Brexit Won’t Stop Amazon Building Its AWS UK Data Centres

Ben Sullivan,
netflix, AWS

AWS still won’t give official launch date, but it is understood UK data centres will open between November and February

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has said the Britain’s decision to leave the European Union (EU) will not impact its decision to open data centres in the UK.

But the public cloud provider, currently on $10bn annual run rate, couldn’t give an official date for the launch of the UK region, aside from a projected window of between late 2016 and early 2017.

However, TechWeekEurope has learned from one source close to the matter that the specific date should fall between November 2016 and February 2017.

AWS UK Data centre

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“In light of the Brexit vote, I just wanted to reassure our customers that we see the UK as a fast innovator, we see the UK has a huge talent pool, and as a fast adopter of technology trends, ” AWS UK manager Gavin Jackson told the 5,000-strong audience at Amazon’s AWS Summit in London today.

“Our job at AWS is to help you innovate through technology. So, we as AWS will continue to be an inward investor into the UK, and yes, we will continue on our path to launching a UK region at the end of this year or the beginning of next year.

“Our message to everybody in this room is to keep calm and keep innovating in the UK with cloud and AWS.”

Data sovereignty

A cloud region in the UK will hell AWS customers work faster with Amazon and keep customer data within UK borders, helping navigate any data residency issues that may arise as the GDPR comes into effect over the next two years.

EU Brexit referedumAmazon Web Services boasts a wealth of customers from startups to legacy IT players in the enterprise space, from Airbnb to General Electric.

But the public cloud provider has stiff competition in the likes of Microsoft, which plans to open its own Azure cloud region in the UK by the end of this year.

AWS couldn’t comment on whether Microsoft beating Amazon to the punch with a UK region will affect its business in Europe, but with UK customers eagerly awaiting to run their own public cloud within Britain, TechWeekEurope predicts whoever is first could grab bigger customers.

Werner Vogels, the CTO of AWS, told the keynote audience today: “Part of our success has been our drive for international expansion.

“Of course, by the end of this year, or maybe early next year, we’ll also have landed a region here in the UK.”

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