Cloud data center company Amazon Web Services (AWS) will open an infrastructure region in the Middle East by early 2019.
Currently, AWS provides 44 Availability Zones across 16 infrastructure regions, 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 in 2018.
AWS will also 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.
“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 of Amazon Web Services.
In January 2017, AWS opened offices to serve its customer base with a presence in Dubai, UAE and Manama, Bahrain.
AWS selected 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.
Startups in the region selecting AWS as the foundation for 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.
Enterprises such as Actel, 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.
Middle East Broadcasting Center (MBC), the largest private media company in the Middle East, is using AWS for delivering Arab language content to over 150 million people across the Middle East and North Africa.
Bahrain Institute of Public Administration has moved their Learning Management System to AWS, reducing costs by over 90 percent.
Kingdom of Bahrain Information & eGovernment Authority (iGA) is also one of the main clients of AWS in the Middle East.
iGA started to migrate systems of national significance, such as Bahrain Data Locator, and supporting other entity system migrations, like the Ministry of Education LMS that has 149,000 users. iGA is in the process of migrating 700 servers with more than 50 TB of data to AWS with the goal of decommissioning its hosting platform by the end of 2017.
“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,” said Mohamed Al Qaed, chief executive of Kingdom of Bahrain iGA.
