People locomotion past the logo of Amazon Web Services (AWS) astatine its exhibitor stall astatine the India Mobile Congress 2025 astatine Yashobhoomi, a normal and expo halfway successful New Delhi, India, October 8, 2025.
Anushree Fadnavis | Reuters
Amazon launched its "sovereign cloud" offering successful Europe connected Thursday successful a determination designed to support it among the starring players successful the portion adjacent arsenic much stringent regulations for tech giants are enforced.
The word sovereign unreality broadly relates to unreality computing services wherever the information is stored, handled and not moved retired of a circumstantial jurisdiction.
The European Union (EU) has pushed for companies operating successful the bloc to beryllium compliant with its assorted information and privateness regulations, arsenic concerns person risen astir the dominance of U.S. tech giants successful the unreality abstraction and imaginable entree to European citizens' data.
The Amazon Web Services (AWS) European Sovereign Cloud, based successful Brandenburg, Germany, and first announced successful 2023, is simply a caller concept. Amazon said successful a property merchandise connected Thursday that the unreality is "physically and logically separate" from different AWS regions. To bash this, Amazon has created a caller genitor institution for the sovereign unreality that volition beryllium locally controlled successful the European Union (EU) and tally by EU citizens.
Stéphane Israël volition pb the AWS European Sovereign Cloud. Stefan Hoechbauer, who is vice president of AWS planetary income for Germany and Europe Central, has been appointed arsenic a managing director. AWS besides announced 5 caller members of an advisory committee for the sovereign cloud, 3 of which are Amazon employees.
AWS said the sovereign unreality has "no captious dependencies connected non-EU infrastructure" and it tin proceed to run successful the lawsuit of a communications disruption with the remainder of the world. Under "extreme circumstances, authorised AWS employees of the AWS European Sovereign Cloud, who are EU residents, volition person autarkic entree to a replica of the root codification needed to support the AWS European Sovereign Cloud services," the institution said.
For the past fewer years, European politicians and regulators person grown acrophobic astir the dominance of U.S. tech firms implicit captious exertion infrastructure. Despite the EU pushing for determination companies to turn their businesses, AWS, Microsoft and Google relationship for 70% of the unreality computing marketplace successful the region, according to Synergy Research Group.
Even arsenic AWS pushes its sovereign cloud, European regulators are presently investigating unreality computing services from Amazon and Microsoft nether the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which aims to curb the powerfulness of Big Tech.
In 2024, Amazon said it would put 7.8 cardinal euros ($9.1 billion) successful the AWS European Sovereign Cloud successful Germany done 2040. On Thursday, Amazon said it would grow the AWS European Sovereign Cloud to Belgium, the Netherlands, and Portugal.
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