Can Amazon Bedrock be used in a private or on-premises environment, or is it only offered as a cloud service by AWS?

Amazon Bedrock is currently offered only as a fully managed cloud service by AWS and is not available for deployment in private or on-premises environments. Bedrock is designed to provide access to foundation models (FMs) like Claude, Jurassic-2, or Stable Diffusion through AWS’s cloud infrastructure. This means all compute, storage, and model inference occur within AWS data centers. While AWS offers hybrid solutions like Outposts for some services, Bedrock has not been extended to these platforms, and there’s no public documentation or configuration option suggesting on-premises support. If your use case requires data or processing to stay entirely within a private environment, Bedrock’s cloud-only approach may not align with those needs.

That said, AWS provides tools to help customers use Bedrock securely within their cloud environments. For example, you can restrict Bedrock access to specific AWS accounts or Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs) using IAM policies and VPC endpoints. This ensures that API calls to Bedrock stay within your isolated network and don’t traverse the public internet. Additionally, Bedrock supports AWS PrivateLink, which allows private connectivity between your VPC and AWS services. While this doesn’t move Bedrock on-premises, it minimizes exposure to external networks. Data residency can also be addressed by selecting AWS regions compliant with local regulations, ensuring model inputs and outputs remain within geographic boundaries.

For teams requiring on-premises AI/ML solutions, AWS offers alternatives like SageMaker for deploying custom models on local infrastructure, but these differ from Bedrock’s managed FM service. Bedrock’s value lies in its simplicity—pre-trained models, scalability, and pay-as-you-go pricing—which would be challenging to replicate offline. If strict on-premises requirements exist, you’d need to explore self-hosted open-source models (e.g., using Hugging Face or PyTorch) or third-party vendors offering deployable FM solutions. AWS’s focus with Bedrock appears to be cloud-centric, prioritizing integration with its ecosystem (e.g., Lambda, CloudWatch) over hybrid flexibility. Check AWS’s roadmap for updates, but as of now, Bedrock remains a cloud-exclusive service.