Amazon Web Services (AWS), an Amazon.com Inc. company (Nasdaq: AMZN), said it will expand its Local Zones portfolio with the addition of more than 30 new locations in major cities around the world in 2022.

The new AWS Local Zones, announced at the company’s annual re:Invent conference, will be located in more than 21 countries, including Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greece, India, Kenya, Netherlands, Norway, Philippines, Poland, Portugal and South Africa.

AWS Local Zones are a type of infrastructure deployment that places compute, storage, database, and other select AWS services close to large population and industry centres.

The company currently has 16 zones in operation in the US, in Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Kansas City, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, New York City/New Jersey, Philadelphia, and Portland.

Amazon CTO Werner Vogels told the re:Invent’s audience: “I’m very excited to announce that we will be expanding the local zones internationally across the world in Europe, South America, Africa, Asia and Australia. And of course we will have one in my home city of Amsterdam.”

The AWS Local Zones add to the provider’s portfolio of 81 Availability Zones within 25 geographic regions, with announced plans for 27 more Availability Zones and nine more AWS Regions in Australia, Canada, India, Indonesia, Israel, New Zealand, Spain, Switzerland, and the United Arab Emirates.

Capital Markets

Also during the event, Nasdaq (Nasdaq: NDAQ) and AWS announced a multi-year partnership to build the next generation of cloud-enabled infrastructure for the world’s capital markets.

Beginning in 2022, Nasdaq plans to migrate its North American markets to AWS in a phased approach, starting with Nasdaq MRX, a U.S. options market.

Nasdaq will use a new edge computing solution that is co-designed by Nasdaq and AWS and specifically developed for market infrastructure.

This solution may also be used by other market infrastructure operators and market participants to move their trading systems to the cloud, the two parties said.

In addition, the partnership will include opportunities to explore new ways to leverage AWS’s cloud capabilities across Nasdaq’s anti-financial crime, data and analytics, and market infrastructure software solutions.

Adena Friedman, President and CEO, Nasdaq, said: “This landmark partnership with AWS seeks to power a truly cloud-based market infrastructure that is more resilient, scalable, and accessible for all market participants.

“For over a decade, Nasdaq has used the elasticity and high security of AWS to deliver client-driven solutions. Our innovative, new collaboration with AWS creates a bridge to the future for our markets and represents the next major step forward in Nasdaq’s cloud journey.”