Amazon Web Services will invest $2.8 billion to build a new AWS Cloud region in the Indian state of Telangana. The new region will be located in Hyderabad, which is the capital and the largest city in Telangana.
"Hyderabad is already an important talent hub for IT professionals and entrepreneurs," said AWS chief evangelist Jeff Barr, in a blog post. "We have been investing in India for quite some time, and opened our first office there in 2011. This upcoming infrastructure region in Hyderabad is the latest in a long series of investments that we continue to make in India to power continued customer growth and provide more choices to our customers in India."
The Hyderabad AWS Cloud Region, which will be part of AWS' Asia Pacific cloud, is slated to open in mid-2022 with three availability zones. According to a story by TechCrunch, Telangana technology minister K. T. Rama Rao tweeted AWS will invest $2.77 billion for building the data centers in Hyderabad.
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With India being one of the fasted growing telecommunication countries in the world, the Hyderabad region is AWS' second in India. AWS launched an AWS region in Mumbai in 2016. Last year AWS expanded the Mumbai region to include a third availability zone.
"The existing region in Mumbai and the upcoming region in Hyderabad are designed to support companies in India as they innovate and embrace digital transformation," Barr said. "To this end, we continue to invest in programs that are designed to upskill local students and developers, with the goal of creating the next generation of IT leaders in India."
Earlier this week, AWS announced a new European cloud region in Zurich, which will join the European roster of existing regions in France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Sweden and the U.K. when it's completed in the second half of 2022.
AWS has plans in the works for three more cloud regions in Indonesia, Japan and Spain. With the addition of Hyderabad, the total number of global regions (operational and in the works) stands at 29. Today, AWS has 77 availability zones across 24 regions.
India boasts the second-largest internet user base in the world, with consumption expected to grow with the continued advancement of internet infrastructure, smartphone usage and the penetration of 4G and 5G.
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In July, Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced that Google planned to invest around $10 billion in India over the next five to seven years. The investment will be made via the India Digitization Fund to help accelerate India’s digital economy. According to a story by Reuters, India has more than 500 million internet users, and Google wants to help an additional 500 million get online.
In August, colocation giant Equinix broadened its reach into India by buying two data centers from GPX India for $161 million. That deal is slated to close in the first quarter of next year once it garners the customary closing and regulatory approvals.