At a Glance:
- AWS has recently announced its global expansion in Local Zones.
- Its Local Zones footprint will rise from 16 to a total of 48.
- Amazon’s initial U.S. built-out is complete.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced a 2-year global expansion of its Local Zones. With this global expansion, the WS presence will rise from 16 to a total of 48 Local Zones, spanning across the APAC, Middle East, North America & Latin America, and African region.
The VP of Infrastructure Services at AWS, Prasad Kalyanraman, stated, “The edge of the cloud is expanding and is now becoming available everywhere.”
AWS edge computing architecture
AWS’s Local Zones act as the implementation of edge computing architecture. Amazon started rolling out Local Zones in May 2021, which are the extension of AWS Regions—physical locations of Amazon clustered data centers across the globe.
AWS consolidates compute, storage, database, and other AWS services closer to the end-users by moving AWS cloud to the edge. This allows low latency communication for real-time collaboration, gaming, and a host of other emerging services.
Amazon counts Netflix, Supercell, and CouchBase among its customers provided several use cases. Netflix uses Local Zones for allowing its distributed teams to use low-latency virtual workstations. Supercell hosts latency-sensitive portions of their game servers there, whereas CouchBase uses Local Zones to deliver low-latency database operation & synchronization across the cloud.
Local Zones mitigating data regulation & privacy concerns
Local Zones not only enables low latency but also mitigates data regulation and privacy concerns.
The spokesperson commented, “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.”
Amazon has also confirmed that the U.S. buildout is complete. Early this year, they announced the general availability of Local Zones in Seattle, Atlanta, and Phoenix. Furthermore, they joined 13 other Local Zones across the U.S.
