Amazon Web Services to open new cloud region in UAE
News

Amazon Web Services to open new cloud region in UAE

Abu Dhabi buildings.jpg

Amazon Web Services says it plans to open an infrastructure region in the United Arab Emirates in the “first half of 2022”.

The new AWS Middle East (UAE) Region will consist of three data centres and will become AWS’ second region in the Middle East, with the existing one in nearby Bahrain having been opened in 2019.

AWS already has two edge data centre sites in Dubai and Fujairah, but it hasn't yet confirmed where the three data centres supporting the new region will be located.

“We are building on the great momentum of cloud adoption in the Middle East by providing more choice for customers in the UAE to run applications and store data locally,” said Peter DeSantis, senior vice president of global infrastructure at AWS.

“With the new region organisations of all sizes will be able to innovate faster and serve end-users with even lower latency across the region,” said DeSantis.

Mohammed Ali Al Shorafa, chairman of the Abu Dhabi Department of Economic Development, added: “AWS' expansion into the UAE is a testament to our rapidly growing innovation ecosystem that will benefit from access to the world's leading cloud platform and its advanced technologies and solutions.”

Organisations using the region will be offered services in compute, storage, networking, analytics, machine learning, the Internet of Things, mobile other areas.

Middle East and North Africa (MENA) enterprises currently using AWS include Al Tayer Group, Aramex, AXA Gulf, Axiom Telecom, Emirates NBD, Flydubai, Gulf News, MBC Group, OSN, Seera Group and Virgin Middle East.

In February, Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC) successfully launched the Hope Probe, the first interplanetary mission for the UAE. AWS is powering the data journey of the mission, enabling data to be processed and analysed from the probe’s instruments and accessed by the global scientific community in “less than 20 minutes”, it says.

Gift this article