AWS Launches New Region In Paris

Amazon Web Services has launched a new region in Paris, set up to serve customers in the European Union. This makes it the fourth region for the cloud giant in the EU.

After Germany, Ireland, and the United Kingdom.

The opening of AWS EU (Paris) region brings the total number of AWS regions around the world to 18, which together contain 49 availability zones. Amazon already counts Canal+, Decathlon, Les Echoes, Schneider Electric and Societe Generale as customers in France.

But the immediate advantage of this new Paris region is that it will make it easier for technology companies in France to comply with the local data privacy regulations. They are now able to store user data in the country with the reassurance that it will not be moved unless they do so.

AWS, in announcing this new region, emphasized this focus on data privacy, citing the strict data sovereignty laws in France.

Andy Jassy, CEO of AWS:

“We have tens of thousands of French customers using AWS from regions outside of France, but we’ve heard them loud and clear and are excited to deliver them an AWS Region in France, so they can easily operate their most latency-sensitive workloads or house any data that needs to reside on French soil.”

The region has three availability zones, as in separate geographic locations with their own infrastructure like power, cooling, physical security, and low latency networks in order to minimize risk of service disruptions.

AWS already operates three edge network locations in France that allow customers to deliver services to end users, including websites and apps.

This new region, however, solidifies the cloud giant’s presence not only in France, but Europe as a whole. And allows it to comply with upcoming General Data Protection Regulation that will be implemented in the European Union in 2018.