[September 25, 2017] |
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Amazon Web Services Announces the Opening of Data Centers in the Middle East by Early 2019
Amazon Web Services (AWS), an Amazon.com (News - Alert) company (NASDAQ: AMZN), today
announced that it plans to open an infrastructure region in the Middle
East by early 2019. The new AWS Middle East (Bahrain) Region will
consist of three Availability Zones at launch. Currently, AWS provides
44 Availability Zones across 16 infrastructure regions worldwide, with
another 14 Availability Zones, across five AWS Regions in China, France,
Hong Kong, Sweden, and a second GovCloud Region in the U.S. expected to
come online by the end of 2018. AWS today also announced it will launch
an AWS Edge Network Location in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in the
first quarter of 2018. This will bring Amazon CloudFront, Amazon Route
53, AWS Shield, and AWS WAF to the region and adds to the 78 points of
presence AWS has around the world. For more information on AWS's global
infrastructure, go to https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/global-infrastructure/.
"As countries in the Middle East look to transform their economies for
generations to come, technology will play a major role, and the cloud
will be in the middle of that transformation," said Andy Jassy, CEO,
Amazon Web Services (News - Alert), Inc. "Some of the most gratifying parts of
operating AWS over the last 11 years have been helping thousands of new
companies get started, empowering large enterprises to reinvent their
customer experiences, and allowing governments and academic institutions
to innovate for citizens again. We look forward to making this happen
across the Middle East."
This announcement has been welcomed by political leaders and royal
families in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states. Countries across the
Middle East are looking to innovate, grow their economies, and pursue
their vision plans, such as Saudi Vision 2030, UAE Vision 2021, and
Bahrain Vision 2030, and cloud technology will be key in helping them
achieve this. His Royal Highness Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa,
Crown Prince of Bahrain, First Deputy Prime Minister, and Chairman of
the Bahrain Economic Development Board, commented, "Today's announcement
is a significant moment for Bahrain and the region. For the Kingdom, the
expansion of regional cloud capacity builds upon a business environment
that is already driving innovation and entrepreneurship, using
technology to accelerate economic diversification in Bahrain. Through
improved efficiencies, access to new career opportunities, and helping
to enhance the delivery of government services, this marks further
realization of the principles of sustainability, fairness, and
competitiveness that form the core of Bahrain's 2030 Vision."
H.E. Khalid Al Rumaihi, Chief Executive of the Bahrain Economic
Development Board, said of the news, "AWS's commitment to expanding its
presence into the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, from
Bahrain, is a major enabler for technology and data-driven business
across the GCC. This will benefit global corporates, SMEs,
entrepreneurs, and governments alike. The ability to store and share
data at speeds the Gulf has never experienced before has the potential
to help companies gain competitive advantage, allowing them to compete
more effectively at a global level. Amazon Web Services is delivering
the Middle East a world class service. With such a young,
technologically adept, and growing population, the Gulf is well
positioned to drive innovation in mobile applications and digital
services. I am very eager to see how our region's entrepreneurs will
make use of this exciting opportunity."
AWS Investing in the Middle East
AWS is growing its presence in the Middle East bringing offices, staff,
education, training, startup support, and other investments to the
region. In January 2017, AWS opened offices to serve its rapidly growing
customer base with a presence in Dubai, UAE and Manama, Bahrain. These
offices have been established with teams of account managers, solutions
architects, partner managers, professional services consultants, support
staff, and various other functions for customers to engage with AWS.
Another investment AWS is making for its customers in the Middle East,
and around the world, is to run its business in the most environmentally
friendly way. An important criteria in launching the AWS Middle East
(Bahrain) Region is the opportunity to power it with renewable energy.
AWS chose Bahrain in part due to the country's focus on executing
renewable energy goals and its proposal to construct a new solar power
facility to meet AWS's power needs. The Bahrain Electricity and Water
Authority expects to bring the 100 MW solar farm online in 2019, making
it the country's first utility-scale renewable energy project. For more
information on AWS's commitment to sustainability, go to https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/sustainability/.
AWS also announced that it is supporting the advancement of technology
education across the Middle East making AWS Training and Certification
programs available to customers. In the education sector, AWS is
supporting the development of technology and cloud computing skills at
local universities through the AWS Educate program, providing students
and educators with the resources needed to accelerate cloud-related
learning. This program is now available for students attending
institutions such as King Abdullah University of Science and Technology
in Saudi Arabia, the Higher Colleges of Technology in the UAE, Bahrain
Polytechnic, University of Bahrain, as well as Oman College of
Management and Technology, the Jordan University of Science and
Technology, and many others across the region.
To support the growth of new business, AWS works with incubators and
accelerators in the Middle East to provide resources to startups through
the AWS Activate program. In Saudi Arabia, AWS works with the Badir
Program for Technology Incubators and Accelerators at King Abdulaziz
City for Science and Technology (KACST) to provide startups with access
to technology resources as well as expert advice, education, and
training to help promote Saudi youth entrepreneurship and grow new
businesses in the Kingdom. To help new businesses across the Middle East
go global, AWS also works with a number of local and international
accelerators and incubators active in the region such as AstroLabs in
the UAE, Cloud 10 Scalerator in Bahrain, as well as 500 Startups,
Startupbootcamp, and Techstars, providing training, AWS credits,
in-person technical support, and other benefits.
Middle Eastern Organizations Increasingly Moving to AWS
Organizations across the Middle East - in UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait,
Jordan, Egypt, Bahrain, and other countries - are increasingly moving
their mission-critical applications to AWS. Startups in the region
choosing AWS as the foundation for their business include Alpha Apps,
Anghami, Blu Loyalty, Cequens, DevFactory, Dubizzle, Fetchr, Genie9,
Mawdoo3.com, Namshi, OneGCC, Opensooq.com, Payfort, Tajawal, and Ubuy,
as well as Middle Eastern Unicorn Careem, the leading ride-hailing
service in the MENA region. Careem runs all of its operations on AWS and
over the past five years has grown 10 times its current size each year.
"It is great news that AWS is opening a Region in the Middle East," said
Magnus Olsson, chief experience officer and co-founder of Careem. "We
have been all-in on AWS since we launched in 2012 and using the
scalability of the cloud has helped us to cope with rapid growth. After
starting in Dubai, we now serve over 12 million commuters in 80 cities
across the Middle East and North Africa, including Turkey and Pakistan -
this would not have been possible without AWS. The new AWS
infrastructure Region in the Middle East gives us the opportunity to
experiment with new Internet of Things (IoT) technologies that, in the
future, will give us the ability to run a fleet of self-driving Careem
cars comfortably and safely taking passengers to their destinations."
Some of the Middle East's most historic and established enterprises are
moving mission critical applications to AWS. Enterprises such as Actel (News - Alert),
Al Tayer Group, Batelco, flydubai, Hassan Allam, Silah Gulf, Union
Insurance, and the United Arab Shipping Company are using AWS to drive
cost savings, accelerate innovation, and speed time-to-market. One
successful business that used AWS to grow is eCommerce provider
SOUQ.com. "AWS has been key to our success throughout our journey of
exponential growth in the MENA region," said Ronaldo Mouchawar, CEO and
Co-Founder of SOUQ.com. "Businesses in the region need robust
technologies to both scale rapidly and provide world class service to
their customers. With innovation being the main focus on the region's
national agenda, the advent of the world's largest provider of cloud
computing in the region is great news for everyone. This will help
support the growing demand for cloud technologies as well as accelerate
business expansions and success, regionally and around the world."
Another enterprise using AWS is Middle East Broadcasting Center (MBC),
the largest private media company in the Middle East, delivering Arab
language content to over 150 million people across the Middle East and
North Africa. "AWS has been critical in our digital transformation
initiatives," said Joe Igoe, MBC's Group Director of Technical
Operations. "Knowing we will have AWS infrastructure close to our
viewers is invaluable for us. AWS has helped us speed up innovation and
rapidly expand into a wider range of scalable and reliable digital
services, such as our Video on Demand platform, Shahid.net. During the
holy month of Ramadan, TV viewership spikes dramatically. This year, we
successfully scaled our online platform to support a massive increase in
traffic and delivered hundreds of thousands of concurrent video streams
and dozens of petabytes of content to our viewers."
Government organizations are also working with AWS to lower costs and
better serve citizens in the region, including the Bahrain Institute of
Public Administration which has moved their Learning Management System
to AWS, reducing costs by over 90 percent. Another government
organization using AWS is the Kingdom of Bahrain Information &
eGovernment Authority (iGA). The iGA is in charge of moving all
government services online and is responsible for ICT governance and
procurement for the Bahrain government. Earlier this year the iGA
launched a cloud first policy, requiring all new government ICT
procurement to evaluate cloud-based services first. Mohamed Al Qaed,
Chief Executive of Kingdom of Bahrain iGA, said of the announcement,
"AWS forms the backbone of our digital government initiatives so the
news that an AWS Region is coming to our country is warmly welcomed by
us. Through adopting a cloud first policy, we have helped to reduce the
government procurement process for new technology from months to less
than two weeks. We are in the process of migrating 700 servers with more
than 50 TB of data to AWS with the goal of decommissioning our hosting
platform by the end of 2017. We have also started to migrate systems of
national significance, such as our Bahrain Data Locator, and supporting
other entity system migrations, like the Ministry of Education LMS that
has 149,000 users, with more planned on the way. As we move more mission
critical workloads to AWS, we look forward to even greater efficiencies
and being able to complete our mission to become eGovernment & ICT
Pioneers."
In addition to established enterprises, government organizations, and
rapidly growing startups, AWS also has a vibrant AWS Partner Network
(APN) across the Middle East, including APN Partners that have built
cloud practices and innovative technology solutions on AWS. APN
Consulting and Technology Partners in the Middle East are helping
customers to migrate to the cloud include Al Moayyed Computers, Batelco,
C5, du, DXC Technology, Falcon 9, Infonas, Integra Technologies, ITQAN
Cloud, Human Technologies, Kaar Technologies, Navlink, Redington, Zain (News - Alert),
and many others. For companies looking to join the APN or for the full
list of members please visit: https://aws.amazon.com/partners/.
About Amazon Web Services
For 11 years, Amazon Web Services has been the world's most
comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform. AWS offers over 90
fully featured services for compute, storage, networking, database,
analytics, application services, deployment, management, developer,
mobile, Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI),
security, hybrid and enterprise applications, from 44 Availability Zones
(AZs) across 16 geographic regions in the U.S., Australia, Brazil,
Canada, China, Germany, India, Ireland, Japan, Korea, Singapore, and the
UK. AWS services are trusted by millions of active customers around the
world monthly - including the fastest growing startups, largest
enterprises, and leading government agencies - to power their
infrastructure, make them more agile, and lower costs. To learn more
about AWS, visit https://aws.amazon.com.
About Amazon
Amazon is guided by four principles: customer obsession rather than
competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to operational
excellence, and long-term thinking. Customer reviews, 1-Click shopping,
personalized recommendations, Prime, Fulfillment by Amazon, AWS, Kindle
Direct Publishing, Kindle, Fire tablets, Fire TV, Amazon Echo, and Alexa
are some of the products and services pioneered by Amazon. For more
information, visit www.amazon.com/about and
follow @AmazonNews.
View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170925005374/en/
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