The new AWS Region will give developers, startups, entrepreneurs, and enterprises, as well as healthcare, education, gaming, and nonprofit organisations, greater choice for running their applications and serving end users from data centres located in the Kingdom.
This will allow users of AWS to keep their data within the region, addressing data sovereignty rules.
AWS is planning to invest more than $5.3 billion in the country to support the infrastructure.
“Today’s announcement supports the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s digital transformation with the highest levels of security and resilience available on AWS cloud infrastructure, helping serve fast-growing demand for cloud services across the Middle East,” said Prasad Kalyanaraman, vice president of infrastructure services at AWS.
Kalyanaraman said the new AWS Region will enable organisations to unlock the full potential of the cloud and build with AWS technologies like compute, storage, databases, analytics, and artificial intelligence.
This, he claims, will transform the way businesses and institutions serve their customers.
“We look forward to helping Saudi Arabian institutions, startups, and enterprises deliver cloud-powered applications to accelerate growth, productivity, and innovation and spur job creation, skills training, and educational opportunities,” Kalyanaraman added.
Engineer Abdullah Alswaha, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia minister of communications and information technology welcomed the investment from AWS.
“This cloud Region demonstrates a firm commitment to research and innovation, and empowers entrepreneurs to achieve prosperity for our region and the world,” he said.
The new AWS Region will consist of three availability zones at launch, adding to the existing 105 availability zones across 33 geographic regions AWS has globally.
