What is a Cloud Region?

Imagine a specific geographical area where any cloud provider, such as AWS, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud, for example, operates several data centers so as to offer cloud services. Such a region is called a 'cloud region'. There are several such cloud regions across the globe, and all of them are located strategically, so that cloud providers can ensure three things - data compliance (the most important), superior performance, and data availability. For example, "Asia Pacific" located in Mumbai, and "US East", located in Virginia are two AWS regions

Each region further has several isolated data canters within them, which are called availability zones. While they operate independently, they are interconnected to ensure fault tolerance (even if one zone experiences a hardware failure or disaster, the other zone continues operations) and high availability (if one zone is unavailable, traffic can automatically be redirected to another zone), so as to prevent/minimize the effect of service interruptions.  

Therefore, choosing the right cloud region is an important decision. Factors to consider are:

• Latency: This refers to being closer to your end-users.  The closer you are, the faster they can access your applications/services, leading to a better experience.
• Compliance: Highly regulated industries require data to remain within strict limits/borders thanks to local data residency laws.  
• Cost: Some regions may have lower operational costs, making them more economical for businesses.

Thanks to cloud regions, businesses can hit three birds with one stone - they can serve users locally, ensure regulatory compliance, and offer uncompromised performance. Moreover, businesses can enjoy the flexibility that comes with deploying workloads in several locations, thanks to global reach, disaster recovery, and redundancy.