Hyderabad: Amazon Web Services (AWS), one of the largest cloud computing platforms in the world, will set up its second data centre region in the country in Telangana state with an investment of Rs 20,761 crore.
“AWS would set up an AWS Region with three availability zones (AZs) in Hyderabad. The AWS Asia-Pacific region is expected to start operations in Hyderabad by the middle of 2022,” said a statement issued by IT minister K.T. Rama Rao.
AZs consist of multiple data centres in separate distinct locations within a single region that are engineered to be operationally independent of one another. Data centres are large groups of networked computer servers which allow organisations to store, process or distribute their data remotely.
AWS’ first data centres were set up in Mumbai. Its Hyderabad region centres would further enhance the company’s ability to serve its customers. AWS competes with global giants like Microsoft and Google in the data infrastructure space.
Rama Rao said, “This investment from AWS is going to be the largest FDI (foreign direct investment) that the state has attracted since its inception. It will act as a strong anchor for attracting other technology investments.”
Given its safe location, Hyderabad has several key data installations, including that of the Bombay Stock Exchange’s Disaster Recovery Centre.
“The investment from AWS would position Telangana state as one of the preferred destinations for other companies that are looking to set up data centres in the future,” Rama Rao said.
Oracle, Flipkart and the Adani Group are among other well-known companies that have announced their plans to set up data centres in Hyderabad.
According to a report of JLL, a property consulting firm, the overall capacity of data centres in Hyderabad is expected to more than triple in the next five years — becoming the third preferred destination in the country for data centres after Mumbai and Chennai.
The state government claimed that AWS chose Hyderabad because of the support provided by the government of Telangana state, robust policy framework and because it best met the rigorous requirements for an AWS region.
Hyderabad already hosts the largest office campus of Amazon.
In its statement, the IT ministry attributed the decision of AWS to invest in Hyderabad to Rama Rao’s meeting with company officials in Davos early this year.
In a virtual briefing, Puneet Chandok, Amazon Internet Services president, commercial business (AWS India and South Asia), said, “The new AWS Asia Pacific (Hyderabad) Region will enable even more developers, start-ups, and enterprises as well as government, education, and non-profit organisations to run their applications and serve end-users from data centres located in India.”
Chandok added that the expansion will “address the long-term capacity needs in a growth market like India” for the company and enable its customers to architect their infrastructure for greater variability, lower latency, reduce costs and migrate even more critical workloads to AWS cloud.
