Amazon Web Services Inc. (AWS), has set its sights on France in its plans to expand its global cloud infrastructure.
The company plans to open a new Paris region sometime in 2017, according to CTO Werner Vogels, in a blog post on Thursday.
AWS’ fourth European region will be Paris. Vogels stated that AWS currently has regions in Ireland, Frankfurt, and plans to open a third in the United Kingdom in the “coming months”.
Vogels stated that AWS did not have a country-specific region when it was launched in France 10 years ago. He also said that nearly 80 percent of companies listed on the French stock exchange use AWS in some capacity.
He stated that the new European region in Paris, along with the existing AWS regions of Dublin and Frankfurt, and a future London one, will provide customers quick, low-latency, access to Web sites and mobile applications, games, SaaS apps, Big Data analysis and Internet of Things applications.
AWS currently has a cloud footprint that spans 13 geographical regions and 35 availability zones. According to Jeff Barr, AWS evangelist, Canada, Ohio, and China are the next regions.
The news of AWS’ Paris region is following comments made by Scott Guthrie (Microsoft’s top cloud executive), who highlighted his company’s cloud expansion at a recent conference.
Microsoft Azure, the second-placed public cloud platform behind AWS, currently has 34 regions around the world, almost double that of AWS. (Though it should be noted that AWS and Microsoft define “regions” differently).
Recent concerns about data sovereignty and privacy have made Europe a key battleground for U.S.-based cloud service providers. Azure currently has four regions in Europe, two in the United Kingdom and one in Ireland and the Netherlands. It plans to open two more in Germany. Update, 10/3: Microsoft has announced that it plans to open a French cloud datacenter sometime in 2017. AWS may be behind Azure in this regard, however Vogels stated that his company will continue to build out its European cloud infrastructure.
He said, “We are actively working on opening new regions in the areas our customers most need them.”
