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Now Open — AWS Asia Pacific (New Zealand) Region

Kia ora! Today, I’m pleased to share the general availability of the AWS Asia Pacific (New Zealand) Region with three Availability Zones and API name ap-southeast-6. With the new Region, customers can now run workloads and securely store data in New Zealand while serving end users with even lower latency.

The new AWS Asia Pacific (New Zealand) Region will help organizations run their applications and serve end users while maintaining data residency in New Zealand. The NZD $7.5 billion Amazon Web Services (AWS) investment to establish an AWS Region in New Zealand is expected to contribute NZD $10.8 billion to New Zealand’s gross domestic product (GDP) which is estimated to create 1,000 new jobs annually and will enable Kiwi organizations of all sizes to innovate and scale faster using the most secure and resilient infrastructure.

AWS in New Zealand
Since we opened our first office in New Zealand in 2013, we’ve been continuously expanding our infrastructure to better serve Kiwi customers:

Connectivity to the global AWS network – In 2016, AWS enhanced New Zealand’s connectivity to the AWS Global Infrastructure by establishing diverse, high-capacity subsea cable connections, improving network reliability and performance for customers.

Amazon CloudFront – In 2020, AWS expanded its infrastructure footprint in New Zealand by adding two Amazon CloudFront edge locations in Auckland.

AWS Local Zones – To further enhance its infrastructure offerings in New Zealand, AWS introduced an AWS Local Zone in Auckland in 2023 helping customers deliver applications that require single-digit millisecond latency.

AWS Direct Connect – In the same year, AWS also added a Direct Connect location in Auckland to help customers securely link their on-premises networks to AWS resulting in lower networking costs and improved application performance. With this Region launch, AWS is adding another Direct Connect location in Auckland.

Let’s take a look at how AWS customers are leveraging AWS capabilities for diverse needs.

Security and compliance
The New Zealand government has a cloud first policy to encourage cloud adoption across the public sector. AWS supports 143 security standards and compliance certifications, including Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH), Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP), General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-3, and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) 800-171, helping customers satisfy compliance requirements around the globe and providing a secure cloud infrastructure.

MATTR, a New Zealand-based organization providing infrastructure and digital trust services to businesses and governments, sees significant benefits from the new Region. To learn more about how MATTR and other organizations like Kiwibank and Deloitte plan to use the AWS New Zealand Region, visit this news article.

Accelerating AI innovation in New Zealand
AWS delivers the most comprehensive set of capabilities for generative AI at every layer of the stack, including a choice of cutting-edge large language models (LLMs) for implementing generative AI with Amazon Bedrock, and the most capable generative AI assistant to transform how work gets done with Amazon Q.

New Zealand customers are already benefiting from the generative AI capabilities offered by AWS.

Thematic is a New Zealand-based global leader in customer intelligence and feedback analysis. Thematic uses generative AI to turn customer feedback data from multiple channels into curated, accurate, and reliable customer intelligence.

“Using Amazon Bedrock is just so incredibly easy that it just makes sense. Whenever we design a solution, we do test more than 10 large language models (LLMs). Consistently the ones offered by AWS are winning those competitions,” said Nathan Holmberg, CTO and Co-Founder, Thematic.

To learn more on other customers like One NZ utilized generative AI, visit this article.

Building cloud skills together
Since signing a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the New Zealand government in 2022, Amazon has trained more than 50,000 Kiwis toward our goal of 100,000. Amazon is committed to continuing to invest in cloud education through programs including AWS Academy, AWS Skills Builder, AWS Educate, and AWS re/Start. Organizations are using AWS to scale globally while investing in local talent development, supporting New Zealand’s growing demand for cloud expertise.

Xero, a global small business platform helps customers supercharge their business by bringing together the most important small business tools, including accounting, payroll and payments — on one platform. Leveraging AWS since 2016, Xero has scaled its platform globally, enhancing its features and enabling continual innovation.

“Amazon’s commitment to the New Zealand tech industry through their NZD $7.5B investment is promising. It’s a significant vote of confidence that will help connect New Zealand tech exporters with new global opportunities across the AWS ecosystem and the broader Amazon network,” says Bridget Snelling, Xero Country Manager, Aotearoa New Zealand.

Sustainable digital transformation
Through The Climate Pledge, Amazon is committed to reaching net-zero carbon across its business by 2040. AWS is committed to supporting New Zealand’s sustainability goals with efficient and responsible operations of its data centers in the country. The AWS Asia Pacific (New Zealand) Region is underpinned by renewable energy from day one through its agreement with Mercury New Zealand.

Energy companies are using AWS to modernize operations while advancing sustainability goals. Sharesies, a wealth development platform, is using AWS to modernize operations while advancing sustainability goals.

“Sharesies is very supportive of storing customer data in-country and being able to use renewable energy, “ says Sharesies Chief Technical Officer Richard Clark. “To do this in New Zealand on the AWS Cloud and have it fully powered by Mercury’s wind energy is a huge step forward. And very exciting!”

AWS partners in New Zealand
The AWS Partner Network (APN) in New Zealand includes a growing ecosystem of consulting and technology partners helping customers of all sizes design, architect, build, migrate, and manage their workloads on AWS. AWS Partners like Custom D, Grant Thornton Digital, MongoDB, and Parallo are actively supporting customers to deliver innovative solutions tailored to the unique needs of New Zealand organizations across various industries. With the new Region, these partners can now leverage the full capabilities of AWS cloud services locally.

AWS community in New Zealand
New Zealand is also home to one AWS Hero, 26 AWS Community Builders, 6 AWS User Groups and almost 9,000 community members across AWS User Groups in Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch. If you’re interested in joining AWS User Groups New Zealand, visit their Meetup and social media pages.

Here’s what our AWS Hero Arshad Zackeriya, says about the new Region:

“The launch of the AWS Region in New Zealand is a game-changer for our country. It’s not just about a new set of data centers; it’s about unlocking the potential of New Zealand’s businesses and developer communities, allowing us to build a better, more connected Aotearoa for all.”

Available now
The AWS Asia Pacific (New Zealand) Region is the first infrastructure Region in New Zealand and sixteenth Region in Asia Pacific. With this launch, AWS now spans 120 Availability Zones within 38 geographic Regions around the world, with announced plans for 10 more Availability Zones and three more AWS Regions in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Chile, and the European Sovereign Cloud.

The new Asia Pacific (New Zealand) Region is ready to support your business, and you can find a detailed list of the services available in this Region on the AWS Services by Region page. To learn more, visit the AWS Global Infrastructure page, and start building on ap-southeast-6!

Happy building!
— Donnie

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AWS Weekly Roundup: Amazon EC2, Amazon Q Developer, IPv6 updates, and more (September 1, 2025)

My LinkedIn feed was absolutely packed this week with pictures from the AWS Heroes Summit event in Seattle. It was heartwarming to see so many familiar faces and new Heroes coming together.

For those not familiar with the AWS Heroes program, it’s a global community recognition initiative that honors individuals who make outstanding contributions to the AWS community. These Heroes share their deep AWS knowledge through content creation, speaking at events, organizing community gatherings, and contributing to open-source projects.

The AWS Heroes Summit brings these exceptional community leaders together, providing a unique platform for knowledge exchange, networking, and collaboration. As someone who regularly interacts with Heroes through our AWS initiatives, I always find these summits invaluable – they offer deep technical discussions, early access to AWS roadmaps, and opportunities to provide direct feedback to AWS service teams. The insights and connections made at these events often translate into better resources and guidance for the broader AWS community.

Last week’s launches

In addition to this inspiring community, here are some AWS launches that caught my attention:

• AWS expands Internet Protocol v6 (IPv6) support to AWS App Runner, AWS Client VPN, and RDS Data API — Three more AWS services now support IPv6 connectivity, helping you meet compliance requirements and removes the need for handling address translation between IPv4 and IPv6. AWS App Runner now supports IPv6-based inbound and outbound traffic on both public and private App Runner service endpoints. AWS Client VPN announced support for remote access to IPv6 workloads, allowing you to establish secure VPN connections to your IPv6-enabled VPC resources. Finally, RDS Data API now supports IPv6, enabling dual-stack configuration (IPv4 and IPv6) connectivity for your Aurora databases.
• We launched two new instance families this week: the new storage-optimized I8ge and the general-purpose M8i instances —Our I8ge instances, powered by AWS Graviton4 processors, deliver up to 60% better compute performance compared to their Graviton2-based predecessors. These instances feature third-generation AWS Nitro SSDs, providing up to 55% better real-time storage performance per TB and significantly lower I/O latency. With 120 TB of storage and sizes up to 48xlarge (including two metal options), they offer the highest storage density among AWS Graviton-based storage optimized instances. We also launched M8i and M8i-flex instances with custom Intel Xeon 6 processors. These instances deliver up to 15% better price-performance and 2.5x more memory bandwidth than their predecessors. M8i-flex instances are ideal for general-purpose workloads, available from large to 16xlarge. For demanding applications, you can choose from our SAP-certified M8i instances in 13 sizes, including 2 bare metal options and a new 96xlarge size.
• Amazon EC2 Mac Dedicated hosts now support Host Recovery and Reboot-based host maintenance — you can enable two new capabilities for your EC2 Mac Dedicated Hosts: Host Recovery and Reboot-based Host Maintenance. Host Recovery automatically detects potential hardware issues on Mac Dedicated Hosts and seamlessly migrates Mac instances to a new replacement host, minimizing disruption to workloads. Reboot-based Host Maintenance automatically stops and restarts instances on replacement hosts when scheduled maintenance events occur, eliminating the need for manual intervention during planned maintenance windows.
• Amazon Q Developer now supports MCP admin control — Administrators have now the ability to enable or disable the MCP functionality for all the Q Developer clients in their organization. When an administrator disables the functionality, users will not be allowed to add any MCP servers, nor will any previously defined servers be initialized.

Other AWS news

Here are some additional projects and blog posts that you might find interesting:

• Mastering Amazon Q Developer with Rules — I read an interesting article about Amazon Q Developer’s rules feature this weekend that I want to share with you. What caught my attention is how it solves a pain point I often encounter when working with AI assistants – having to repeatedly explain my coding preferences and standards. With rules, you define your preferences once in Markdown files, and Amazon Q Developer automatically follows them for every interaction. I particularly like how transparent the system is, showing which rules it’s following, and how it helps maintain consistency across teams. Since implementing rules in my projects, I’ve seen more consistent code quality, all while reducing the cognitive load of having to repeatedly explain our standards.
• Strategies for excelling across all four exam domains of the AWS Certified Machine Learning – Specialty certification. The AWS Training & Certification team, where I spent my first three years at AWS, shared how to prepare for the AWS Certified Machine Learning – Specialty certification, whether you’re starting from scratch or building upon existing AWS Certifications. They share the prerequisites and guidance to help you get ready for this certification and demonstrate your expertise in building ML solutions with AWS.
• As is now our tradition after Prime Day, we shared the impressive metrics showing how AWS services scaled to support one of the world’s largest shopping events. Amazon Prime Day 2025 was the biggest ever, setting records for both sales volume and total items sold during the 4-day event. This year was particularly special as we saw a significant transformation in the Prime Day experience through advancements in our generative AI offerings, with customers using Alexa+, Rufus, and AI Shopping Guides to discover deals and get product information. The numbers are staggering – Amazon DynamoDB handled tens of trillions of API calls while maintaining high availability, delivering single-digit millisecond responses and peaking at 151 million requests per second. Amazon API Gateway processed over 1 trillion internal service requests—a 30 percent increase in requests on average per day compared to Prime Day 2024.

Upcoming AWS events
Check your calendars and sign up for these upcoming AWS events:

• AWS Summits — Join free online and in-person events that bring the cloud computing community together to connect, collaborate, and learn about AWS. Register in your nearest city: Toronto (September 4), Los Angeles (September 17), and Bogotá (October 9).
• AWS re:Invent 2025 — This flagship annual conference is coming to Las Vegas from December 1–5. The event catalog is now available. Mark your calendars for this not to be missed gathering of the AWS community.
• AWS Community Days — Join community-led conferences that feature technical discussions, workshops, and hands-on labs led by expert AWS users and industry leaders from around the world: Adria (September 5), Baltic (September 10), Aotearoa (September 18), South Africa (September 20), Bolivia (September 20), Portugal (September 27).

Join the AWS Builder Center to learn, build, and connect with builders in the AWS community. Browse here for upcoming in-person and virtual developer-focused events.

That’s all for this week. Check back next Monday for another Weekly Roundup!

— seb

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