AWS to Launch Cloud Data Centers in Spain

Amazon Web Services is expanding its investment in Spain in a big way.

The company announced this week a plan to launch an availability region in the country, which will consist of multiple availability zones. Each AWS cloud availability zone typically consists of one or more dedicated data centers.

Expected to come online in late 2022 or early 2023, Spain will be AWS’s seventh region in Europe. It currently has 22 worldwide and four more in the works: Indonesia, Italy, South Africa, and Spain.

After several years of rapid infrastructure expansion in the top data center markets, such as Northern Virginia, Frankfurt, and Hong Kong, cloud giants are now pouring money into data centers in smaller but quickly growing markets. While the top markets are continuing to grow, the next wave of rapid growth is expected to take place in emerging markets.

Earlier this year, AWS launched data centers in Bahrain – its first availability region in the Middle East – Google Cloud Platform is building its first data centers in Poland, and Microsoft Azure has two availability regions in the works in Norway.

AWS has had presence in Spain for some time but without a full-fledged availability region. It has two edge locations and two Direct Connect locations in the country, as well as offices in Barcelona. Edge locations are used by the company’s CDN and DNS services, and Direct Connect is a private cloud connectivity service for large enterprises wanting to use AWS without getting their data traffic onto the public internet.

Related:Amazon Brushes Off European Challenge to Its Cloud Business

Amazon’s cloud customers in Spain include Barceló Group, BBVA, Enel, and Adevinta, among others.