Amazon Web Services (AWS) is planning to invest billions of dollars over the next 15 years to build data centers in Taiwan and create an infrastructure region in the country by early next year, the Amazon.com Inc cloud computing subsidiary said yesterday.
The new “AWS Asia Pacific (Taipei) Region” aims to help customers and AWS partners in Taiwan store their content securely and run cloud-enabled workloads with lower latency from data centers in Taiwan, the company said.
The project reflects AWS’ long-term commitment to Taiwan and the Asia-Pacific region amid growing demand for cloud services, it said.
Photo: Reuters
The move comes as Taiwan has become a major data center market for global cloud service providers amid rising demand for digital transformation, artificial intelligence and clean energy. In 2013, Google opened a data center in Changhua County, while Microsoft Corp is building a data center in Taoyuan that is scheduled to open later this year.
AWS provides customers computing, data storage, analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence services from its data centers around the world.
In Taiwan, companies, including Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電), Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信), Cathay Financial Holding Co (國泰金控), Acer Inc (宏碁), Trend Micro Inc (趨勢科技) and Gamania Digital Entertainment Co (遊戲橘子), are using AWS’ services to deal with workloads.
AWS said it has steadily increased its investment in Taiwan since 2014, with the launch of “Local Zones” in Taipei in 2022, its most recent major infrastructure deployment in the country.
Compared with Local Zones, the AWS Asia Pacific (Taipei) Region’s data center would be larger in scale, and can provide customers with low latency, high-speed transmission services because it stores data domestically, it said.
The new AWS region in Taiwan would consist of three “Availability Zones” at launch, the company said.
Currently, AWS operates 105 Availability Zones in 33 geographic regions globally, it said.
Availability Zones feature infrastructure in separate and distinct geographic locations, with the zones far enough from each other to support customers’ business continuity, while being close enough to provide low-latency access for high availability applications that use multiple Availability Zones, AWS said.
Each zone has independent power, cooling and physical security and is connected through redundant, ultra-low-latency networks, it said, adding that customers could design their applications to run in multiple zones to achieve a greater fault tolerance.
“With today’s announcement, AWS has plans to launch 21 more Availability Zones and seven more AWS Regions in Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, Thailand and the AWS European Sovereign Cloud,” it said.
CAUTIOUS RECOVERY: While the manufacturing sector returned to growth amid the US-China trade truce, firms remain wary as uncertainty clouds the outlook, the CIER said The local manufacturing sector returned to expansion last month, as the official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose 2.1 points to 51.0, driven by a temporary easing in US-China trade tensions, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The PMI gauges the health of the manufacturing industry, with readings above 50 indicating expansion and those below 50 signaling contraction. “Firms are not as pessimistic as they were in April, but they remain far from optimistic,” CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said at a news conference. The full impact of US tariff decisions is unlikely to become clear until later this month
GROWING CONCERN: Some senior Trump administration officials opposed the UAE expansion over fears that another TSMC project could jeopardize its US investment Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is evaluating building an advanced production facility in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and has discussed the possibility with officials in US President Donald Trump’s administration, people familiar with the matter said, in a potentially major bet on the Middle East that would only come to fruition with Washington’s approval. The company has had multiple meetings in the past few months with US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff and officials from MGX, an influential investment vehicle overseen by the UAE president’s brother, the people said. The conversations are a continuation of talks that
CHIP DUTIES: TSMC said it voiced its concerns to Washington about tariffs, telling the US commerce department that it wants ‘fair treatment’ to protect its competitiveness Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday reiterated robust business prospects for this year as strong artificial intelligence (AI) chip demand from Nvidia Corp and other customers would absorb the impacts of US tariffs. “The impact of tariffs would be indirect, as the custom tax is the importers’ responsibility, not the exporters,” TSMC chairman and chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) said at the chipmaker’s annual shareholders’ meeting in Hsinchu City. TSMC’s business could be affected if people become reluctant to buy electronics due to inflated prices, Wei said. In addition, the chipmaker has voiced its concern to the US Department of Commerce
STILL LOADED: Last year’s richest person, Quanta Computer Inc chairman Barry Lam, dropped to second place despite an 8 percent increase in his wealth to US$12.6 billion Staff writer, with CNA Daniel Tsai (蔡明忠) and Richard Tsai (蔡明興), the brothers who run Fubon Group (富邦集團), topped the Forbes list of Taiwan’s 50 richest people this year, released on Wednesday in New York. The magazine said that a stronger New Taiwan dollar pushed the combined wealth of Taiwan’s 50 richest people up 13 percent, from US$174 billion to US$197 billion, with 36 of the people on the list seeing their wealth increase. That came as Taiwan’s economy grew 4.6 percent last year, its fastest pace in three years, driven by the strong performance of the semiconductor industry, the magazine said. The Tsai
RSS