Following up on Jeff’s post on the announcement of the Melbourne Region, today I’m pleased to share the general availability of the AWS Asia Pacific (Melbourne) Region with three Availability Zones and API name ap-southeast-4.

The AWS Asia Pacific (Melbourne) Region is the second infrastructure Region in Australia, in addition to the Asia Pacific (Sydney) Region, and 12th the twelfth Region in Asia Pacific, joining existing Rregions in Singapore, Tokyo, Seoul, Mumbai, Hong Kong, Osaka, Jakarta, Hyderabad, Sydney, and Mainland China Beijing and Ningxia Regions.

AWS in Australia: Long-Standing History
In November 2012, AWS established a presence in Australia with the AWS Asia Pacific (Sydney) Region. Since then, AWS has provided continuous investments in infrastructure and technology to help drive digital transformations in Australia, to support hundreds of thousands of active customers each month.

Amazon CloudFront — Amazon CloudFront is a content delivery network (CDN) service built for high performance, security, and developer convenience that was first launched in Australia alongside Asia Pacific (Sydney) Region in 2012. To further accelerate the delivery of static and dynamic web content to end users in Australia, AWS announced additional CloudFront locations for Sydney and Melbourne in 2014. In addition, AWS also announced a Regional Edge Cache in 2016 and an additional CloudFront point of presence (PoP) in Perth in 2018. CloudFront points of presence ensure popular content can be served quickly to your viewers. Regional Edge Caches are positioned (network-wise) between the CloudFront locations and the origin and further help to improve content performance. AWS currently has seven edge locations and one Regional Edge Cache location in Australia.

AWS Direct Connect — As with CloudFront, the first AWS Direct Connect location was made available with Asia Pacific (Sydney) Region launch in 2012. To continue helping our customers in Australia improve application performance, secure data, and reduce networking costs, AWS announced the opening of additional Direct Connect locations in Sydney (2014), Melbourne (2016), Canberra (2017), Perth (2017), and an additional location in Sydney (2022), totaling six locations.

AWS Local Zones — To help customers run applications that require single-digit millisecond latency or local data processing, customers can use AWS Local Zones. They bring AWS infrastructure (compute, storage, database, and other select AWS services) closer to end users and business centers. AWS customers can run workloads with low latency requirements on the AWS Local Zones location in Perth while seamlessly connecting to the rest of their workloads running in AWS Regions.

Upskilling Local Developers, Students, and Future IT Leaders
Digital transformation will not happen on its own. AWS runs various programs and has trained more than 200,000 people across Australia with cloud skills since 2017. There is an additional goal to train more than 29 million people globally with free cloud skills by 2025. Here’s a brief description of related programs from AWS:

AWS re/Start is a digital skills training program that prepares unemployed, underemployed, and transitioning individuals for careers in cloud computing and connects students to potential employers.
AWS Academy provides higher education institutions with a free, ready-to-teach cloud computing curriculum that prepares students to pursue industry-recognized certifications and in-demand cloud jobs.
AWS Educate provides students with access to AWS services. AWS is also collaborating with governments, educators, and the industry to help individuals, both tech and nontech workers, build and deepen their digital skills to nurture a workforce that can harness the power of cloud computing and advanced technologies.
AWS Industry Quest is a game-based training initiative designed to help professionals and teams learn and build vital cloud skills and solutions. At re:Invent 2022, AWS announced the first iteration of the program for the financial services sector. National Australia Bank (NAB) is AWS Industry Quest: Financial Services’ first beta customer globally. Through AWS Industry Quest, NAB has trained thousands of colleagues in cloud skills since 2018, resulting in more than 4,500 industry-recognized certifications.

In addition to the above programs, AWS is also committed to supporting Victoria’s local tech community through digital upskilling, community initiatives, and partnerships. The Victorian Digital Skills is a new program from the Victorian Government that helps create a new pipeline of talent to meet the digital skills needs of Victorian employers. AWS has taken steps to help solve the retraining challenge by supporting the Victorian Digital Skills Program, which enables mid-career Victorians to reskill on technology and gain access to higher-paying jobs.

The Climate Pledge
Amazon is committed to investing and innovating across its businesses to help create a more sustainable future. With The Climate Pledge, Amazon is committed to reaching net-zero carbon across its business by 2040 and is on a path to powering its operations with 100 percent renewable energy by 2025.

As of May 2022, two projects in Australia are operational. Amazon Solar Farm Australia – Gunnedah and Amazon Solar Farm Australia – Suntop will aim to generate 392,000 MWh of renewable energy each year, equal to the annual electricity consumption of 63,000 Australian homes. Once Amazon Wind Farm Australia – Hawkesdale also becomes operational, it will boost the projects’ combined yearly renewable energy generation to 717,000 MWh, or enough for nearly 115,000 Australian homes.

AWS Customers in Australia
We have customers in Australia that are doing incredible things with AWS, for example:

National Australia Bank Limited (NAB)
NAB is one of Australia’s largest banks and Australia’s largest business bank. “We have been exploring the potential use cases with AWS since the announcement of the AWS Asia Pacific (Melbourne) Region,” said Steve Day, Chief Technology Officer at NAB.

Locating key banking applications and critical workloads geographically close to their compute platform and the bulk of their corporate workforce will provide lower latency benefits. Moreover, it will simplify their disaster recovery plans. With AWS Asia Pacific (Melbourne) Region, it will also accelerate their strategy to move 80 percent of applications to the cloud by 2025.

Littlepay
This Melbourne-based financial technology company works with more than 250 transport and mobility providers to enable contactless payments on local buses, city networks, and national public transport systems.

“Our mission is to create a universal payment experience around the world, which requires world-class global infrastructure that can grow with us,” said Amin Shayan, CEO at Littlepay. “To drive a seamless experience for our customers, we ingest and process over 1 million monthly transactions in real time using AWS, which enables us to generate insights that help us improve our services. We are excited about the launch of a second AWS Region in Australia, as it gives us access to advanced technologies, like machine learning and artificial intelligence, at a lower latency to help make commuting a simpler and more enjoyable experience.”

Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT)
RMIT is a global university of technology, design, and enterprise with more than 91,000 students and 11,000 staff around the world.

“Today’s launch of the AWS Region in Melbourne will open up new ways for our researchers to drive computational engineering and maximize the scientific return,” said Professor Calum Drummond, Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Vice-President, Research and Innovation, and Interim DVC, STEM College, at RMIT.

“We recently launched RMIT University’s AWS Cloud Supercomputing facility (RACE) for RMIT researchers, who are now using it to power advances into battery technologies, photonics, and geospatial science. The low latency and high throughput delivered by the new AWS Region in Melbourne, combined with our 400 Gbps-capable private fiber network, will drive new ways of innovation and collaboration yet to be discovered. We fundamentally believe RACE will help truly democratize high-performance computing capabilities for researchers to run their datasets and make faster discoveries.”

Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS)
ABS holds the Census of Population and Housing every five years. It is the most comprehensive snapshot of Australia, collecting data from around 10 million households and more than 25 million people.

“In this day and age, people expect a fast and simple online experience when using government services,” said Bindi Kindermann, program manager for 2021 Census Field Operations at ABS. “Using AWS, the ABS was able to scale and securely deliver services to people across the country, making it possible for them to quickly and easily participate in this nationwide event.”

With the success of the 2021 Census, the ABS is continuing to expand its use of AWS into broader areas of its business, making use of the security, reliability, and scalability of the cloud.

You can find more inspiring stories from our customers in Australia by visiting Customer Success Stories page.

Things to Know
AWS User Groups in Australia — Australia is also home to 9 AWS Heroes, 43 AWS Community Builders and community members of 17 AWS User Groups in various cities in Australia. Find an AWS User Group near you to meet and collaborate with fellow developers, participate in community activities and share your AWS knowledge.

AWS Global Footprint — With this launch, AWS now spans 99 Availability Zones within 31 geographic Regions around the world. We have also announced plans for 12 more Availability Zones and 4 more AWS Regions in Canada, Israel, New Zealand, and Thailand.

Available Now — The new Asia Pacific (Melbourne) Region is ready to support your business, and you can find a detailed list of the services available in this Region on the AWS Regional Services List.

To learn more, please visit the Global Infrastructure page, and start building on ap-southeast-4!

Happy building!

— Donnie