Amazon Web Services, (AWS), an Amazon.com, Inc. company, has announced the launch of a new AWS Local Zones location in Lagos, Nigeria to help businesses move more workloads by enabling a hybrid cloud migration plan and simplifying IT processes.
AWS Local Zones are a type of infrastructure deployment that places AWS computing, storage, databases, and other services close to major industries, commercial centres, and information technology (IT) hubs.
It also allows customers to deploy applications that require just one millisecond or less to end users or on-premises data centers.
Customers can run workloads with low latency requirements on AWS Local Zones while seamlessly connecting to the rest of their workloads running in AWS regions.
“With today’s launch of a new AWS Local Zones location in Lagos, we are proud to bring the cloud closer to AWS customers, so they can deploy latency-sensitive workloads and meet local data residency requirements,” said Robin Njiru, AWS regional public sector lead for West, East, and Central Africa.
“We’ve designed Local Zones to support a broad range of use cases—from trading applications that need to respond quickly to market fluctuations to interactive live events and gaming experiences,” Njiru said.
“Customers in a variety of industries can now deliver new innovative services and experiences to their end users, all with familiar AWS infrastructure, services, APIs, and tools.”
The AWS Local Zones location in Lagos is Nigeria’s newest addition to its AWS infrastructure, which already includes local offices, Amazon CloudFront edge locations, and AWS Outposts. Some of AWS’s customers and partners include the Lagos State government, Stanbic IBTC Holdings PLC, and the Terragon Group.
“The launch of the AWS Local Zone location in Lagos is a significant milestone for our regional enterprises and digital transformation agenda,” said Hakeem Popoola Fahm, commissioner of Lagos State Ministry of Science and Technology.
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“Being a future-ready organization goes beyond being able to deploy new solutions for the benefit of our customers,” said Demola Sogunle, CEO at Stanbic IBTC Holdings PLC.
“It also means building reliability into our business and customer offerings through the use of AWS compute, storage, and on-demand scaling. This is why we have chosen to work with AWS, one of the world’s leading cloud service providers, to achieve this important objective,” Sogunle said.
“Every single day, AWS helps us scale globally and take advantage of new technological opportunities,” said Ayodeji Balogun, co-founder and CTO at the Terragon Group, a data and marketing technology company.
“The launch of an AWS Local Zones location in Lagos is something we have been looking forward to because it offers fast, secure access to AWS services that help us deliver low latency access to our applications running locally.”
Customers can achieve the low latency needed for use cases like online gaming, live streaming, and augmented and virtual reality by having AWS Local Zones close to significant population centres in metro areas.
AWS Local Zones can also help customers operating in regulated sectors like healthcare, financial services, and the public sector that might have preferences or requirements to keep data within a geographic boundary.
AWS now has 32 AWS Local Zones around the world, with announced plans to launch 24 more Local Zones globally.
