Amazon Web Services announced that its long-planned AWS Asia Pacific (Bangkok) Region will go live in early 2025 as it makes good on its earlier pledge to invest more than 190 billion baht (US$5 billion) in Thailand by 2037.
AWS first announced plans to invest US$5 billion to build a new cloud region in Bangkok in October 2022, but gave no planned launch date at the time. Thursday’s announcement, revealed in an AWS blog post, is the first time AWS has given a timeline for launching the new region.
AWS said the new region in Bangkok will add to existing AWS infrastructure in the country, including 10 Amazon CloudFront edge locations, AWS Outposts, and AWS Local Zones.
The new Bangkok region will be the fourth AWS region to launched in ASEAN after Singapore, Indonesia, and Malaysia, the latter of which is due to go live sometime this year. AWS said the Bangkok region will enable customers with data residency preferences to store data securely in Thailand, achieve lower latency, and serve demand for cloud services across Southeast Asia.
In a statement, Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin said he welcomed AWS’s US$5 billion investment in the new Bangkok region, saying it aligns with the government’s “Cloud First initiative” that aims to position Thailand as a central hub for the digital economy in Southeast Asia.
The news follows Microsoft’s announcement last month that it would build its first data centre region in Thailand.
Microsoft didn’t reveal how much money it would invest in the Thailand project. The same week, it said it would invest US$1.7 billion in Indonesia and US$2.2 billion in Malaysia to build data centre regions in those countries.
According to a Reuters report in November 2023, a spokesperson for the PM’s office said AWS, Google and Microsoft had committed to a combined US$8.46 billion in cloud investments in Thailand, including the US$5 billion pledged by AWS. Google first announced plans to build a cloud region in Thailand in August 2022.