Amazon Web Services Inc. have plans to launch new AWS Local Zones in Toronto and Vancouver. The AWS Local Zones will complement existing infrastructure in Canada, including the AWS Canada (Central) Region and six Edge locations in Toronto (3), Montreal (2) and Vancouver (1), along with our upcoming AWS Canada West (Calgary) Region which will be available in late 2023/early 2024. AWS Local Zones are a type of infrastructure deployment that places AWS compute, storage, database, and other services at the edge of the cloud near large population, industry, and information technology (IT) centers—enabling customers to deploy applications that require single-digit millisecond latency closer to end users or on-premises data centers. AWS Local Zones allow customers to use core AWS services locally while seamlessly connecting to the rest of their workloads running in AWS Regions with the same elasticity, pay-as-you-go model, application programming interfaces (APIs), and toolsets.
The vast majority of customers get the necessary latency required to support their applications’ performance by running them in AWS Regions. However, for applications that require ultra-low latency, customers want AWS infrastructure closer to their end users or on-premises data centers to support a seamless experience. The new AWS Local Zones will give customers in Canada the ability to offer end users single-digit millisecond performance designed to suit applications such as remote real-time gaming, media and entertainment content creation, live video streaming, engineering simulations, augmented and virtual reality, machine learning inference at the edge, and more. AWS manages and supports Local Zones, meaning customers in Canada do not need to incur the expense and effort of procuring, operating, and maintaining infrastructure in Toronto and Vancouver to support low-latency applications. AWS Local Zones also allow customers with local data residency requirements in Canada to run parts of their applications in on-premises data centers and seamlessly connect to AWS while ensuring ultra-low latency for these types of hybrid deployments—all while using familiar AWS APIs and tools. Customers can connect to AWS Local Zones through an internet connection or use AWS Direct Connect—a cloud service that links an organization’s network directly to AWS to deliver consistent, secure, low-latency performance—to route traffic over a private AWS network connection.
The new AWS Local Zones in Canada will join 16 existing AWS Local Zones across the United States and the new 32 AWS Local Zones planned to launch in 26 countries around the world starting in 2022—delivering single-digit millisecond latency performance at the edge of the cloud to hundreds of millions of people worldwide.
AWS Local Zones will empower more public and private organizations, innovative startups, and AWS partners to deliver a new generation of leading edge, low-latency applications to end users, taking advantage of the cost savings, scalability, and high availability that AWS provides. This new AWS Local Zone(s) is a continuation of our investment to support customers of all kinds and commitment to accelerate innovation by bringing cloud infrastructure to more locations in Canada.
Netflix is one of the world’s leading entertainment services with 214 million paid memberships in over 190 countries for TV series, documentaries, and feature films across a wide variety of genres and languages. “Netflix is poised to become one of the world’s most prolific producers of visual effects and original animated content. To meet that demand, they are hiring the best artistic talent from all over the world. These artists need specialized hardware and access to petabytes of images to create stunning visual effects and animations.
By taking advantage of AWS Local Zones, they have migrated a portion of their content creation process to AWS while ensuring an even better experience for artists. Ubitus is a cloud gaming technology leader that offers turnkey solutions to help customers build their cloud game businesses. “Today, we use AWS Local Zones in the U.S. to provide players a consistent, low-latency gameplay experience, and it has transformed the way we deliver service to our customers,” said Wesley Kuo, CEO at Ubitus. “With AWS Local Zones, we can deploy and test clusters of game servers in cities across the world to ensure all customers get a great experience regardless of where they are located. AWS Local Zones is reinforcing Ubitus’s cloud game services, and its expansion to more cities helps us deliver the low-latency gaming experience our customers want and expect.”
Source: AWS
