Matthew BoyleArticle originally on BusinessWire. See links for direct access.
The AWS European Sovereign Cloud will be a new standalone cloud for Europe that will provide customers in highly regulated and public sectors additional choice and flexibility to meet evolving data residency and resiliency requirements in the European Union (EU)
The AWS European Sovereign Cloud will allow customers to store all metadata created in the EU
Only AWS employees residing and located in the EU will have control of operations and support of the AWS European Sovereign Cloud
Customers, AWS Partners and regulators who have welcomed the new AWS European Sovereign Cloud include the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), the German Federal Ministry of the Interior and Community (BMI ), the German Federal Ministry of Digital and Transport, the Finnish Ministry of Finance, the National Agency for Cybersecurity and Information Security (NÚKIB) of the Czech Republic, the National Cybersecurity Directorate of Romania, SAP , Dedalus, Deutsche Telekom, O 2 Telefónica in Germany, Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG, Raisin, Scalable Capital, de Volksbank, Telia Company, Accenture, AlmavivA, Deloitte, Eviden, Materna and msg groupOctober 26, 2023 10:43 AM Eastern Daylight Time
BERLIN–( BUSINESS WIRE )–Amazon Web Services (AWS), an Amazon.com company (NASDAQ:AMZN), today announced the launch of the AWS European Sovereign Cloud, a new standalone cloud for Europe designed to help customers in public sector and highly regulated industries meet the most stringent data operations and residency requirements. Located and managed in Europe, the AWS European Sovereign Cloud will be physically and logically separate from existing AWS Regions, with the same security, availability and performance as existing AWS Regions, and provides customers with additional choice to meet their needs. their needs for data residency, operational autonomy and resilience. The AWS European Sovereign Cloud will launch with the first AWS Region in Germany and will be available to all European customers. To learn more, visit: aws.amazon.com/compliance/europe-digital-sovereignty/ .
As with existing AWS Regions, customers will have control and assurance that AWS will not access or use customer data for any purpose without their consent, as well as access to the strongest sovereign controls among the leading cloud service providers. Only AWS employees residing in the EU will have control of operations and support of the AWS European Sovereign Cloud. For customers with higher data residency requirements, the AWS European Sovereign Cloud will allow all created metadata (such as roles, permissions, resource tags, and configurations used to be retained) to be retained in the EU. run AWS) and will have its own billing and usage measurement systems.
“ The AWS European Sovereign Cloud reinforces our commitment to offering AWS customers the most advanced set of sovereign controls, privacy protections and security features available in the cloud,” said Max Peterson, vice president of Sovereign Cloud at AWS. “ For over a decade, we have worked with governments and regulators across Europe to understand and respond to the evolving needs of cybersecurity, data privacy and localization and, more recently, digital sovereignty . With this new offering, European customers and partners will have more choices to achieve the operational independence they need, without compromising the broader and deeper cloud services that millions of customers already know and use today. »
“ The development of a European AWS Cloud will make it easier for many public sector organizations and businesses with high requirements for security and data protection to use AWS services,” said Claudia Plattner, President of the AWS Cloud. German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI). “ We are aware of the innovative power of modern cloud computing services and want to help make them securely available for Germany and Europe. The Cloud Compliance Criteria Catalog (C5), developed by the BSI, has significantly shaped cloud computing cybersecurity standards and AWS was, in fact, the first cloud service provider to receive the BSI C5 certificate. With this in mind, we are very happy to constructively support the local development of an AWS cloud, which will also contribute to European sovereignty in terms of security. »
The AWS Sovereign Cloud will be sovereign by design and leverage more than a decade of AWS experience managing multiple independent clouds for the most critical and confidential workloads. Customers needing more options to meet their data isolation and country residency needs will be able to leverage existing offerings such as AWS Outposts or AWS Dedicated Local Zones to deploy AWS infrastructure European Sovereign Cloud in locations of their choice. AWS Outposts are fully managed solutions that deliver AWS infrastructure and services to virtually any on-premises or edge location for a consistent hybrid experience. They are designed for workloads that must remain on-premises due to latency, data processing, and data residency requirements, when customers want these workloads to work seamlessly with other workloads. work in AWS. AWS Dedicated Local Zones are a type of infrastructure built for the exclusive use of a customer or community, located in a location specified by the customer. They are designed to reduce the operational costs of managing large-scale on-premises infrastructure and can be configured to meet customer-specific regulatory requirements.
AWS European Sovereign Cloud customers will benefit from the same low latency and high availability they experience in existing AWS Regions, as well as access to the world’s most comprehensive and widely adopted cloud to drive innovation. The AWS European Sovereign Cloud will offer multiple Availability Zones, infrastructures located in separate and distinct geographic locations, far enough apart to significantly reduce the risk of a single event impacting customer business continuity, but close enough to ensure low latency for high-availability applications using multiple Availability Zones. Each Availability Zone has independent power, cooling and physical security and is connected by redundant, ultra-low latency networks.
AWS offers the world’s largest and most comprehensive cloud infrastructure, with 102 Availability Zones across 32 geographic regions, and plans to launch 15 additional Availability Zones and five AWS Regions in Canada, Germany, Malaysia, New Zealand. -Zealand and Thailand. AWS infrastructure in Europe currently includes eight AWS Regions in Frankfurt, Ireland, London, Milan, Paris, Stockholm, Spain, and Zurich, and more than 120 Content Delivery Network (CDN) points of presence ) in more than 25 cities across 19 European Member States. Some of the largest AWS development teams are located in Europe, with key centers in Dublin, Dresden and Berlin. Today, Amazon creates thousands of quality jobs and invests billions of euros in European economies. In the EU, Amazon has created more than 100,000 permanent jobs and many major components of AWS, including AWS Nitro and Amazon CloudWatch, are built in the EU. The AWS European Sovereign Cloud will drive economic development by investing in infrastructure, jobs and skills in European communities and countries. As part of its ongoing commitment to helping develop digital skills, AWS will recruit and train additional local staff to manage and support the AWS European Sovereign Cloud.
Customers, AWS Partners and Regulators Welcome AWS European Sovereign Cloud
EU organizations are among millions of active customers using AWS in more than 190 countries around the world. AWS offers the most comprehensive compliance controls, supporting 143 security standards and compliance certifications to help customers meet regulatory requirements around the world. To meet additional needs for data residency, operational autonomy, and resiliency in Europe, AWS is working closely with European regulators and national cybersecurity agencies to build the AWS European Sovereign Cloud. Many AWS regulators, customers and partners across Europe welcome the new AWS European Sovereign Cloud.
“ We welcome AWS’s commitment to expand its infrastructure with an independent European cloud. Businesses and public sector organizations will thus have more choices to meet their digital sovereignty requirements,” said Markus Richter, Chief Information Officer of the German Federal Government. “ Cloud services are essential for the digitalization of public administration. The German government’s cloud strategy and the EVB-IT Cloud contract standard have laid the foundations for the use of the cloud in public administration. I am very excited to work with AWS to implement sovereignty in line with our cloud strategy in a practical and collaborative way. »
“ The German and European economies are on the path to digitalization. Germany’s powerful “Mittelstand”, i.e. small and medium-sized businesses, particularly needs a sovereign digital infrastructure that meets the highest requirements in order to remain competitive on the global market,” said Stefan Schnorr, State Secretary at the German Federal Ministry for Digital and Transport. “ For our digital independence, it is important that computing power is generated locally in Germany and that additional investments are made in the digitalization of the local economy. We therefore welcome AWS’s announcement to establish the European cloud in Germany. »
“ AWS’ announcement of an independent European cloud will offer organizations facing stricter regulations more choices in their digital sovereignty strategy,” said Jarkko Levasma, Finnish government chief information officer at the Ministry of Finance. “ To provide secure, human-centered services to citizens and businesses, public sector organizations must have cloud solutions that comply with data protection and other regulations. »
“ Data sovereignty and residency are currently at the forefront of European and national security debates. Therefore, AWS’ announcement of an independent European cloud is indeed the right decision at the right time which will ultimately also strengthen transatlantic collaboration,” said Tomas Krejci, Deputy Director of the National Agency for Information and Cybersecurity (NÚKIB) of the Czech Republic. “ We recognize that it will provide more heavily regulated organizations, such as those in the public sector attentive to changing regulations, more choice in their digital sovereignty strategy. A fully independent cloud, providing adequate levels of cybersecurity, as well as the assurance of meeting strict data protection requirements, will always be beneficial to both public sector organizations and citizens in general. »
“ We welcome AWS’ announcement to strengthen its existing European infrastructure with a new independent cloud. This will help public and private organizations that face strict regulatory requirements accelerate their transition to the cloud, while improving innovation and data security for the benefit of European citizens,” said Dan Cimpean, Director of the Directorate National Cybersecurity Agency of Romania. “ Romania encourages the development of cybersecurity skills and expertise and hosts the European Cybersecurity Competence Center. We also welcome this move by AWS as a long-term investment in cloud and security expertise in Europe. »
SAP SE is a market leader in enterprise application software. With a global network of customers, partners, employees and thought leaders, SAP helps the world run better and improve people’s lives. SAP and AWS continue to work together to accelerate digital transformation and support customers around the world. “ As a market leader in enterprise application software with strong roots in Europe, SAP has a long history of working with AWS on behalf of its customers to accelerate digital transformation around the world,” said Peter Pluim, President of SAP Enterprise Cloud Services and SAP Sovereign Cloud Services. “ The AWS European Sovereign Cloud provides new opportunities to strengthen our relationship in Europe, allowing us to expand the choices we offer customers as they move to the cloud. We appreciate the ongoing collaboration with AWS and the new opportunities this investment can bring to our joint customers across the region. »
Dedalus is one of the world’s largest healthcare software companies, providing healthcare software across the entire patient care continuum. It serves 6,700 healthcare organizations, 5,700 diagnostic and laboratory centers, and hundreds of regions worldwide, helping providers care for more than 540 million patients. Starting in 2021, Dedalus will use AWS to provide healthcare software solutions, including native and platform services for Dedalus health records, as well as cloud-linked delivery capabilities. “ Today we are on the eve of an era of transformation. The introduction of the AWS European Sovereign Cloud is not just an infrastructural improvement, but a paradigm shift,” said Andrea Fiumicelli, President of Dedalus. “ This sophisticated framework will enable Dedalus to offer unprecedented services for the secure and efficient storage of patient data in the AWS Cloud. We remain committed, without compromise, to serving our European customers with best-in-class solutions, backed by trust and technological excellence. »
With offices in over 20 countries and over 27,000 employees, T-Systems is one of Europe’s leading digital service providers. The Deutsche Telekom subsidiary is headquartered in Germany and has a presence in Europe, as well as in certain key markets and strategic production sites. T-Systems provides a global production and supply chain to companies operating around the world. T-Systems and AWS entered into a strategic partnership in 2021 to support customers on their digital journey. “ Deutsche Telekom welcomes the announcement of AWS European Sovereign Cloud, which highlights AWS’ commitment to continued innovation for European businesses. said Greg Hyttenrauch, Senior Vice President, Global Cloud Services at T-Systems. “ The AWS solution will provide organizations with greater choice when moving regulated workloads to the cloud and additional options to meet evolving digital governance requirements in the EU. »
O 2 Telefónica is one of the leading integrated telecommunications providers in Germany, with a customer base of more than 44 million mobile subscriptions and 2.3 million broadband subscriptions. Since 2020, O 2 Telefónica has worked with AWS to accelerate its network progression, amplify automation and drive innovation at an accelerated pace. As part of the digital transformation process, the telecom operator has migrated most of its IT applications to AWS. “ The new European Sovereign Cloud from AWS can be a game-changer for the highly regulated industries in the European Union,” said Mallik Rao, CTO of O 2 Telefónica in Germany. “ As a leading telecommunications provider in Germany, our digital transformation focuses on innovation, scalability, agility and resilience to provide our customers with the best services and quality. This is now complemented by the highest levels of data protection and regulatory compliance offered by AWS, with a focus on digital sovereignty requirements. I am confident that this new infrastructure offering has the potential to boost cloud adoption by European businesses and accelerate the digital transformation of regulated industries across the EU. »
Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG is a leading manufacturer of industrial offset printing presses. The German precision mechanics company also offers a wide range of solutions for the printing industry and an ecosystem of digital solutions built on AWS. “ We welcome the AWS European Sovereign Cloud as a new offering within AWS to meet the more complex requirements for data residency and operations in Europe,” said Bernhard Wagensommer, Vice President of Prinect, Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG.
Founded in 2012, Raisin is a fast-growing financial technology company that works with more than 400 banks in over 30 countries, connecting partners with savers through its platform. Raisin has worked with AWS on mission-critical workloads, including enterprise applications, web/client applications, disaster recovery and more. “ The AWS European Sovereign Cloud will set new industry benchmarks and give financial services institutions even more options within AWS to meet growing digital sovereignty requirements for data residency and operational autonomy in the EU,” said Gerhard Koestler, CIO at Raisin.
With over 600,000 clients and over €15 billion in assets under management, Scalable Capital is one of the leading digital asset managers in Europe. With Scalable Broker, clients can independently trade stocks, ETFs, funds, bonds and derivatives, starting from 1 EUR. The fintech runs most of its workloads on AWS. “ With a focus on data protection, security and regulatory compliance, the AWS European Sovereign Cloud underlines AWS’ commitment to promoting the highest standards in digital sovereignty for financial services institutions said Andreas Schranzhofer, Chief Technology Officer at Scalable Capital. “ This robust additional framework allows businesses like ours to thrive in a secure environment, where data is protected and compliance with the highest standards is more achievable than ever. »
De Volksbank is the organization behind SNS, ASN Bank, RegioBank and BLG Wonen and the driving force behind the development of banking products, processes and systems based on human needs. As a bank with more than 3 million customers, Volksbank wants to distinguish itself through its social impact on the lives of the Dutch. “ At the Volksbank we believe in investing in improving the Netherlands. To achieve this effectively, we need access to the latest technologies so that we can continuously innovate and improve the services offered to our customers,” said Sebastiaan Kalshoven, Director IT/CTO at Volksbank. “ That’s why we welcome the announcement of the AWS European Sovereign Cloud, which will make it easy for European customers to demonstrate compliance with evolving regulations, while benefiting from the reach, security and suite full range of AWS services. »
Telia Company is a leading telecommunications company in the Nordic and Baltic countries and a Nordic media publisher, providing consumers, businesses and public sector customers with essential digital infrastructure and services, ICT services and entertainment. Telia uses AWS DeepRacer as part of its 2,000 employee training program on artificial intelligence and machine learning with AWS. “ Telia Company welcomes the development of AWS European Sovereign Cloud which complements Telia’s trusted cloud offerings,” said Rainer Deutschmann, Group Chief Operating Officer at Telia Company. “ This milestone underlines AWS’s commitment to democratizing cloud technology for businesses and organizations across Europe. Telia welcomes AWS’ commitment to providing highly regulated industries with greater flexibility and choice in an environment where digital sovereignty requirements are evolving. »
Accenture, an AWS Premier Tier Services Partner, is a leading global professional services company focused on accelerating end-to-end AWS adoption and optimizing business transformation, safely, quickly and at scale. Accenture’s global AWS team of more than 20,000 certified professionals has more than 24,000 AWS certifications and more than 30 AWS skills. “ According to a recent Accenture study, 50% of CEOs consider digital sovereignty a top issue when choosing cloud providers. Today’s announcement can help accelerate economic growth and innovation in Europe by providing players in highly regulated industries with the operational and data independence commitment they need to move their workloads further. more sensitive to the cloud,” said Valerio Romano, cloud first lead EMEA, Accenture. “ Building on our digital sovereignty partnership with AWS, Accenture will work with our regulated industry and public sector clients to help them access the profitability, security and resiliency of the cloud. »
AlmavivA is an AWS Premier Tier Services Partner that offers proven experience, unique expertise, continuous research and in-depth knowledge of a range of public and private market sectors, making it the leading Italian technology group. information and communication. “ AlmavivA is the leading Italian information and communications technology group, with offices and clients around the world. As an AWS Premier Tier Services Partner, we welcome the announcement of AWS European Sovereign Cloud, a complement to existing AWS offerings that will give European businesses and governments more choice and flexibility in their workloads. This step reaffirms AWS’ commitment to unlocking new opportunities for EU businesses and aligns with AlmavivA’s goal of supporting Italian and European organizations to harness the vast benefits of digital transformation. »
“ The digitalization of the public sector is one of the biggest challenges for governments in Europe and, together with AWS, Deloitte has already successfully implemented digitalization projects in the public sector in many countries,” said Patrick Callewaert , partner and EMEA AWS Alliance lead, Deloitte North South Europe. “ Deloitte is now able to offer our clients in Europe further opportunities with the new AWS European Sovereign Cloud to accelerate their digital transformation in public sector and regulated industries. As an AWS Premier Tier Services Partner, Deloitte warmly welcomes this development which will support our customers’ cloud journey across Europe. »
Eviden, an Atos company, is an AWS Premier Tier Services Partner for reliable and sustainable data-driven digital transformation. “ Eviden welcomes the launch of the AWS European Sovereign Cloud. This will help regulated industries and the public sector meet the demands of their sensitive workloads with a fully managed AWS cloud in Europe,” said Yannick Tricaud, Head of Southern Europe, Middle East and Africa for Eviden, Atos group. “ As an AWS Premier Tier Services partner and leader in cybersecurity services in Europe, Eviden has extensive experience helping AWS customers formalize and mitigate their sovereign risks. The AWS European Sovereign Cloud will enable Eviden to meet a broader range of customer sovereignty needs. »
Materna Group is a German international IT service provider that successfully uses AWS to implement digital transformation solutions. Materna is an AWS Advanced Tier Services Partner focused on AWS skills for IoT, mobile devices, migration, DevOps and big data, providing agile application development in these areas. » AWS European Sovereign Cloud is an important additional offering from AWS that provides highly regulated industries, public sector organizations and German government authorities with additional options to implement the most stringent regulatory requirements for data protection in the cloud,” said Martin Wibbe, CEO of Materna. “ As an AWS Advanced Tier Services Partner, AWS Solution Provider, and AWS Public Sector Partner, we provide critical infrastructure implementation guidance and support. The new offering from AWS is an important boost for innovation and digitalization in Germany. »
msg group is a German consulting and IT company. As an AWS Advanced Tier Services Partner, msg advises customers on the design, planning, development, migration, and management of workloads and applications on AWS. “ As one of the largest German IT companies and a strategic partner of AWS Advanced Tier Services, msg welcomes the announcement of AWS European Sovereign Cloud,” said Jürgen Zehetmaier, CEO of msg. “ As we operate both as a SaaS provider and as a consultant to clients with specific data protection requirements, creating an independent European cloud will allow us to help our clients demonstrate more easily that they are in compliance with evolving regulations. This exciting news is in line with our cloud strategy and we see this development as an opportunity to strengthen our partnership with AWS and accelerate the evolution of cloud in Germany. »
Commitment to sustainable development
Amazon is committed to becoming a more sustainable company and achieving zero carbon emissions across all operations by 2040, 10 years ahead of the Paris Agreement, as part of the Climate Pledge. Amazon co-founded The Climate Pledge, becoming its first signatory in 2019. As part of its Climate Pledge, Amazon aims to power 100% of its operations with renewable energy by 2025, five years ahead of the target initial of 2030. For more information on its approach, see Amazon’s public methodology . In 2022, Amazon set a new record for the most renewable energy announced by a single company in a year and, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, it remains the largest corporate buyer of renewable energy, a position that she has held since 2020. Amazon now has 401 renewable energy projects in 22 countries. Additionally, by 2030, AWS will be water positive, returning more water to communities than it uses for its direct operations.
