Amazon building data center in the Greater Zurich Area

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced the establishment of the new AWS Region Zurich. According to a press release, this is to open from the second half of 2022 with three availability zones. Data generated within Switzerland will additionally not leave the country. AWS explains in the press release that its plan is to provide developers, start-ups and businesses, in addition to governmental, educational and not-for-profit organizations, with the capacity to run their applications and serve end-users from data centers located in Switzerland

The AWS Region Italy only opened at the beginning of this year. Works are underway to complete another in Spain, in addition to two more located in Indonesia and Japan. The AWS Region Zurich is to become the eighth AWS Region within Europe, AWS states. It will supplement those already opened in Dublin, Frankfurt, London, Paris, Stockholm, Milan as well as the one announced for Spain. In global terms, there will ultimately now be 27 AWS Regions with 77 availability zones overall.

According to the AWS press release, many Swiss companies right across the whole country are already using the cloud services of Amazon Switzerland which were launched back in 2006. In 2016, the first AWS office was opened in Zurich, with another located in Geneva following 12 months later. The new AWS Region will offer these and other customers applications that operate more rapidly due to regional data centers in addition to tight application security that fulfils strict requirements with regard to data sovereignty. This includes, for example, an obligation for Swiss data to be stored solely in Switzerland.