Amazon Selects Montreal For Canadian Data Centre

Amazon Web Services has continued its international expansion of data centres after announcing the availability of AWS data centres in Montreal, Quebec.

The decision to build a local data centre will allow AWS customers such as National Bank of Canada, Salesforce, The Toronto Star and Shaw Communications to run applications and store their data within Canadian borders.

Amazon reportedly opted for Montreal because that region of Canada had cheaper hydro costs than Ontario.

Hydro Power

AWS is currently expanding its data centre footprint globally. The Canadian addition now means AWS provides 40 Availability Zones across 15 regions globally. It said another seven Availability Zones and three regions in the UK, France, and China are expected to come online in the coming months.

Amazon said in the summer that the UK’s decision to leave the EU would not stop it building its UK facilities, expected to open between November 2016 and February 2017.

The AWS Canada (Central) Region meanwhile offers two Availability Zones at launch. According to Amazon, each Availability Zone has independent power, cooling, physical security, and is connected via redundant, ultra-low-latency networks.

And it said that the new AWS Canada (Central) Region will deliver cloud technologies to customers in an environmentally friendly way. This is because the AWS data centres in Canada will draw from a regional electricity grid that is 99 percent powered by hydropower, one of the cleanest forms of energy in the world.

“For many years, we’ve had an enthusiastic base of customers in Canada choosing the AWS Cloud,” said Andy Jassy, CEO, AWS. “Our Canadian customers and APN Partners asked us to build AWS infrastructure in Canada, so they can run their mission-critical workloads and store sensitive data on AWS infrastructure located in Canada. A local AWS Region will serve as the foundation for new cloud initiatives in Canada that can transform business, customer experiences, and enhance the local economy.”

Foreign Fields

“The digital economy is now the economy itself. Virtually every sector of the economy is propelled by digital technologies, which are being enabled by cloud computing,” said Navdeep Singh Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science, and Economic Development in Canada. “On behalf of the Government of Canada, I congratulate Amazon on the success of its cloud business and welcome the expansion of Amazon Web Services in this country.”

In June Amazon revealed it had expanded with a new region centred in Mumbai, India. It said it was  building its first data centre there to serve its 75,000 customers in that location.

It is also building a new data centre in Ireland, located in a former Jacob’s biscuit factory in Tallaght, near Dublin.

How much do you know about the cloud? Try our quiz!