Today, Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced its plans to invest €7.8 billion in the AWS European Sovereign Cloud in Germany through 2040, which reflects AWS’s long-term commitment to meeting Europe’s digital sovereignty needs. The AWS European Sovereign Cloud is planning to launch its first AWS Region in the State of Brandenburg, Germany, by the end of 2025, available to all customers.
AWS’s long-term investment is expected to lead to a ripple effect in the local cloud community, through accelerating productivity gains, empowering the digital transformation of businesses, empowering the AWS Partner Network (APN), upskilling the cloud and digital workforce, developing renewable energy projects, and creating a positive impact in the communities where AWS operates. In total, AWS’s planned investment is estimated to contribute €17.2 billion to Germany’s total Gross Domestic Product (GDP) through 2040, and support an average 2,800 full-time equivalent jobs in local German businesses each year. These positions - including construction, facility maintenance, engineering, telecommunications, and other jobs within the broader local economy - are part of the AWS data centre supply chain.
In addition, AWS will also create new highly-skilled permanent roles to build and operate the AWS European Sovereign Cloud. These jobs will include software engineers, systems developers, and solutions architects. This is part of our commitment that all day-to-day operations of the AWS European Sovereign Cloud will be controlled exclusively by personnel located in the EU, including access to data centres, technical support, and customer service.
Continued investment in Europe
Over the last 25 years, we’ve driven economic development through our investment in infrastructure, jobs, and skills in communities and countries across Europe. Since 2010, Amazon has invested more than €150 billion in the EU and we're proud to employ more than 150,000 people in permanent roles across the European Single Market. The launch of the AWS European Sovereign Cloud builds on our long-term commitment to Europe and ongoing investment in its digital future.
“This investment reinforces our commitment to offer customers the most advanced set of sovereignty controls, privacy safeguards, and security features available in the cloud. We're investing heavily in new local talent and infrastructure, which will help provide the operational sovereignty our customers require," said Max Peterson, Vice President of Sovereign Cloud at AWS. "This is an exciting milestone, and we're looking forward to the ways that our customers and partners across Europe will drive further innovation with the AWS European Sovereign Cloud."
In Germany, we also collaborate with local communities on long-term, innovative programmes that will have a lasting impact in the areas where our infrastructure is located. We focus on developing cloud workforce and education initiatives to learners of all ages, helping to solve the skills gap and prepare for the tech jobs of the future. For example, last year AWS partnered with Siemens AG to design the first apprenticeship programme for AWS data centres in Germany, and launched the first national cloud computing certification with the German Chamber of Commerce (DIHK), as well as the AWS Skills to Jobs Tech Alliance in Germany. We will work closely with local partners to roll out these skills programmes, and ensure they are tailored to regional needs.
“High performing, reliable, and secure infrastructure is the most important prerequisite for an increasingly digitalised economy and society. Brandenburg is making progress here. In recent years, we have set on a course to invest in modern and sustainable data centre infrastructure in our state, strengthening Brandenburg as a business location,” said Prof. Dr. Jörg Steinbach, Brandenburg’s Minister of Economic Affairs, Labour and Energy. “State-of-the-art data centres for secure cloud computing are the basis for a strong digital economy. I am pleased Amazon Web Services (AWS) has chosen Brandenburg for a long-term investment in its cloud computing infrastructure for the AWS European Sovereign Cloud.”
More control, more choice
From day one, AWS has believed it is essential that our customers have control over their data, and choices for how they secure and manage that data in the cloud. AWS gives customers the flexibility to choose how and where they want to run their workloads, including a proven track record of innovation to support specialised workloads around the world. We help customers meet stringent security, sovereignty, and privacy requirements in our existing sovereign-by-design AWS Regions.
The AWS European Sovereign Cloud will be a new independent cloud for Europe, designed to provide further choice to help public sector organisations and customers in highly regulated industries meet their evolving sovereignty needs. It will utilise the full power of AWS with the same familiar architecture, expansive service portfolio, and APIs that customers use today, though separate from existing AWS Regions. This means that customers using the AWS European Sovereign Cloud will get the benefits of AWS infrastructure including industry-leading security, availability, performance, and resilience.
The AWS European Sovereign Cloud will provide customers the capability to meet stringent operational autonomy and data residency requirements within the European Union (EU), with infrastructure wholly located within the EU and operated independently from existing Regions. The AWS European Sovereign Cloud will allow customers to keep all customer data and the metadata they create (such as the roles, permissions, resource labels, and configurations they use to run AWS) in the EU.
We’re committed to giving customers more control and more choice to help meet their unique digital sovereignty needs, without compromising on the full power of AWS.
