This is different from an AWS Availability Zone; the Availability Zone - such as AP-SOUTHEAST-2 (i.e., Sydney) - provides access to the full array of AWS services while a Local Zone brings core services needed for latency-sensitive portions of your workload closer to end users.

The new AWS Local Zone is designed for critical Western Australian industries such as mining, resources, healthcare, and the public sector, and will ensure single-digit millisecond latency to end-users in the Perth metro area. This will achieve low latency requirements for virtual workstations, remote healthcare, video analytics, augmented and virtual reality, and online gaming.

The AWS Local Zone in Perth is in line with the recently announced WA Innovation Strategy and provides a way for West Australian customers to improve the performance of digital applications, process large amounts of data faster, and drive productivity gains.

AWS now has 29 AWS Local Zones around the world, with announced plans to launch 23 more AWS Local Zones globally, including a location in Brisbane.

AWS manages and supports AWS Local Zones, meaning customers do not incur the expense and effort of procuring, operating, and maintaining infrastructure in various cities to support low-latency applications. AWS Local Zones can also help organizations migrate additional workloads to AWS, supporting a hybrid cloud migration strategy and simplifying IT operations.

“AWS’s investment to launch its first Australian AWS Local Zones location in Perth is a big win for Western Australian organizations and the economy,” said the Hon. Stephen Dawson, Western Australian minister for Innovation and the Digital Economy. “An AWS Local Zones location in Perth opens up more opportunities for Western Australian businesses to innovate and develop new services enabling better experiences for their customers and our citizens. Having world-class cloud infrastructure here in Perth will drive our state’s innovation agenda and strengthen the diversification of our economy. We’re pleased that AWS’s continued investment in our state supports the next generation of innovators.”

“We are pleased to deepen our investments in Western Australia by bringing the first Australian AWS Local Zones location to Perth,” said AWS Australia head of Western Australia, South Australia and Queensland Enterprise Sarah Bassett (pictured). “Speed matters in business, and we’ve designed AWS Local Zones to deliver low latency capabilities for organizations to improve the performance of their digital applications, process large amounts of data faster, and drive productivity gains. The launch of AWS Local Zones location in Perth is a continuation of our investment to support organizations running all types of workloads by bringing secure, extensive, and reliable cloud infrastructure closer to our customers.”

The launch of AWS Local Zones location in Perth is the newest addition to AWS infrastructure in Australia, including the AWS Asia Pacific (Sydney) Region, seven Amazon CloudFront edge locations, six AWS Direct Connect locations, and the announced AWS Asia Pacific (Melbourne) Region.

Customers and partners alike welcome the new AWS Local Zone in Perth.

Curtin University is an Australian public research university, based in Perth, that supports more than 50,000 students. “Curtin University is on a journey to build a cloud-based digital platform, powered by AWS, which will enable us to move out of our on-campus data centres to ensure we can take full advantage of digital services,” said Curtin University CIO Jason Cowie. "Flexibility is key in delivering the services and experiences that our staff and students require. An AWS Local Zones location in Perth gives us more choice in where we host our workloads – whether to bring the cloud closer to our students using AWS Local Zones or support large-scale IT migrations across our global campuses using the AWS Region in Sydney. Today’s announcement brings us one step closer to operating 100% on AWS while enhancing our security and operational resiliency.”

HBF is Australia's second-largest not-for-profit health insurer, providing hospital and ancillary insurance to approximately 1.1 million members nationwide. “We have selected AWS as our cloud provider in our cloud-first strategy,” said HBF chief information and transformation officer Sanjeev Gupta. “AWS enables us to innovate at pace, process data faster, and enhance our service capabilities to benefit our large customer base in Western Australia and across Australia. The launch of the Perth AWS Local Zones location will help HBF to deliver future applications that require ultra-low latency”

Mechanical Rock is a Perth-based IT consultancy and AWS Advanced Consulting Partner that specializes in product development, modern data platforms, and enterprise DevOps-focused transformation. “Today’s launch of AWS Local Zones location in Perth is a game-changer for us and the services we’ll be able to offer local organizations,” said Mechanical Rock founder and CEO Hamish Tedeschi. “AWS Local Zones will enable us to help more customers run latency-sensitive applications closer to their offices and sites while addressing data residency preferences for our healthcare, financial services, and government customers.”

Nearmap is a Perth-founded location intelligence company providing organizations with easy access to high-resolution aerial imagery, city-scale 3D content, artificial intelligence data sets, and geospatial tools. “We have compute-heavy artificial intelligence and machine learning workloads that would be challenging to run without the scalability of AWS,” said Nearmap CEO and MD Dr. Rob Newman. “AWS helps us provide our customers with real-time access to petabytes of Nearmap location data instantly via the web and APIs. The AWS Local Zones location in Perth gives us more options to reduce latency to drive better user experiences for our customers in Western Australia accessing high-resolution aerial imagery and location data.”

Woodside Energy is a global energy company founded in Australia. “Our digital twin solution, Fuse, allows us to create a virtual replica of our operations, pulling data from sensors, cameras, and robots to help us make more informed business decisions,” said Woodside Energy chief digital officer Ben Wilkinson. “An AWS Local Zones location in Perth will give us the low latency capabilities we need for future Fuse use cases and help us continue re-imagining how our business can be operated more efficiently through automation and digital twins.”

To understand more about AWS Local Zones, here is an AWS explainer video: