PETALING JAYA: US tariffs and other short-term trade issues won’t affect Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) Malaysia strategy, said AWS managing director for Asean, Jeff Johnson.
He also said AWS’s pricing philosophy is to “relentlessly drive efficiencies” in its own operations and pass those savings on to customers.
“Our infrastructure strategy is built around long-term customer needs, not short-term market shifts. While we don’t comment on future pricing, our global scale and supply chain strategies help us manage costs effectively and maintain competitive pricing,” he told SunBiz.
Johnson highlighted that since its launch in 2006, AWS has reduced prices 151 times as of Nov 14, 2024.
On its long-term commitment to Malaysia, Johnson emphasised AWS’s US$6.2 billion (RM29.2 billion) infrastructure investment as the largest international digital infrastructure commitment in the country’s history.
“Our investment through 2038 positions the country as a digital innovation leader in Southeast Asia,” he said.
The investment is projected to contribute RM57.3 billion to the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) and create more than 3,500 direct jobs, he added.
“The AWS Asia Pacific (Malaysia) Region provides low-latency access to cloud services and ensures in-country data residency, crucial for regulated sectors.”
Johnson said AWS is aligning with Malaysia’s sustainability goals as it has pledged to operate on 100% renewable energy and become water positive by 2030.
As AWS marks the first anniversary of the launch of its Asia Pacific (Malaysia) Region, the tech giant highlighted its support for local innovation to help Malaysian businesses build and deploy artificial intelligence (AI) solutions.
Johnson highlighted its Amazon SageMaker that removes the complexity from machine learning, making it easier to build high-quality models.
“The availability of Amazon SageMaker in the AWS Asia Pacific (Malaysia) Region enables organisations to build, train, and deploy ML models,“ he said.
Johnson reiterated that AWS sees AI as the biggest opportunity since cloud computing and possibly since the internet.
“MaLLaM, a Malay-language model developed by local startup Mesolitica that understands not only standard Bahasa Melayu but also 16 regional dialects, is a perfect example of what is possible.”
“This kind of cultural fluency in artificial intelligence is critical as Asia’s population speaks about 2,300 languages,” he said.
Johnson remarked startups are incredibly important to AWS as they represent tomorrow’s enterprises.
“We take a long-term view by empowering startups at their earliest stages, providing not just technology but also mentorship, go-to-market support, and connections to our vast AWS Partner Network.
“This enables innovation that might otherwise never get off the ground.”
AWS customers are starting to develop AI applications in parallel to building modern data architecture on AWS as they are realising the tremendous value they can unlock in their own company data, said Johnson.
“Grab, for example, powers most of its Southeast Asian operations across mobility, deliveries, and financial services using AWS.
“Their ML model platform, Catwalk, built on AWS, has deployed over 1,000 AI models in production for route guidance, pricing, and even personalised experiences,” he said.
Through AWS Activate, the company is helping to nurture Malaysia’s future economic powerhouses by offering free cloud credits, technical guidance and training.
“Startups aren’t just our customers, they’re tomorrow’s Fortune 500s. By supporting them from day one, we create a powerful flywheel: they build groundbreaking products on AWS, give us feedback to improve our services, and grow with us as they scale.”
He added that the cloud has “fundamentally changed the economics of innovation”, removing upfront costs for servers, software licences and infrastructure.
“Now, we shoulder the cost of experimentation. Businesses can test ideas, fail fast without breaking the bank, and only pay for what they use. This democratises innovation. Failure and invention are inseparable twins.”
To accelerate AI adoption, AWS has launched Generative AI Innovation Centres and Prototyping and Cloud Engineering teams, which Johnson described as collaborative sandboxes for businesses to co-develop working prototypes.
He also highlighted the launch of AgentCore, designed to help smaller enterprises deploy AI agents without specialised expertise.
“It handles the complex technical pieces – security, system connections, reliability – so good ideas don’t get stuck in the prototype phase just because implementation is too complicated.”