News
AWS Commits to a Full-Blown Cloud Region in Osaka
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is expanding its ever-growing infrastructure footprint, announcing plans this week to turn an existing "local" region in Osaka, Japan, into a full-blown cloud region, complete with three availability zones, sometime next year.
AWS defines a "region" as a single geographic location that contains at least two availability zones, which in turn contain one or more datacenters. Each datacenter can contain as many as hundreds of thousands of servers. AWS shares details about its cloud regions here.
AWS first launched the Osaka region nearly two years ago as a local region with just one datacenter. At that time, according to a blog post by Harunobu Kameda, senior product marketing manager at AWS, the Osaka zone was meant to "complement" the company's Tokyo region nearly 250 miles away.
"[T]he Osaka Local Region has supported customers with applications that require in-country, geographic diversity for disaster recovery purposes that could not be served with the Tokyo Region alone," Kameda wrote.
As a local region, only certain AWS-approved customers were able to use the Osaka region. However, once it becomes refurbished as a full region -- which AWS expects to happen in "early 2021" -- the Osaka region will be open to all AWS customers.
"When launched, the Osaka Region will provide the same broad range of services as other AWS Regions and will be available to all AWS customers," Kameda said. "Customers will be capable of deploying multi-region systems within Japan, and those users located in western Japan will enjoy even lower latency than what they have today."
The new region promises to be a boon to AWS partners servicing customers in the rapidly growing Asia Pacific market, notes Chris Smith, vice president of cloud architecture at Unitas Global, a provider of enterprise-class cloud management services.
"The expansion of the Osaka region from local to a full region will allow partners of AWS, like Unitas Global, to continue to be competitive in providing full public cloud management services to our clients with a presence and need for a presence in the region," Smith said in an e-mailed statement. "As always, when AWS expands, it allows our managed services to expand, as well."
Currently, AWS has 22 regions in operation (eight of them in the Asia Pacific) comprising 69 availability zones. Besides the forthcoming Osaka region with its three planned availability zones, AWS is developing another four regions comprising 13 availability zones.