AWS plans to invest $10.5 billion over the next five years building, operating and maintaining data centers in the U.K.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) plans to invest £8 billion ($10.5 billion) over the next five years building, operating and maintaining data centers in the U.K. In a release, the company noted that this investment is part of the company’s long-term commitment to supporting growth and productivity across the country and is estimated to contribute £14 billion to the U.K.’s total GDP through to 2028 and support an average of more than 14,000 full-time jobs on an annual basis at local U.K. businesses.
AWS first launched an AWS Region in the U.K. in December 2016, and over the last few years, the company has continued to expand the Region to include three Availability Zones (AZ), two WaveLength Zones, two Edge Locations and a Regional Edge Cache.
Tanuja Randery, vice president and managing director of EMEA at AWS, said: “The next few years could be among the most pivotal for the U.K.’s digital and economic future, as organizations of all sizes across the country increasingly embrace technologies like cloud computing and AI to help them accelerate innovation, increase productivity, and compete on the global stage. We’re proud to announce our plans to invest £8 billion in digital and AI infrastructure over the next five years to help meet the growing needs of our customers and partners and support the transformation of the UK’s digital economy.”
In a separate release, AWS also confirmed it will invest R$10.1 billion ($1.8 billion) through 2034 to expand, build, connect, operate and maintain data centers in Brazil. This investment in AWS cloud infrastructure and connectivity in the state of Sao Paulo will help meet growing customer demand for cloud and generative artificial intelligence services, said AWS.
“Brazil has a thriving technology sector, and this additional investment will provide businesses and public organizations across the country with valuable resources to support their innovation and growth,” said Shannon Kellogg, vice president of Public Policy of the Americas region at AWS. “We are also committed to helping develop the next generation of cloud talent in Brazil through training initiatives and collaborations, and we look forward to these professionals driving innovation for decades to come in the country and across Latin America.”
The South America (Sao Paulo) Region was the eighth AWS region launched worldwide, offering customers in the country and throughout Latin America low latency and access to advanced cloud computing technologies, such as compute, storage, AI and ML. The infrastructure was launched with three Availability Zones in 2011, located far enough apart to support customer business continuity, but also close enough to provide low latency for highly available applications that use multiple Availability Zones. Each Availability Zone has independent power, cooling and physical security and is connected through redundant, ultra-low latency networking.
Last month, AWS officially launched the AWS Asia Pacific (Malaysia) Region. The company said that the new launch will allow developers, startups, entrepreneurs and enterprises, as well as government, education and nonprofit organizations, to have greater choice for running their applications and serving end users from AWS data centers located in Malaysia.
With this recent launch in Malaysia, AWS now has 108 availability zones across 34 geographic regions, with announced plans to launch 18 more availability zones and six more AWS Regions in Mexico, New Zealand, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, Thailand and the AWS European Sovereign Cloud.
