Amazon Web Services Inc. will invest $12.7 billion into its data center network in India by the end of the decade, the cloud giant announced today.

The investment is expected to create 131,700 full-time jobs at local businesses. The new roles are set to span multiple fields including construction, facility maintenance, engineering and telecommunications. Taking everything into account, AWS expects that the investment will contribute $23.3 billion to India’s gross domestic product through 2030.

The investment comes on top of the $3.7 billion that AWS spent between 2016 and 2022 to expand its local data center footprint. The Amazon.com Inc. unit opened its first infrastructure region, or data center cluster, in India seven years ago. It launched a second infrastructure region last November.

The two data center clusters are located in Mumbai and Hyderabad, respectively. They each include three availability zones. Those are data centers that are located in proximity to one another, but use separate power and networking infrastructure.

The fact that availability zones use separate infrastructure helps limit the risk of large-scale outages. If one availability zone experiences a localized technical issue, the others are not likely to be affected. At the same time, the fact that the facilities are close to one another allows data to travel quickly between them, which reduces latency for cloud customers.

Besides the two infrastructure regions, AWS’ cloud footprint in India also includes multiple Local Zones. A Local Zone is a miniature cloud data center that is built close to a major metropolitan area in order to reduce latency for local users. AWS launched two such data centers in India last year and plans to add two more this year.

The cloud giant didn’t specify whether the $13.7 billion it plans to invest in India will be used to build new infrastructure regions or Local Zones. However, AWS detailed that its existing cloud infrastructure is used by hundreds of thousands of customers in the country.

“Since 2016, AWS has invested billions of dollars into cloud infrastructure in India to support the tremendous growth we have witnessed in the use of cloud for digital transformation,” said Puneet Chandok, president of AWS India and South Asia. “AWS is committed to driving positive social and economic impact in India.”

Besides data centers, AWS’ infrastructure investments in India also include renewable energy projects. Last year, the company invested in six solar and wind projects that are expected to generate 920 megawatts of electricity once construction is complete. The initiatives are part of an effort by AWS parent Amazon to switch its operations fully to renewable energy by 2025.

Photo: Tony Webster/Flickr