Amazon Web Services has announced the completion of its first 16 AWS Local Zones in the U.S. and plans to launch new AWS Local Zones in 32 new metropolitan areas in 26 countries around the world. AWS Local Zones are a type of infrastructure deployment that extends AWS Regions to place AWS compute, storage, database, and other services at the edge of the cloud near large population, industry, and information technology (IT) centers—enabling customers to deploy applications that require single-digit millisecond latency closer to end users or on-premises data centers. AWS Local Zones allow customers to use core AWS services locally while seamlessly connecting to the rest of their workloads running in AWS Regions with the same elasticity, pay-as-you-go model, application programming interfaces (APIs), and toolsets.
According to AWS, the majority of customers receive the latency required to support their applications’ performance by running them in AWS Regions. However, for applications that require ultra-low latency (e.g., remote real-time gaming, media and entertainment content creation, live video streaming, engineering simulations, augmented and virtual reality, machine learning inference at the edge, etc.), customers want AWS infrastructure closer to their end users to support a seamless experience. Other customers have local data residency requirements where they must run parts of their applications in on-premises data centers, but they also want to take advantage of AWS services and similarly benefit from the ultra-low latency that AWS Local Zones can provide to these types of hybrid applications. Both of these use cases would otherwise require customers to procure, operate, and maintain IT infrastructure—and use a different set of APIs and tools for the on-premises and AWS environments—which creates unnecessary costs and operational complexity. Prior to today, customers could use AWS Local Zones to deliver applications that require single-digit millisecond latency in 16 cities in the U.S. (Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Kansas City, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, New York City, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Portland, and Seattle). However, customers in Africa, Asia Pacific, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East would also like to use AWS Local Zones to deliver applications closer to end users and run hybrid workloads near their data centers with single-digit millisecond latencies around the world.
Starting this year, new AWS Local Zones will launch in Amsterdam, Athens, Auckland, Bangkok, Bengaluru, Berlin, Bogotá, Brisbane, Brussels, Buenos Aires, Chennai, Copenhagen, Delhi, Hanoi, Helsinki, Johannesburg, Kolkata, Lima, Lisbon, Manila, Munich, Nairobi, Oslo, Perth, Prague, Querétaro, Rio de Janeiro, Santiago, Toronto, Vancouver, Vienna, and Warsaw. The new AWS Local Zones will give customers around the world the ability to offer hundreds of millions of end users single-digit millisecond performance for applications from gaming to video streaming to machine learning inference at the edge. AWS Local Zones also allow customers to connect their on-premises data center installations to AWS while ensuring ultra-low latency for hybrid deployments—all while using familiar AWS APIs and tools. Using AWS Local Zones, customers outside the U.S. have the ability to meet data residency requirements in regulated sectors like health care and life sciences, financial services, and government. AWS manages and supports Local Zones, meaning customers do not need to incur the expense and effort of procuring, operating, and maintaining infrastructure in various cities to support low-latency applications. Customers can connect to AWS Local Zones through an internet connection or use AWS Direct Connect to route traffic over a private AWS network connection.
“The edge of the cloud is expanding and is now becoming available virtually everywhere,” said Prasad Kalyanaraman, vice president of infrastructure services at AWS. “Thousands of AWS customers using U.S.-based AWS Local Zones are able to optimize low-latency applications designed specifically for their industries and the use cases of their customers. With the success of our first 16 Local Zones, we are expanding to more locations for our customers around the world who have asked for these same capabilities to push the edge of cloud services to new places. AWS Local Zones will now be available in over 30 new locations globally, providing customers with a powerful new capability to leverage cloud services within a few milliseconds of hundreds of millions of end users around the world.”
To learn more about AWS Local Zones, visit aws.amazon.com/about-aws/global-infrastructure/localzones.