AWS Launches Second Infrastructure Region in Canada

December 20, 2023 at 06:00 AM EST

With the launch of the new AWS Canada West (Calgary) Region, AWS becomes the first major cloud services provider to have an infrastructure region in Western Canada

AWS Canada West (Calgary) Region provides customers with more options to run workloads with even greater resilience and availability, securely store data in Canada, and serve end users with even lower latency

New AWS economic impact study estimates that AWS will invest more than $17.9 billion (approx. CA $24.8 billion) in its infrastructure in Canada through 2037, and support an average of more than 9,300 full-time equivalent jobs annually

Active customers in Canada include Bell Canada, BlackBerry, Calgary Sports and Entertainment, CI Financial, Keyera, Kidoodle.tv, KOHO Financial, Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment (MLSE), the National Hockey League (NHL), Natural Resources Canada (NRCan), Neo Financial, Nutrien, RBC, SECURE, Sun Life, TELUS, University of Calgary, and many others innovating on AWS

Amazon Web Services (AWS), an Amazon.com, Inc. company (NASDAQ: AMZN), today announced the launch of its second AWS infrastructure Region in Canada—the AWS Canada West (Calgary) Region. Starting today, developers, startups, entrepreneurs, and enterprises, as well as government, education, and nonprofit organizations, will have greater choice for running their applications and serving end users from AWS data centers located in Canada. Customers will also have access to advanced AWS technologies, including data analytics, security, machine learning (ML), and artificial intelligence (AI), to drive innovation. AWS also released a new economic impact study highlighting that the company is planning to invest an estimated $17.9 billion (approximately CA $24.8 billion) in Canada through 2037 via the new AWS Canada West (Calgary) Region and the existing AWS Canada (Central) Region in Quebec. For more information about AWS Global Infrastructure, visit aws.amazon.com/about-aws/global-infrastructure.

“With the launch of the AWS Canada West (Calgary) Region, customers and partners across Canada now have additional infrastructure to deploy applications with greater resilience, availability, and lower latency, while enabling more customers to innovate with advanced technologies like artificial intelligence to help fuel economic development across the country,” said Prasad Kalyanaraman, vice president of Infrastructure Services at AWS. “AWS is committed to helping organizations of all sizes and across all industries increase agility and drive innovation. We are proud to deepen our investment by driving local job creation, building cloud skills, and creating opportunities for growth and collaboration with our local customers and AWS Partners.”

“Our government is committed to positioning our domestic industries for long-term growth and sustainability. The powerful digital infrastructure being established by Amazon Web Services near Calgary, Alberta will support Canadian developers, startups, large enterprises and academic institutions in their work by enabling access to AWS’s powerful advanced cloud technologies,” said The Hon. François-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, Government of Canada. “This means faster and more reliable access to cloud services to support computing, storage, networking, analytics, artificial intelligence, mobile, hybrid, media, and security, which helps to secure well-paying jobs across many new industries.”

“Alberta has one of the fastest growing tech markets in North America and is an internationally recognized hub of tech innovation,” said the Hon. Nate Glubish, Minister of Technology and Innovation for the Government of Alberta. “The establishment of an Amazon Web Services infrastructure Region near Calgary further strengthens our information technology sector and supports businesses and public sector organizations while helping to attract the best-in-class talent.”

With the launch of the AWS Canada West (Calgary) Region, AWS has 105 Availability Zones across 33 geographic regions, with announced plans to launch 12 more Availability Zones and four more AWS Regions in Malaysia, New Zealand, Thailand, and the AWS European Sovereign Cloud. The AWS Canada West (Calgary) Region consists of three Availability Zones and joins the existing AWS Canada (Central) Region, which opened in December 2016. AWS Regions are composed of Availability Zones that place infrastructure in separate and distinct geographic locations. Availability Zones are located far enough from each other to support customers’ business continuity, but near enough to provide low latency for high availability applications that use multiple Availability Zones. Each Availability Zone has independent power, cooling, and physical security and is connected through redundant, ultra-low-latency networks. AWS customers focused on high availability can design their applications to run in multiple Availability Zones to achieve even greater fault tolerance.

With the launch of the new AWS Canada West (Calgary) Region, AWS becomes the first major cloud services provider to have an infrastructure region in Western Canada. The launch of the AWS Canada West (Calgary) Region provides customers with more options to run workloads with even greater resilience and availability, and to securely store data in Canada, while providing even lower latency across the country to drive greater productivity, more efficient business operations, and enhanced real-time application performance. Customers can now use the AWS Canada West (Calgary) Region, in addition to the AWS Canada (Central) Region, for use cases such as disaster recovery and can run their mission-critical applications across multiple AWS Regions in Canada with even higher levels of resilience and availability. Customers also have access to advanced AWS technologies to accelerate innovation, including compute, storage, networking, business applications, developer tools, data analytics, security, ML, and AI. As part of its infrastructure across the country, AWS has launched eight total Amazon CloudFront locations in Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver. Amazon CloudFront is a highly secure and programmable content delivery network (CDN) that accelerates the delivery of data, videos, applications, and APIs to users worldwide, with low latency and high transfer speeds. In addition, AWS has announced AWS Local Zones in Toronto and Vancouver. AWS Local Zones are a type of AWS infrastructure deployment that places compute, storage, database, and other select services closer to customers for applications that require single-digit millisecond latency to end users.

AWS also released an economic impact study estimating the company’s projected spending on the construction and operation of its two AWS infrastructure Regions in Canada will support an average of more than 9,300 full-time equivalent (FTE) jobs at external businesses annually, with a planned investment of more than $17.9 billion (approx. CA $24.8 billion) through 2037. The new AWS Canada West (Calgary) Region, specifically, is estimated to support an average of more than 1,300 FTE jobs annually, and AWS plans to invest more than $2.9 billion (approx. CA $4 billion) in Alberta through 2037. These jobs, including construction, facility maintenance, engineering, telecommunications, and others within the country’s broader economy, will be part of the AWS supply chain in Canada. In addition, the construction and operation of the two AWS infrastructure Regions is estimated to generate more than $31 billion (approx. CA $43.02 billion) in gross domestic product (GDP), and the new AWS Canada West (Calgary) Region is estimated to add about $4.1 billion (CA $5.62 billion) to Canada’s GDP through 2037.

Customers and AWS Partners welcome the AWS Canada West (Calgary) Region

Tens of thousands of Canadian organizations are among the millions of active customers using AWS around the world. Large and small enterprises in Canada choose AWS to innovate, drive cost efficiencies, and accelerate time to market. Customers in Canada using AWS to build their businesses and rapidly scale nationally and around the world include Bell Canada, BlackBerry, BrainBox AI, Calgary Sports and Entertainment, CI Financial, Good Chemistry, Keyera, Kidoodle.tv, KOHO Financial, Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment (MLSE), the National Hockey League (NHL), Neo Financial, Nutrien, RBC, SECURE, STEMCELL Technologies, Strathcona Resources, Sun Life, and TELUS. Public sector organizations that use AWS to transform the services delivered to Canadians include AlayaCare, the College of Physicians and Surgeons Alberta (CPSA), Natural Resources Canada (NRCan), the University of Alberta, the University of Calgary, WELL Health, and several groups within the Department of National Defence and Canadian Armed Forces.

Bell Canada, a leading Canadian technology services and digital media company, is leveraging AWS capabilities to develop and scale innovative apps and to revolutionize how subscribers engage with its services and content. “Bell’s purpose is to advance how Canadians connect with each other and the world,” said Petri Lyytikainen, VP of Enterprise Architecture, Cloud and Data Platforms at Bell Canada. “This collaboration reinforces our commitment to business resilience and fosters next-generation service innovations for both consumer and business customers across Canada.”

CI Financial is a diversified global asset and wealth management corporation operating primarily in Canada, Australia, and the United States. The company manages and advises on approximately $420.7 billion in client assets. “We moved to AWS to improve our customer service, optimize business performance, and promote company-wide growth through the acquisition of new clients,” said Ravi Kishore, director, Cloud Platform Engineering & Operations, CI Financial. “With our strategic business applications now running on AWS, we’re developing new products faster than before, and leveraging our data to drive business decisions – continuously adapting to our customers’ evolving needs and enhancing their experience. The new AWS Region near Calgary will help us further advance our operations with real-time analytics, while keeping all data in-country.”

KOHO Financial (KOHO) is a Vancouver-based fintech company that is democratizing access to personal finance solutions by offering Canadians accessible, affordable spending and savings products. KOHO’s core business applications were born on AWS, and the company uses AWS’s AI and machine learning services in several areas of its operations. “The new AWS Region near Calgary will deliver several benefits for our business, including having a failover region in-country so we can provide improved resiliency and reduced latency to our users,” said Jonathan Klein, chief technology officer, KOHO.

The National Hockey League is the premiere hockey league in the world and has been using AWS as its official cloud infrastructure provider to help analyze the details of the game for hockey fans, teams, and media partners. The NHL uses AWS artificial intelligence, machine learning, and more for its advanced analytic derivatives, NHL EdgeIQ powered by AWS. “AWS is an industry leader in its portfolio of cloud services, helping to enable us to bring our fans closer to the game on the ice, while giving every team, official, and media partner advanced analysis of the game faster than ever before,” said Dave Lehanski, NHL executive vice president, Business Development and Innovation. “With the launch of a second AWS Region in Canada, this provides us more flexibility, reliability, and security to unlock more opportunities to engage our fans across Canada and the world to better understand and enjoy the game.”

SECURE is a leading environmental waste management and energy infrastructure company with an extensive network of waste processing facilities, landfills, metal recycling facilities, fluid management facilities, gathering pipelines, and terminals in Western Canada and the United States. “We’ve been working with AWS since 2021 to evaluate how SECURE uses analytics to provide a best-in-class customer experience, while solving challenges our industry faces every day,” said Marvin Wong, vice president, Business Intelligence, Technology and Security at SECURE. “Leveraging AWS artificial intelligence and machine learning services like Amazon SageMaker and Amazon Forecast allows us to reduce time required to turn imagining into reality. In turn, SECURE and our customers can approach complex problems with agility to improve efficiency, sustainability, and provide solutions to optimize waste management. The data residency and lower latency provided by the AWS Canada West (Calgary) Region will allow SECURE to further our use of real-time data, helping us and our customers continue to challenge what is possible to create a more connected and efficient industry.”

STEMCELL Technologies is Canada’s largest biotech company, which manufactures and distributes more than 2,500 scientific products to labs globally. STEMCELL relies on AWS to scale its operations, optimize costs, and increase the speed of innovation to better serve its life science customers. “Technology is at the core of our company’s ongoing digital transformation and long-term growth,” said John Lilleyman, chief information officer at STEMCELL. “We moved to AWS in 2010 to help us focus our efforts on supporting science at a hyperscale level. As a result, teams spent less time on infrastructure and maintenance, and more time on innovating. The addition of this second AWS Region in Canada will help us to further improve the resilience of our critical workloads and help ensure we provide our employees, the majority of whom are based in Greater Vancouver, a low latency user experience.”

Sun Life is a leading international financial services organization providing asset management, wealth, insurance and health solutions to individual and institutional clients. “We’ve been on a journey to be a digital leader so we can help our clients achieve lifetime financial security and live healthier lives,” said Laura Money, EVP and chief information and technology innovation officer at Sun Life. “The launch of a second AWS Region in Canada is a critical step that will help us ensure greater resilience, stability and scalability so we can better support our clients across Canada.”

TELUS, a leading communications technology company, is collaborating with AWS to simplify and transform the smart living experience. The TELUS smart living solution leverages AWS’s portfolio of cloud, Internet of Things (IoT), AI and ML services, and support multiple IoT protocols, to help create automation experiences across consumers’ connected devices. “In partnership with AWS, TELUS is transforming the connected home experience with the world’s first device-agnostic connected home solution that simplifies the installation, setup, and management of all of your connected devices,” said Garry Gross, vice president of Platform and Systems Development at TELUS. “The addition of the AWS Canada West (Calgary) Region, combined with the AWS Canada (Central) Region ensures our customers enjoy a higher level of resilience and availability necessary to support this hyper-personalized smart home experience.”

The AWS Partner Network (APN) includes tens of thousands of independent software vendors (ISVs) and systems integrators (SIs) around the world. AWS Partners build innovative solutions and services on AWS, and the APN helps by providing business, technical, marketing, and go-to-market support to customers. AWS ISVs, technology partners, SIs, and consulting partners help enterprise and public sector customers migrate to AWS, deploy mission-critical applications, and provide a full range of monitoring, automation, and management services for customers’ cloud environments. AWS Partners in Canada include Accenture, Autoverse, CGI, Cofomo, Cohere, CrowdStrike, Datadog, Databricks, Deloitte, ESTI, Forrest Green, Insight, IT2Go, Kidoodle.TV, Kyndryl (ISM), IBM, Levio, OnX, OpsGuru, Rackspace, SentinelOne, Slalom, SmartSimple, Splunk, Softchoice, TELUS, Trend Micro, Qalius, Quantiphi, Veeam, Visier, Zscaler, and many others. For the full list of AWS Partners, visit aws.amazon.com/partners.

CGI, an AWS Advanced Tier Services Partner and leading managed services provider, is among the largest IT and business consulting services firms in the world. “CGI welcomes this significant investment by AWS in adding a second Region to the Canadian market,” says Dean Bosch, senior vice president for Western Canada at CGI. “The new AWS Region near Calgary will empower clients with data residency preferences to securely store data in Canada, while providing even lower latency across the country and more flexibility to run applications across multiple Regions. Our partnership with AWS enables CGI and our clients to provide greater experiences and outcomes for Canadians.”

Enabling Canada’s workforce

AWS continues to invest in upskilling developers, students, and the next generation of IT leaders in Canada with sought-after cloud skills through programs like AWS Academy and AWS Educate, which provide free resources to accelerate cloud-related learning and prepare students for the jobs of the future. Numerous Canadian universities and business schools, including Athabasca University, Bow Valley College, Concordia University of Edmonton, Humber College, McMaster University, Queen’s University, Red River College Polytechnic, and Université de Sherbrooke, participate in these programs. AWS also offers a free full-time, classroom-based skills development and training program, AWS re/Start, to prepare individuals for careers in the cloud and connect them to potential employers. In 2022, AWS teamed up with Calgary’s Mount Royal University to launch AWS re/Start for displaced oil and gas workers, and with Momentum, a Calgary-based not-for-profit, to bring more women into the tech workforce. AWS also launched the AWS Fiber Optic Fusion Splicing Certificate Course, a two-day training course on fiber optic installation and repair, offered at no cost to participants, to create a pipeline of qualified talent for local and national fiber optic installation and repair companies. Since 2017, AWS has trained more than 200,000 Canadians on cloud computing skills as part of Amazon’s commitment to train 29 million people around the world for free on cloud and technical skills by 2025.

The University of Calgary is a top research university and Canada’s leading start-up creator. Across five campuses, UCalgary fosters an innovative learning environment for its 35,000 students, made rich by research, hands-on experiences and entrepreneurial thinking. “At the University of Calgary, we are committed to equipping our researchers, students, and staff with the tools they need to create new knowledge and research that will change the world,” says Dr. Robert Thompson, Ph.D., associate vice president (Research) and director of Research Services at the University of Calgary. “By working with AWS, we can offer our faculty, postdocs, staff, and students access to cutting-edge virtual learning environments, artificial intelligence, machine learning, data and analytics, and high-performance computing technology that helps accelerate discovery. Already, AWS has helped expand our research capacity in areas ranging from biomedical engineering, to geomatics, to quantum computing. Having this new Region in close proximity will allow us to further harness the tremendous potential of the AWS cloud and advance our research and innovation ecosystem.”

Commitment to sustainability

Amazon is committed to becoming a more sustainable business and reaching net-zero carbon across its operations by 2040, 10 years ahead of the Paris Agreement, as part of The Climate Pledge. Amazon co-founded The Climate Pledge and became its first signatory in 2019. As part of its Climate Pledge commitment, Amazon is on a path to power its operations with 100% renewable energy by 2025, five years ahead of the original 2030 target. See Amazon's public methodology for more on its approach. In 2022, Amazon set a new corporate record for the most renewable energy announced by a single company in one year and remains the largest corporate buyer of renewable energy—a position it’s held since 2020, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Amazon now has 479 renewable energy projects in 26 countries. Additionally, AWS will be water positive by 2030, returning more water to communities than it uses in its direct operations.

With a total of four renewable energy projects in Canada, Amazon is currently the largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy in the country, according to Bloomberg NEF. Once operational, the projects will generate more than 2.3 million megawatt hours (MWH) of clean energy – enough to power 1.69 million Canadian homes. Amazon recently announced its first wind farm in Vulcan County, Alberta, and has previously invested in two solar farms, as well as a rooftop solar energy project at an Amazon delivery station in Nisku, Alberta. Amazon’s solar and wind projects are also helping benefit the local economy in Canada. New economic data from Amazon shows the company’s investments in utility-scale renewable energy projects generated an estimated CA $478 million in local economic investment, and contributed CA $206 million in total gross domestic product (GDP) from 2014 through 2022. These projects will contribute to powering Amazon’s global infrastructure. More information on AWS sustainability efforts can be found at aws.amazon.com/about-aws/sustainability.

About Amazon Web Services

Since 2006, Amazon Web Services has been the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud. AWS has been continually expanding its services to support virtually any workload, and it now has more than 240 fully featured services for compute, storage, databases, networking, analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), mobile, security, hybrid, media, and application development, deployment, and management from 105 Availability Zones within 33 geographic regions, with announced plans for 12 more Availability Zones and four more AWS Regions in Malaysia, New Zealand, Thailand, and the AWS European Sovereign Cloud. Millions of customers—including the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises, and leading government agencies—trust AWS to power their infrastructure, become more agile, and lower costs. To learn more about AWS, visit aws.amazon.com.

About Amazon

Amazon is guided by four principles: customer obsession rather than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence, and long-term thinking. Amazon strives to be Earth’s Most Customer-Centric Company, Earth’s Best Employer, and Earth’s Safest Place to Work. Customer reviews, 1-Click shopping, personalized recommendations, Prime, Fulfillment by Amazon, AWS, Kindle Direct Publishing, Kindle, Career Choice, Fire tablets, Fire TV, Amazon Echo, Alexa, Just Walk Out technology, Amazon Studios, and The Climate Pledge are some of the things pioneered by Amazon. For more information, visit amazon.com/about and follow @AmazonNews.