Amazon's subsidiary, AWS, announced that its Region in Malaysia is now open, and it will be investing over US$6.2 billion in the country through 2038. Recently, Microsoft has also announced investment plans for cloud servers and AI infrastructure in Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand, indicating that the cloud service market in Southeast Asian countries will experience accelerated growth.
AWS estimated that the investments would add approximately US$12.1 billion to Malaysia's GDP and support more than 3,500 jobs at external businesses in areas including construction, facility maintenance, engineering, and telecommunications, which will all be part of the AWS supply chain in Malaysia.
The data center was officially named the AWS Asia Pacific (Malaysia) Region and includes three Availability Zones (AZs). There is a certain distance between each AZ and low low-latency system used. Each AZ has individual electrical, heat dissipation, and security systems.
Vice President at AWS Infrastructure Services, Prasad Kalyanaraman, stated, "Malaysia's rapidly growing digital economy requires access to secure, resilient, and sustainable cloud infrastructure. With today's launch, AWS is proud to support Malaysia's digital transformation and help accelerate its role as a regional hub for AI."
AWS also mentioned that other AWS Regions are located in Mexico, New Zealand, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, Thailand, and the AWS European Sovereign Cloud.
The Malaysian government stated that the manufacturing sector plays a key role in helping the country grow, and due to geopolitics, the Plus One strategy has caused Southeast Asian countries to become substitute options for production sites. It believes that Malaysia is a neutral party in the China-United States trade war.
The Malaysian government has also already created the New Industrial Master Plan 2030 with hopes that technologies such as digitization, cloud computing, and AI would make Malaysia a hub for manufacturing and service industries in Asia.
AWS also mentioned that since 2020, Amazon has been the company with the largest procurement volume in renewable energy. It claimed that Amazon's goal of using 100% renewable energy for all electrical operations by 2030 was reached early in 2023. AWS has dedicated itself to raising the energy efficiency of data centers by innovating through improved data center design, investing in specialized chips, and using new cooling techniques.
Microsoft investing in Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand
In May, Microsoft's chief executive officer, Satya Nadella, visited Indonesia, Thailand, and Malaysia. He announced that in the next four years, Microsoft will be investing US$2.2 billion in Malaysia, US$1.7 billion in Indonesia, and will establish its first data center in Thailand. Its investment plans will mainly focus on constructing cloud service and AI infrastructure, as well as cultivating personnel.
Synergy Research Group pointed out that the top three global cloud service providers are AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud, while the top three in China are Alibaba Cloud, Tencent Cloud, and China Telecom (CT).
For countries within the Asia-Pacific region aside from China, AWS, Microsoft, and Google Cloud are still the top three, followed by NTT, Alibaba Cloud, and Fujitsu. Meanwhile, Oracle, Salesforce, and IBM rank fourth to sixth place respectively in European and American regions.
