Amazon unit to open Cape data centres

Amazon Web Services (AWS) plans to open three data centres in Cape Town in 2020.

The cloud computing unit of Amazon, the world’s secondbiggest public company, said it would open its first “infrastructure region”, or cluster of data centres, in SA.

This comes months before Microsoft’s planned launch of two Azure data centres in SA.

Amazon said its data centres will allow organisations to reduce data transfer speeds for end-users across sub-Saharan Africa. They will facilitate the adoption of technologies such as artificial intelligence, the internet of things and mobile services.

“Local AWS customers will also be able to store their data in SA with the assurance that their content will not move without consent, while those looking to comply with the upcoming Protection of Personal Information Act will have access to secure infrastructure that meets the most rigorous international compliance standards,” the company said.

Geoff Brown, sub-Saharan Africa regional manager of AWS, told Business Day the centres will bring “a number of highly skilled, well-paid jobs to the local economy and drive growth in cloud technology jobs”.

AWS was looking for data centre engineers, support engineers, engineering operations managers, security specialists, account managers, solution architects and partner development managers.

Companies including Absa, Investec and Standard Bank are already using its services to reduce costs, boost innovation “and speed up time to market”.

“AWS has been Absa’s primary cloud provider for the past three years. The reduction in latencies ... will further enable us to scale our cloud consumption,” said Absa chief information officer Andy Baker.

2020 the year in which Amazon Web Services plans to open data centres in Cape Town

3 the number of data centres planned for the first half of 2020