The world’s leading cloud computing provider has chosen Victoria as its home to develop an Asia Pacific cloud infrastructure region, in a move that will further strengthen our thriving tech sector.

The new Amazon Web Services (AWS) investment is expected to create up to 90 jobs within four years of its launch, including data centre operatives and technical engineers – drawing on Victoria’s highly skilled people, a culture of innovation and strong capabilities in areas such as cloud computing.

AWS provides on-demand cloud computing platforms to hundreds of thousands of customers in Australia – including individuals, companies, and governments – on a pay-as-you-go basis, helping businesses manage their costs.

The new AWS Region will consist of three Availability Zones, each containing one or more discrete data centres, when it launches, and will complement the company’s existing 25 Availability Zones in eight AWS Regions across Asia Pacific – in Australia, China, Hong Kong SAR, India, Japan, Korea, and Singapore.

AWS’s investment in new infrastructure has the potential to deliver billions of dollars to the economy over the next ten years by giving Victorian organisations, including the public sector, access to additional infrastructure to develop advanced technologies like machine learning, internet of things (IoT) and mobile services.

The AWS Asia Pacific (Melbourne) Region is expected to open in the second half of 2022 and will boost Victoria’s already strong tech sector, which contributes $38.4 billion to the State’s economy and supports more than 139,000 workers across 19,941 businesses.

Victoria has substantial cloud technology capabilities and is home to renowned cloud/software as a service companies including Aconex, Carsales, Computershare, Interactive, REA Group, Seek, Telstra and WME.