Customers can now connect AWS Outposts to AWS GovCloud (US) Regions

Government customers and commercial organizations in government-regulated industries can now connect their AWS Outposts to the AWS GovCloud (US) Regions. With this launch, users in AWS GovCloud (US) Regions can get a consistent AWS experience by accessing the same AWS infrastructure, services, APIs, and tools across on premises and the cloud.

AWS Outposts and AWS GovCloud (US)

With AWS Outposts, public sector customers can access the full range of AWS services available in the AWS GovCloud (US) Regions to build and run on-premises applications using familiar AWS services and tools.

AWS Outposts is a new, fully managed service that delivers AWS infrastructure, services, APIs, and tools to virtually any customer on-premises facility. Public sector customers can access the full range of AWS services available in the AWS GovCloud (US) Regions to build and run on-premises applications. You can run Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS), container-based services such as Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) and Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS), database services such as Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS), and analytics services such as Amazon EMR locally on your Outpost.

AWS delivers and installs Outposts at your preferred data center, colocation facility, or on-premises facility. Your Outpost can now be connected to the AWS GovCloud (US) Regions to provide the same management and control plane services on premises for a consistent operational experience across your on premises and GovCloud (US) Regions. You can access your control plane data such as instance IDs, monitoring metrics, metering records, and tags using the same AWS APIs and tools. This reduces the time, resources, operational risk, and maintenance downtime required for managing your infrastructure.

What it means for government-regulated industries

Government customers and regulated agencies can now use AWS services to process data and run their applications in on-premises facilities that they own, manage, and control.

Several of these customers already use AWS GovCloud (US) Regions to run their mission-critical applications. However, customers may want to keep sensitive data such as Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI), Personally Identifiable Information (PII), law enforcement data, export-controlled data, and other forms of CUI on-premises. Applications that process and manage this data locally can now use the same AWS services with AWS Outposts, as in AWS GovCloud (US) Regions. For instance, with AWS Outposts, government research organizations can now use the AWS database, analytics, and machine learning (ML) services to perform data visualization and run engineering simulations locally.

The emergence of new technologies such as Internet of Things (IoT) and augmented reality (AR), and virtual reality (VR) means significant amounts of data are collected that has to be processed and managed locally, at edge locations. With Outposts, you can manage, process, and analyze the data locally and use AWS GovCloud (US) for additional processing or long-term storage. For instance, you can run ML inference or perform interactive image analysis on captured images close to your edge locations and seamlessly transfer this data to the AWS GovCloud (US) Regions for additional data analysis or long-term archival.

Commercial organizations that are government regulated can also now support low-latency applications such as virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) or manufacturing executive system (MES) factory floor applications on premises using the same cloud services they use in the AWS GovCloud (US) Region.

Customers such as Philips use AWS Outposts to extend the capabilities they need to be always on premises and have that seamlessly integrate with applications that they developed to run in the AWS Region.

Our AWS Partner Network (APN) Partners have deep expertise in helping commercial and public sector customers migrate their applications to AWS. They have proven infrastructure, software, and industry-specific solutions that help you build and run your on-premises applications on AWS Outposts. Several APN Technology Partners have tested on AWS Outposts to provide integrated storage, networking, security, and industry-specific solutions.

For example, World Wide Technology (WWT) is a leading technology solution provider serving the technology needs of enterprise, public sector, and global service providers around the world.

“We use proven and innovative technologies that help government agencies discover, architect, and implement advanced solutions to run their regulated workloads,” said Rick Pina, Chief Technology Advisor, Public Sector, World Wide Technology. “For example, we have worked with several agencies to deliver the scale offered by AWS services in the AWS GovCloud (US) region. With emerging technologies such as 5G, IoT, and advanced analytics pushing the envelope in the volume of data generated, agencies require a solution that can effectively manage and process that data locally without impact to latency. With AWS Outposts now on AWS GovCloud (US), we have the opportunity to leverage that capability, offering the flexibility to scale agency environments quickly and efficiently on-premises. We are pleased to be able to enable our customers with a broader solution set to meet their growing demands for infrastructure services.”

How to get started

How AWS Outposts works

You can purchase a variety of AWS Outposts configurations featuring a combination of Amazon EC2 instance types and Amazon EBS gp2 storage tiers from the AWS Management Console for a range of use cases from general purpose, compute optimized, memory optimized, storage optimized, and graphics accelerated. Choose the configuration that best suits your use case and order your Outposts.

AWS will work with you so that your site meets the power, cooling, networking, space, and weight requirements to host your Outpost configuration. Once your site has been validated, AWS will deliver and install your Outpost in the desired location in your data center or on-premises facility.

Learn more about AWS GovCloud (US) Regions or contact the AWS GovCloud (US) team with questions. Visit the AWS Outposts product page to learn more about the service.