Amazon Web Services (AWS) has launched its second Canada cloud region, Canada West, in Calgary.
The region launched on December 20, and will be available for use by developers, startups, entrepreneurs, and enterprises, as well as government, education, and nonprofit organizations in the region.
The cloud region will give customers access to AWS technologies including data analytics, security, machine learning (ML), and artificial intelligence (AI), and consists of three Availability Zones.
AWS is planning to invest $17.9bn in Canada through 2037 in both the Canada West and Canada Central regions.
“With the launch of the AWS Canada West (Calgary) Region, customers and partners across Canada now have additional infrastructure to deploy applications,” said Prasad Kalyanaraman, vice president of Infrastructure Services at AWS.
Plans for the Calgary-based cloud region were first announced in November 2021, with an expected launch date of late 2023/early 2024.
Active customers in Canada include Bell Canada, BlackBerry, Calgary Sports and Entertainment, CI Financial, Keyera, Kidoodle.tv, KOHO Financial, Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment (MLSE), the National Hockey League (NHL), Natural Resources Canada (NRCan), Neo Financial, Nutrien, RBC, SECURE, Sun Life, TELUS, and University of Calgary,
AWS now has 105 availability zones across 33 geographic regions. The company is planning to launch 12 more zones and four AWS Regions in Malaysia, New Zealand, Thailand, and the AWS European Sovereign Cloud.
Google Cloud has two Canadian cloud regions; one in Montreal and another in Toronto that opened earlier this year. Microsoft has Azure regions in Toronto and Quebec City that both opened in 2016. In November 2023, Microsoft said it would invest $500 million in building data centers in Quebec over the next two years.
