A view of the logo on the new Amazon logistic and distribution center in Werne, Germany, on November 7, 2017. Amazon says it will create an independent cloud for the European Union. File Photo by Friedemann Vogel/EPA-EFE
Amazon announced on Wednesday that it will launch an independent cloud for Europe that will give those in “highly regulated industries” and the public sector the ability to comply with regulations set by the European Union.
The AWS European Sovereign Cloud will be located and operated within Europe and “physically and logically separate from existing AWS Regions” while only EU-resident AWS employees who are located in the EU will have control of the operations and support for the AWS European Sovereign Cloud. Advertisement
The company said the Sovereign Cloud will allow for “further choice and flexibility to address evolving data residency and resilience requirements” in the EU and allow customers to keep all metadata they create in the union.
“The AWS European Sovereign Cloud reinforces our commitment to offering AWS customers the most advanced set of sovereignty controls, privacy safeguards, and security features available in the cloud,” Max Peterson, vice president of Sovereign Cloud at AWS, said in a statement.
“For more than a decade, we’ve worked with governments and regulatory bodies across Europe to understand and meet evolving needs in cybersecurity, data privacy and localization, and more recently, digital sovereignty.” Advertisement
Peterson said the new cloud will allow for more operational independence without compromising on cloud services.
“The development of a European AWS cloud will make it much easier for many public sector organizations and companies with high data security and data protection requirements to use AWS services,” Claudia Plattner, president, of the German Federal Office for Information Security, said in a statement.
“We are aware of the innovative power of modern cloud services, and we want to help make them securely available for Germany and Europe. We are very pleased to constructively accompany the local development of an AWS cloud, which will also contribute to European sovereignty, in terms of security.”
Amazon’s plans come after the British antitrust watchdog announced it has opened a two-year investigation into the country’s $9.1 billion cloud computing market. The probe comes after a complaint to the Competition and Markets Authority that Amazon and Microsoft were squeezing out competition.
