RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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See the full story · 1 sourcesAmazon CEO Andy Jassy Bloomberg/Getty Images
Amazon's Region Flex spreads e-commerce workloads across more AWS cloud regions.
It aims to make Amazon's online retail operation more flexible, resilient, and closer to customers.
AWS expects AI demand to outstrip available cloud capacity through at least 2027.
Amazon's huge e-commerce business is redesigning its cloud setup as power and data center capacity become increasingly constrained.
The multiyear effort, known internally as "Region Flex," aims to reduce the concentration of Amazon's online retail operations in a handful of large AWS regions and run systems across more locations at a smaller scale, according to internal planning documents obtained by Business Insider.
Internal plans include efforts to reduce Amazon e-commerce footprint in major AWS hubs such as Northern Virginia and Dublin, Ireland, according to the documents.
The AI boom has sparked an industrywide scramble for power and computing capacity. Amazon is racing to expand AWS data centers and says it added more capacity globally than any other company last year. Even so, CEO Andy Jassy said last month that AWS still can't build capacity fast enough to meet demand.
"AWS power constraints"
Region Flex may not have started due to industrywide power constraints caused by the AI boom, but the internal documents obtained by Business Insider show this has become a driving force behind the project.
The Amazon internal documents explicitly cite power and capacity constraints in its cloud planning for the e-commerce business.
One planning document from last year said online retail teams were investing in moving infrastructure out of AWS's Dublin region "to mitigate expansion risk due to AWS power constraints."
A separate online grocery team document said Region Flex was required to ensure Amazon could meet "projected capacity requirements in each region."
Amazon's e-commerce logistics organization described Region Flex as dividing its "service architecture footprint" so it could run "in more AWS regions at a smaller scale, in closer proximity to our customers," according to one planning document from earlier this year.
'S-Team goal'
Region Flex is being tracked by Amazon's most senior leaders.
Amazon's grocery business described the initiative as an "S-Team goal," referring to Amazon's senior leadership team, and said teams were planning more than 100 software migrations. The documents also describe Region Flex as improving resilience during AWS disruptions.
The industrywide AI boom has sent demand for computing infrastructure soaring while electricity and available data center space have become major constraints on expansion.
Vacancy rates across North America's largest data center markets fell to a record 1.4% at the end of 2025, according to CBRE. Limited power availability is pushing more data centers beyond established hubs into smaller markets where electricity can be secured more quickly.
Amazon is adding enormous amounts of infrastructure to meet demand. In October, the company said it had added more than 3.8 gigawatts of data center capacity over the previous year, doubling its cloud scale since 2022, and expects to roughly double its power capacity again by the end of 2027.
An AWS data center in Sterling, Virginia Bloomberg/Getty Images
Distributing workloads
Dublin has been one focus of Region Flex. Ireland became one of Europe's biggest data center markets over the past decade, putting significant pressure on the country's electricity system.
An internal plan last year called for reducing the Dublin infrastructure footprint of Amazon's e-commerce operation by 40% through migrations and deprecations in 2025. It also contemplated fully moving away from Dublin by the end of 2026 and from AWS regions in Northern Virginia and Oregon by 2029.
In an email to Business Insider, an Amazon spokesperson confirmed Region Flex. The spokesperson added that official internal Amazon documents don't always reflect current plans and described some of the timelines and other details in the documents obtained by Business Insider as "not accurate."
"Evolving our infrastructure is nothing new — it's something we've done for years to deliver the experience our customers expect from Amazon," the spokesperson said.
Using more AWS regions gives Amazon's online retail business greater flexibility to meet customer demand, improve reliability, manage costs, and bring services closer to customers, according to the spokesperson.
The internal documents show Amazon moving workloads from its long-established Dublin hub and distributing them across more AWS regions, including Frankfurt and Zaragoza, Spain.
That can be more expensive. Some services moving from Dublin into those two other regions could see infrastructure costs rise 10% to 15%, according to one document, because distributing workloads can reduce hosting efficiency. Amazon also estimated $90 million in one-time spending on Region Flex in 2025, according to an internal planning document.
Distributing workloads doesn't necessarily eliminate capacity problems. One of the documents noted "capacity constraints" in the Zaragoza region meant the organization planned to move only 65% of its remaining infrastructure costs there, leaving 35% in Dublin.
Despite AWS's rapid expansion, the company still expects shortages to persist. Jassy called power the "single biggest constraint" last year, and said demand will continue to outstrip supply during last month's earnings call.
"Even at that amount, we will still not have enough capacity to meet all the demand we have in 2026," Jassy said, adding that he expected the same dynamic in 2027.
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