Amazon Web Services Inc. plans to develop its local data center network in Japan by investing 2.26 trillion yen, or approximately $15.24 billion, until 2027.
During a press conference in Tokyo, the cloud giant revealed the idea. The investment is much more valuable than the 1.51 trillion yen AWS spent on Japanese data centers between 2011 and 2022. According to Amazon.com Inc., the infrastructure expansion will contribute $38 billion to Japan’s GDP.
According to Reuters, AWS plans to expand its infrastructure capacity in Tokyo and Osaka, where its local data centers are located. In 2021, the cloud giant said that the data centers serve hundreds of thousands of local clients.
Amazon first entered the Japanese cloud industry in 2011 by establishing an AWS region in Tokyo. A region is a collection of availability zones, each including one or more data centers. AWS’ Tokyo data center cluster began with two availability zones, but added a third in 2012 and a fourth six years later.
In 2018, AWS deployed a limited quantity of cloud infrastructure in Osaka, around 250 miles west of Tokyo. The hardware served primarily as a disaster recovery environment in which clients could store their backups. In 2021, AWS upgraded its Osaka location to a full-fledged cloud region with various availability zones.
AWS Japan President Tadao Nagasaki stated that the data center expansion plan announced today will “support Japanese customers’ data utilization, generate various economic spillover effects, and contribute to Japan’s growth.” It will also improve AWS’s ability to compete with Microsoft Corp. and Google LLC in the local market.
Early last year, the search giant established a cloud data center in Inzai, a city roughly an hour’s drive from Tokyo. Google built the facility as part of a $730 million investment plan announced in 2022. The equipment inside runs at relatively high temperatures compared to the industry average, allowing the search giant to cool the technology with outside air during cold weather.
Microsoft has been operating Azure data centers in the Tokyo and Osaka metropolitan areas since 2014. Last year, Nikkei Asia reported that the corporation began modernizing its facilities with new gear designed to perform artificial intelligence workloads. Microsoft placed the infrastructure as part of a project that will allow it to host massive language models for the Japanese government.
To meet client demand, AWS is extending its cloud infrastructure footprint in other markets, including Japan. Today’s announcement of the $15.2 billion investment comes just a few weeks after it inaugurated its second cloud area in Canada. Last July, it announced plans to spend $26 billion by 2030 to develop its data center network in India.
