Recognizing the booming Indian economy and the need for fast response times for big customers, Amazon (AMZN) Web Services plans to open a new region in India next year, the company said Tuesday.
This is the latest in a series of land grabs by major cloud providers, led by Amazon, to set up data centers close to where the markets are. In AWS parlance, a region comprises a field of data centers to service the local area. Amazon launched a cloud presence in Beijing last year. Microsoft(MSFT) also fields a region in Beijing for its Azure cloud.
It was unclear just where in India, AWS will base its datacenters.
For the Asia Pacific area, Amazon also provides regions in Singapore, Tokyo and Sydney. While U.S. firms bulk up in Asia, Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba(BABA) is likewise expanding its Alyun cloud business in the U.S.
In a statement, AWS senior vice president Andy Jassy said the company’s move to India was demand driven.
“Tens of thousands of customers in India are using AWS from one of AWS’s eleven global infrastructure regions outside of India. Several of these customers, along with many prospective new customers, have asked us to locate infrastructure in India so they can enjoy even lower latency to their end users in India and satisfy any data sovereignty requirements they may have.”
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