The cloud has arrived in the Middle East.
Amazon Web Services said Monday it is expanding its data center footprint into Bahrain by early 2019, making it the first of the three major cloud providers to open data centers in the region.
As the global cloud market intensifies, AWS’ move is aimed at attracting new customers in the area and comes months after Amazon completed a $580 million acquisition of Souq, a Middle Eastern commerce site. The cloud computing giant is also opening offices in Dubai and Bahrain this year as part of its expansion into the region.
“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,” Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon Web Services said in a statement.
As part of its Monday announcement, AWS also said it is opening a new Cloud Edge Network location in the United Arab Emirates in 2018.
AWS currently offers server infrastructure in 16 regions across the U.S., Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, India, Ireland, Japan, Korea, Singapore, and the UK and has already announced a variety of new regions coming on board, including the Nordics by sometime in 2018. Additional server infrastructure is also expected to be arriving in new regions in France, China and Hong Kong over the next year.
The battle for cloud services is intensifying around the globe among AWS and rivals Google and Microsoft.
Google opened its first Cloud Platform regions in Germany and Brazil earlier this month. Google and Microsoft have also recently announced plans to open their first African data centers in 2018. And just last week, Microsoft said it will be adding new availability zones.
For its part, AWS has announced a host of upcoming new regions set to come on board around the world, including the Nordics by 2018, while additional server infrastructure will be arriving in new regions in France, China, and Hong Kong over the next year.
