Amazon Web Services (AWS), an Amazon.com Inc. company, has announced the launch of a new AWS Local Zones location in Lagos, Nigeria, as effort to assist organizations migrate additional workloads to AWS, supporting a hybrid cloud migration strategy and simplifying IT operations.
The AWS Local Zones location in Lagos is Nigeria’s newest addition to its AWS infrastructure, which already includes local offices, Amazon CloudFront edge locations, and AWS Outposts. Some of AWS customers and partners include the Lagos State government, Stanbic IBTC Holdings PLC, and the Terragon Group.
In a press statement made available to LEADERSHIP, AWS regional public sector Lead for West, East, and Central Africa, Robin Njiru, said: “With today’s launch of a new AWS Local Zones location in Lagos, we are proud to bring the cloud closer to AWS customers, so they can deploy latency-sensitive workloads and meet local data residency requirements.
“We have designed Local Zones to support a broad range of use cases, from trading applications that need to respond quickly to market fluctuations to interactive live event and gaming experiences. Customers in a variety of industries can now deliver new innovative services and experiences to their end users, all with familiar AWS infrastructure, services, APIs, and tools.”
AWS Local Zones are a type of infrastructure deployment that places AWS compute, storage, databases, and other services near large population, industry, and information technology (IT) centres, enabling customers to deploy applications that require single-digit millisecond latency to end users or on-premises data centres.
Customers can run workloads with low latency requirements on AWS Local Zones while seamlessly connecting to the rest of their workloads running in AWS Regions.
LEADERSHIP reports that for applications that require single-digit millisecond latency or have to remain within a geographic boundary for regulatory reasons, the location of cloud infrastructure matters. Most customer workloads run in an AWS Region, a geographic location where AWS clusters data centres to serve customers. However, when a Region is not close enough to meet low latency or data residency requirements, customers need AWS infrastructure closer to their data source or end users.
Traditionally, organisations maintained these location-sensitive workloads on premises or in managed data centres that required customers to procure, operate, and maintain their own IT infrastructure, and use different sets of APIs and tools for their on-premises and AWS environments.
The launch of the new AWS Local Zones location in Lagos means customers can easily deploy applications located close to end users in the metro area. Having AWS Local Zones close to large population centres in metro areas enables customers to achieve the low latency required for use cases like online gaming, live streaming, and augmented and virtual reality. AWS Local Zones can also help customers operating in regulated sectors like healthcare, financial services, and public sector that might have preferences or requirements to keep data within a geographic boundary.
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. Customers can connect to AWS Local Zones through an internet connection, and they can use AWS Direct Connect for secure, private network connections to both AWS Local Zones and any AWS Region.
