Amazon Mexico cloud unit to open ‘local zone’ in early 2023

By Valentine Hilaire

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) -Amazon Web Services Mexico (AWS), a unit of Amazon.com Inc, will open a local hub in the first quarter to boost bandwidth for its clients, the cloud computing unit’s director for Mexico Luis Velasco said on Wednesday.

The hub would put computing, storage, database and other services closer to large populations and IT centers, increasing bandwidth for purposes such as streaming video, he told Reuters on the sidelines of the AWS tech conference here.

The hub uses infrastructure deployment called “local zones” to run applications for real-time gaming, hybrid migrations, media and entertainment content creation, and engineering simulations.

AWS Mexico will also open new offices in Guadalajara and Monterrey in the first three months of 2023, Velasco said. It is building alliances with local companies to boost its activities in the country.

Totalplay, a telecoms firm owned by Mexican billionaire Ricardo Salinas, will provide consulting for AWS’ cloud services, said Fernando Zamora, Totalplay’s director of products and marketing, at the conference.

Totalplay will pair up with AWS to boost its presence in the Mexican cloud market, which Zamora said could grow to $2.7 billion in 2025 from $1.4 billion in 2021.

Mexico is the fourth most important cloud market in the Americas, following the United States, Canada and Brazil, he added.

(Reporting by Valentine Hilaire; editing by Cassandra Garrison and Richard Chang)