Amazon Moves Into OZ With Data Centre & Office
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Giant US online shopping operation Amazon.com is close to establishing a datacentre in Australia with the Company also tipped to be in the throes of expanding their online shopping operation in Australia.

The new Amazon data centre will be used for its growing Web Services business, with the Company recently opening an Australian office.

Rather than build their own data centre Amazon appears more likely to rent or buy space in an existing datacentre – with global group Equinix’s new Pyrmont, Sydney, operation seen as a favourite – than build its own centre.

Shane Owenby, Asia-Pacific MD of Amazon Web Services (AWS), told a customer event in Sydney that the company had launched a local office to support the growing Down Under cloud computing service, according to a Delimiter Web report.

Lack of an Australian facility has been holding back major expansion by Amazon in the local market. Federal Government departments, for instance, are forbidden to have their data hosted in offshore facilities, and few banks or other major enterprises would consider it. However many smaller businesses have certainly embraced the Amazon system, which sees their data most probably stored in the USA or Singapore.
 

Amazon has been building datacentres in a number of nations outside the US, including Ireland and Japan as well as Singapore.
 

A report in The Australian last week claimed AWS would unveil an Australian-based datacentre operation by early next year, and is preferably seeking a minimum of two sites in a single city.
 

The Oz tipped Equinix as the most likely choice, given its three datacentres in Sydney, including a new $65 million operation, and its existing alliance with Amazon in other markets. Equinix is one of eight companies recently named to a whole-of-government panel for supplying cloud services to federal agencies.
 

AWS has declined to comment other than saying “Over time, we plan to have more datacentres in different countries and regions around the world.”