Amazon to open cloud data centers in Indonesia

CORPORATE ACTION - JAKARTA. Cloud computing giant Amazon Web Services (AWS), a business arm of multinational tech behemoth Amazon, announced on Thursday it was building its first cloud region in Indonesia.

The cloud region, which comprises three data centers in Jakarta, will be operational by either late 2021 or early 2022.

“It’s the most important part of a series of AWS investments in the market,” said Asia Pacific managing director Ed Lenta during a press conference in Jakarta.

Earlier investments include the opening of a consulting office in Jakarta last year and the rolling out two years ago of its AWS Educate education program in cooperation with local colleges and universities, as requested by the Communications and Information Ministry.

AWS currently holds the highest market share (32.3 percent) of public cloud providers worldwide followed by Microsoft Azure (16.5 percent) and Google Cloud (9.5 percent), according to market research firm Canalys.

However, Amazon’s announcement has come after Google Cloud announced it was working on an Indonesian region last year, while rival Alibaba Cloud announced it was establishing a second Indonesian data center earlier this year.

The behemoths are escalating local cloud investments to capitalize on the country’s blossoming start-up ecosystem and Industry 4.0 digital transformation that, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC), will push public cloud spending to US$500 million by 2020.