New Zealand who
provide knowledge, expertise, and services to support our customers’
digital transformations. Last April, we opened our AWS
Marketplace to New Zealand
Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) and Consulting Partners. This new
sales channel provides our partners with instant access to more than
310,000 monthly active users around the world who can now find, buy,
deploy, and manage their software services. One great example is our
local New Zealand partner, Consegna, who found Australian software
provider Local Measure’s customer platform so interesting, they bundled
it with their own consulting services—and listed the new service
offering on the AWS Marketplace, allowing them to access a global
market.

Our customer and partner, Deloitte, offers another example of how AWS’s
commitment to New Zealand helps it accelerate growth and innovation in
the country. Deloitte New Zealand Consulting Deputy Managing Partner
Dave Farrelly said:

“The global infrastructure AWS provides makes it possible for us to
deliver agile, innovative, and impactful solutions to New Zealand
organizations. Deloitte has been an AWS Premier Consulting Partner
since 2017, which has helped us have significant impact in disrupting
industries, driving innovation and providing leadership, risk
management, and multi-disciplinary technical delivery capabilities for
cloud transformations throughout the public and private sectors.

“Furthermore, recognising the tech skills shortage in New Zealand,
the firm launched the Deloitte Digital Cadetship program which
provides an accessible, collaborative and hands-on learning
experience. This has boosted the AWS expertise we can offer clients as
well as help grow the skilled talent pool in New Zealand. The first
cohort was so successful we are recruiting again for the next group of
cadets for the program. In addition to the cadetships, we’ve trained
over 60 business leaders on AWS Cloud Practitioner in the past three
months through the Deloitte Cloud Guild. We understand the importance
of ensuring our people have up-to-date skills to deliver the advanced
technology products and services New Zealand organisations need for
success.”

The AWS Asia Pacific (Auckland) Region will provide many more such
opportunities for individuals in New Zealand to develop skills and build
on top of the world’s most comprehensive cloud offering. AWS is
passionate about upskilling developers, students, and the next
generation of IT leaders to drive economic growth and job creation in
New Zealand. Globally, we have a goal to train 29 million people by
2025, and in New Zealand, Kiwis can already access more than 500 free
courses, interactive labs, and virtual day-long training sessions
through AWS Training and Certification.

Finally, we designed the new AWS Region with sustainability at its
heart. At Amazon, we’re
committed to running our business in an eco-friendly way, and we aim to
reach net-zero-carbon across all our operations by 2040 as part of the
Climate Pledge—10 years ahead of the Paris Agreement goals. We are
currently on track to run all Amazon operations with 100% renewable
energy by 2025.

New Zealand has a long history of pioneering, innovation, and invention,
and the launch of the new AWS Region in Auckland will give Kiwis an
opportunity to continue creating new and exciting ideas and services for
the benefit of us all. I can’t wait to see what comes next.