Amazon Web Service is setting up a region for its public cloud service in the UK.
It will be the third AWS region in the EU after Dublin and Frankfurt and will be based in London, although the firm hasn’t specified where exactly.
The cloud giant said that this region is expected to be up and running by the end of 2016.
In a blog post, Amazon CTO Werner Vogels said that more startups, small and medium businesses, large enterprises, universities, and government organisations all over the world are moving to the AWS cloud faster than ever before.
“We are committed to meeting our customers’ increasing needs for capacity and for powerful AWS services that eliminate the heavy lifting of the underlying IT infrastructure - allowing them to focus more of their precious resources on their core business,” he said.
He added that the new region, coupled with the existing Euroepan AWS regions in Dublin and Frankfurt, will provide customers with “quick, low-latency access to websites, mobile applications, games, SaaS applications, big data analysis, Internet of Things (IoT) applications, and more”. Vogels said the new region would also provide strong data sovereignty to local users.
Trade and Investment minister Lord Maude welcomed the news.
“Having secure cloud services on UK soil will further grow our Digital Economy and it is further proof the UK is the most favoured location in Europe for inward investment with the skills, infrastructure and digital capability to support the world’s leading businesses.,” he said.
The UK Government chief technology officer Liam Maxwell said that only will this mean a “significant investment in the UK economy, but means more healthy competition and innovation in the UK data centre market.”
“This is good news for the UK government given the significant amount of data we hold that needs to be kept onshore.”
