Amazon Web Services (AWS) has sent out an email to all Malaysian-based customers informing them that AWS Malaysia will be launching soon. Effective 1st October 2022, Amazon Web Services Malaysia Sdn Bhd (AWS Malaysia) will replace Amazon Web Services Inc as the reseller for AWS cloud services for accounts based in Malaysia.
AWS customers in Malaysia will be billed in RM instead of USD
According to the email and official FAQ, the launch of AWS Malaysia appears to be a formation of a local business entity to bill AWS services in our local market. This means AWS Malaysia will issue invoices in Malaysian Ringgit (RM) instead of US Dollars (USD) along with applicable local service tax. Local accounts are identified based on the tax address on the tax settings page and users are urged to ensure that their details are up to date. If no tax information is provided, AWS will determine a Malaysian account based on the provided billing and contact address.
The FAQ states that the pricing, billing and metering on tools used by the Account Manager will remain in USD but the invoice will be converted to RM after the bills are computed. It added that AWS Malaysia relies on a third-party financial market rate provider to determine the exchange rate at the time the invoice is generated. For clarity, AWS will display the USD amount along with the local currency amount and the foreign exchange rate used on the first page of the invoice.
It added that the default payment for AWS Malaysia is “MYR” and no other payment currency may be used or selected for any account based in Malaysia after the launch of AWS Malaysia. Interestingly, if a preferred currency was selected before the launch, it will be continued to be used for invoices from AWS Inc. If no currency was selected before the launch, USD will be used as the default payment currency.
AWS assure that there will be no change to your content, configuration, access rights and security settings during the transition to AWS Malaysia. You can learn more by checking out the AWS Malaysia FAQ.
Is AWS opening an availability zone in Malaysia?
Several months back, Malaysia’s Minister of International Trade and Industry Datuk Seri Mohamed Azmin Ali said the government has given approval to AWS to invest which could turn Malaysia into a regional data centre hub. It was reported that AWS has some things to iron out with the Malaysian Investment Development Authority (MIDA), the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) and the Ministry of Finance (MOF).
Azmin Ali told reporters “As this involves high quality new technology, the government is prepared to study the requests made by AWS in order to encourage quality investments into Malaysia. We are discussing several new incentives which are more innovative and attractive to AWS so that it will build more data centres in Malaysia”.
In the ASEAN region, AWS has 3 availability zones in Singapore and 3 in Jakarta. Amazon’s Singapore zone is currently the closest to Malaysia and there’s currently an Edge Location in Kuala Lumpur which helps to improve content and application delivery for local users.
It is worth pointing out that AWS launched its first availability zone in Singapore in 2010 and its third availability zone back in 2018. AWS Singapore which offered billing in Singapore Dollar (SGD) was only launched in October 2021 for selected customers. Eventually, it is launched for all remaining Singapore accounts in Q1 2022. AWS’ Edge Location in Kuala Lumpur was launched in 2017.
In case you’re wondering, an AWS availability zone provides a wider range of cloud infrastructure solutions such as Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Simple Store Service (Amazon S3), Amazon SimpleDB, Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS), Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS) and Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS). Meanwhile, an Edge Location offers a Content Delivery Network (Amazon CloudFront) and a domain name system service (Route 53).
Thanks @prasys for the heads-up!
