Accelerating the Cloud’s Momentum for a Better APJ

Like most digital technology, cloud computing is a relatively young innovation, and we are still in the exciting early stages of its evolution. The cloud continues to shape new possibilities for organisations worldwide, and its impact on Asia Pacific Japan (APJ) has been profound. AWS is spurred by the region’s appetite for cloud – from 2021 to date, we saw customers steadily increase adoption to improve business flexibility and agility. There is still a lot of uncertainty expected in APJ’s business landscape over the medium to long term, but it is for this reason that more organisations will turn to the cloud to drive transformation, innovation, and growth for the future.

All Industries, Traditional Digitisation

The value that the cloud offers is not limited to the tech sector, as one might assume. Traditional industries like construction, manufacturing, and agriculture that are heavily reliant on legacy systems and processes are evolving with cloud technology. Japanese construction company Komatsu, and India-based tire manufacturing company Apollo Tyres are cases in point. These two forward-thinking companies went digital to drive continued long-term growth with the cloud, enabling them to use data to develop new insights and uncover new ways to transform legacy processes.

The cloud is enabling the creation of new digital products and services to power a digital-first economy in the future. Multi-regional entertainment companies like Disney and Netflix have built the success of their online streaming platforms on the cloud, and IDC predicts that by 2023, one in three companies in APJ will generate more than 30% of their revenue from digital products and services. Singapore’s Mediacorp uses cloud for its content delivery workloads, and the broadcaster has also been able to create channels on demand at a fraction of the time previously needed to do so. In India, DishTV relies heavily on the cloud for content delivery to entertain over 100 million viewers worldwide.

Accelerating Digital Transformation with the Cloud

At AWS, 90% of our innovation roadmap comes directly from customer feedback, and the other 10% comes from being close enough to them that we can invent on their behalf. Building new or adding to existing services based on the immediate needs of our customers is a sustainable advantage for AWS, and an essential part of our journey to become earth’s most customer obsessed company.

We are working closely with customers across industries to accelerate migration to the cloud and innovate faster than ever. Businesses can capitalise on our industry-specific services instead of reinventing the wheel to create processes from scratch. This enables them to go to market without the time, effort, and expense compared to setting-up traditional data centres.

Japanese automotive giant Toyota for example, has used AWS solutions to handle large datasets on its Toyota Mobility Services Platform, which functions as a space to deliver valuable services to drivers to improve safety, enhance convenience, and increase mobility for individuals and fleets worldwide while lowering infrastructure costs by 70–80%. Vietnam Technological and Commercial Joint Stock Bank has been able to gain the reliability and scalability of the cloud to offer new digital financial services faster, while remaining highly secure and compliant, following a multi-year collaboration with AWS.

Expanding Cloud Infrastructure to Support Growing Customer Demand

For businesses to unlock the full potential of the cloud, cloud infrastructure needs to be made available more widely. The past year was a period of continued investment and growth in APJ, with AWS launching new infrastructure regions in APJ so organisations can run their applications and serve end users from data centres located in-country using advanced AWS technology to drive innovation. To date, AWS has eight AWS Regions in Asia (Sydney, Singapore, Mumbai, Seoul, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Osaka, and Jakarta), and further investments are planned in Auckland, Hyderabad, and Melbourne.

In February this year we announced plans to launch 10 new AWS Local Zones in six countries across APJ, including Australia (Brisbane and Perth), India (Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi, and Kolkata), New Zealand (Auckland), The Philippines (Manila), Thailand (Bangkok), and Vietnam (Hanoi). This will bring AWS compute, storage, database, and other select services closer to our customers for applications that require single-digit millisecond latency for end users.

Supporting Decarbonisation and the Transition to Greater Sustainability

Moving forward, we also want to expand our commitment to making smart infrastructure choices and to be an enabler of sustainable IT. The cloud drives innovation to create more green tech solutions, while helping reduce carbon footprints and lowering infrastructure costs. A report by 451 Research found that large scale cloud data centres are five times more energy efficient than on-premises data centres in Asia. In fact, moving computing workloads to the cloud can help Asian companies reduce their IT carbon footprint by more than 78%.

Powering our operations with 100% renewable energy is central to helping us meet our own goals to meet the Paris Agreement 10 years early and becoming net-zero carbon by 2040. We are committed to building a sustainable business for customers and the planet. Recently, we announced our first renewable energy project in Singapore, a 62 megawatt (MW) solar project made up of a series of solar panels mounted on a ground system. This is enough to power more than 10,000 homes. Together, our wind and solar projects across APJ (Singapore, Australia, China) projects contribute approximately 411MW of installed capacity and will supply more than 900,000 MWh of additional renewable energy to local electricity grids.

Collaborating for Success Across the Region

Our customer obsession and continued investments in cloud infrastructure and sustainability are the bedrock of our commitment to enabling the digital transformation of industries, organisations, and communities across APJ. We may only be in the early stages of the cloud’s evolution, but we are excited to continue working closely with our partners and customers in the region to drive transformation, long-term growth, and innovation.