AWS Boosts Japan Cloud Infrastructure With $15bn Investment

Amazon Web Services is to invest ¥2.26tn (US$15.24bn) in Japan by 2027 to expand cloud computing infrastructure in the country.

According to the Reuters news agency, AWS’ investment will enable the expansion of its two facilities in Tokyo and Osaka to meet growing customer demand, particularly when it comes to powering its generative AI (Gen AI) offerings. The company opened its first region in Tokyo in March 2011, followed by the opening of a further region in Osaka in 2021.

The latest investment comes on top of ¥1.51tn yen spent from 2011 to 2022 to build up cloud capacity in Japan, Reuters said. In the same time period, AWS’s investment in its regions in Japan resulted in ¥1.31 trillion gross domestic product (GDP) contributed to the Japanese economy.

According to the report, AWS offers Gen AI services to Japanese corporate customers including Asahi Group, Marubeni and Nomura Holdings.

AWS in Japan: Helping customers achieve their sustainability goals and addressing digital skills gap

With Amazon on a path to powering its operations with 100% renewable energy by 2025, AWS is also focused on helping its customers meet their sustainability goals with cloud technology. The company says migrating IT workloads from on-premises to cloud data centres in Japan can reduce energy and carbon emissions by nearly 80%.

AWS also says it is deeply invested in helping Japan unlock its cloud potential by addressing the digital skills gap through AWS education programmes, training and certification. AWS-commissioned research by AlphaBeta shows that cloud and cybersecurity skills will be the top two most sought-after digital skills by Japanese employers by 2025. AWS has trained over 400,000 individuals in Japan with cloud skills since 2017, providing them with in-demand cloud skills and best practices to help learners and organisations innovate in the cloud.

The news follows an announcement from AWS in May 2023 that it would be investing US$12.7bn into cloud infrastructure in India by 2030 to meet growing customer demand for cloud services in the country. AWS has two data centre infrastructure regions in India – the AWS Asia Pacific (Mumbai) Region, launched in 2016, and the AWS Asia Pacific (Hyderabad) Region, launched in November 2022.

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