Expanding the Cloud - New AWS Region: US-West (Northern California)

We have expanded the AWS footprint in the US and starting today a new AWS Region is available for use: US-West (Northern California). This new Region consists of multiple Availability Zones and provides low-latency access to the AWS services from for example the Bay Area. In the US, AWS customers now can choose between the US-East (Northern Virginia) Region and the new US-West (Northern California) Region. In addition, the EU (Ireland) Region is available to customers who want local access to services from Europe to address their performance or jurisdiction requirements.

As we announced earlier this month a Region with multiple Availability Zones will come online in Singapore in the first half of 2010, with other regions in Asia to follow later in 2010.

AWS is committed to making its services available at low cost. We use the cost-following principle in pricing the services and several times we have lowered our pricing in response to the cost savings we were able to achieve. Operation costs are often different based on location and, as such, the pricing for services may vary somewhat between Regions, giving our customers the power to make trade-offs between, for example, cost and latency.