AWS Cloud Expands North to Canada

Amazon Web Services Inc. (AWS), officially switched the switch on its first Canadian territory this month.
“We are expanding the AWS footprint once more. Our new Canada (Central)
“Region is now available and can be used immediately,” stated Jeff Barr, AWS evangelist, in a blog post last Wednesday announcing the new region.
AWS announced the Canada region in Montreal as part of a series of new cloud datacenter infrastructure. In 2016, AWS launched new regions in Seoul, Mumbai, and more recently in Columbus, Ohio. It plans to open new regions in Paris, London, and China before 2017.
(Update, 12/14) The London region is now open. Read the full story here.
AWS now operates in 15 regions, including Canada, and has 40 availability zones. The next three regions will add seven more availability zones. A region is a single location that has one or more availability zones. These availability zones in turn contain one or several datacenters. Here is a map of AWS regions, both live and to come.
Barr said that the new region supports C4, M4, T2, and X1 instances. A variety of AWS services are available, including the Shield Standard security solution, which AWS launched at its recent re-Invent conference.
Barr noted that the Canada region builds on AWS’ recent efforts to greener computing. He said that the new region’s datacenters would be powered by an electric grid that “generates 99% of its electricity through hydropower.” According to this sustainability page, it’s also one the five AWS regions that are carbon-neutral.
In a blog post, Amazon CTO Werner Vogels stated that AWS would enable startups and enterprise customers to launch Canada (Central) Region. This will also allow government, education and non-profit organizations in Canada to implement innovative and cost-effective IT solutions in areas like big data, machine learning and serverless computing. “Millions upon millions of AWS customers have recognized and appreciated the value of cloud computing. Canadian organizations can now use the new Canada (Central) Region to get high-performance, enterprise-grade cloud services that are scalable and secure.