Amazon Web Services has opened is its first data center in France, making it the company’s fourth cloud region in Europe.
The tech giant already has data centers in Germany, Ireland and the U.K., and Tuesday’s announcement of a new region in France comes as Microsoft has plans to open two data centers in the country. The newest cloud region brings AWS’ total regions to 18 around the globe.
Amazon said it already has “tens of thousands” of customers in France who use data centers in nearby regions, but having a physical presence in the country will allow them to store data locally. Storing data locally will satisfy data sovereignty concerns, while also ensuring minimal latency.
“For over a decade, AWS has been supporting French builders and entrepreneurs, in enterprises and startups, on their quest to reinvent and evolve their customer’s experiences,” said Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon Web Services, Inc. “We have tens of thousands of French customers using AWS from regions outside of France, but we’ve heard them loud and clear and are excited to deliver them an AWS Region in France, so they can easily operate their most latency-sensitive workloads or house any data that needs to reside on French soil.”
The AWS Paris region has three availability zones, which helps spread the load across separate locations and offers customers protection in the event of outages caused by an external event.
