Amazon Web Services, the cloud computing industry’s dominant player, is planning to accelerate the pace of its global data center expansion plans.
The company currently has data centers and cloud regions all over the world, from Oregon to Tokyo, but AWS officials say they plan to aggressively grow that footprint in the future.
“I expect every major country, over time, to have an AWS region,” AWS Chief Executive Andy Jassy told reporters recently, according to a report.
Amazon considers an official cloud region to have at least two data centers. The AWS Cloud currently has 16 cloud regions spread across 12 countries.
Earlier this year, Amazon said it is building build three data centers in Bahrain, marking the first cloud availability region in the Middle East from an American cloud provider. And last month AWS announced a new Secret Region designed specifically for the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies to host secret classified data.
“Our belief is we’re going to be accelerating our pace of region builds,” Peter DeSantis, AWS vice president of Global Infrastructure said. “And those regions are going to be growing more quickly.”
Amazon has been steadily adding new cloud regions as it controls the largest slice of market share in cloud computing industry. In 2015, the company had a total of 11 cloud regions but has added five more since then. Seven more AWS cloud regions are currently under construction.
AWS’s biggest US rivals, Microsoft Azure, touts 36 cloud regions and says six more are coming on line.
