AWS announces three new data centres in the Middle East
Amazon Web Services (AWS) will be opening an infrastructure region in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in the first half of 2022 that will consist of three availability zones.
It will be AWS's second region in the Middle East with an existing AWS Region in Bahrain.
"AWS's 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," chairman of the Abu Dhabi Department of Economic Development Mohammed Ali Al Shorafa said.
"Building on Abu Dhabi's smart infrastructure and digital transformation, AWS's investment will further enable innovators and companies with globally-relevant solutions to realise new opportunities in the UAE and beyond."
AWS hopes the addition of the AWS Middle East (UAE) Region would enable local customers with data residency requirements to store their data in the UAE while also providing lower latency across the country.
Organisations using this region will have access to AWS tech such as compute, storage, networking, database, analytics, machine learning, IoT, and mobile services.
"We welcome the upcoming AWS Region, which will bring advanced cloud infrastructure to the UAE. This comes in line with our goal of attracting investments that boost technology capabilities," Dr Tariq Bin Hendi, director-general of the Abu Dhabi Investment Office, added.
"It is another example of the growing partnership between the public and private sectors in the emirate aimed to accelerate breakthroughs and advance large-scale digital transformation, strengthening Abu Dhabi's position as a global hub for innovation."
AWS named customers in the region included First Abu Dhabi Bank, Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre, shopping mall giant Majid Al Futtaim, GE Healthcare, music streaming platform Anghami, the Hamdan Bin Mohammed Smart University, and investment and personal finance platform Sarwa.
Globally, AWS has 80 availability zones across 25 geographic regions, with plans to launch 18 more availability zones and five more AWS regions in Australia, India, Indonesia, Spain, and Switzerland, in addition to the UAE.
Scheduled to open in the second half of 2022, the new AWS Asia Pacific (Melbourne) Region will also consist of three availability zones at launch. These will join the existing 25 availability zones in eight AWS regions across the Asia Pacific in Australia, China, India, Japan, Korea, and Singapore.
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