Its Here: Amazon’s OZ Cloud Assault

Amazon’s Aussie assault: Internet giant unleashed 20 cloud services in Oz, from today.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) now offers 20 cloud services to Aussie customers including Elastic computer Cloud (EC2) including Virtual Private Cloud, Storage Gateway, RDS and SQS.

The giant announced the cloud services available locally in its New Asia Pacific (Sydney) Region in a blog post: “It is time to expand the AWS footprint once again, with a new Region in Sydney, Australia.

“AWS customers in Australia can now enjoy fast, low-latency access to the suite of AWS infrastructure services.” AWS will be available to everyone from enterprises, government agencies, academic institutions, small-to-mid size companies and startups, it said in a blog post.

“We also have an edge location for Route 53 and CloudFront in Sydney.”

The web giant has local offices in Sydney, Melbourne, and Perth. The arrival of the massive global player is set to shake up the cloud industry in Oz.

“We will be adding a local technical support operation in 2013 as part of our global network of support centers, all accessible through AWS Support,” the blog also states.

Amazon has thousands of customers already and says 10,000 organizations in Australia and New Zealand are using AWS including CBA, AMOB and Halfbrick Studios, the hosts of the game Fruit Ninja.

The Sydney base for Amazon is the ninth global base it has established and has invested heavily in spreading its wings, its recent financial results show.

Singapore and Tokyo are other Asia-Pacific bases along with the US and Ireland.

Amazon has also partnered up with systems integrators locally including Bulletproof Networks, Fronde, Industrie IT, The Frame Group, Melbourne IT and SMS IT.

AWS Senior Vice President Andy Jassy will be speaking live from Sydney tomorrow as part of its Customer Appreciation Day.

Many industry followers expressed their delight at Amazon’s entry Down Under:

“Very excited… this will really make a big impact in Australia. Although there are already others with local presence – the Amazon New Asia Pacific Sydney Region will become the tipping point for change and more rapid cloud adoption across Australian businesses.

“This will be game changer and all local infrastructure providers will be impacted – as this will bring more competitiveness in the industry,” wrote Giri Fox, Right Scale Cloud Management., a US based cloud management service, who announced their expansion into Australia just last week.

 “Long awaited. all in all its an excellent news!”, wrote Phil Hall , self described Mobility and Security junkie.