AWS partners hail UK datacentre move

Addition of cloud services on local soil could make difference for security-conscious clients, says partners

Amazon Web Services' UK datacentre plans will play well among UK customers mindful of data sovereignty issues, according to partners of the public cloud giant.

AWS chief technology officer, Werner Vogels, announced today that the UK is to become its third ‘region' in the EU, indicating that it is to establish a local datacentre presence here.

AWS already boasts datacentres in Dublin and Frankfurt but Joseph Spear, head of marketing at AWS Premier partner Smart421, said the addition of cloud services on UK soil could make the difference with security-conscious clients, particularly in the public sector.

"A number of our customers are very mindful of data sovereignty issues and are very keen on the idea for obvious reasons of security," he said.

"We enthusiastically embrace the idea of a UK region. You might argue it's been a long time coming but in our experience AWS knows exactly what it is doing and time things like this very well."

According to analyst Synergy Research, AWS owns over 30 per cent of a cloud infrastructure market worth $6bn a quarter and growing at 50 per cent annually.

Liam Maxwell, CTO of HM Government, said: "It's great to see that Amazon Web Services will be providing commercial cloud services from datacenters in the UK.

"Not only will this mean a significant investment in the UK economy, but means more healthy competition and innovation in the UK datacentre market. This is good news for the UK government given the significant amount of data we hold that needs to be kept onshore."