Amazon Web Services (AWS) has reportedly launched its first cloud region in the Nordics. The Stockholm region, in Sweden, that apparently comprises three data centers, is AWS’s fifth availability region in Europe.
Sources claim that as per AWS, since the company boasts of tens of thousands of customers all over the Nordics, the establishment of the new Amazon data centers in Sweden is certain to improve performance for their customer base.
Incidentally, the Stockholm region had been launched with three cloud zones. Each AWS cloud zone comprised at least one data center with its own infrastructure. However, some zones have multiple facilities. Amazon has not revealed the exact number of data centers it launched in Sweden.
For the uninitiated, AWS has beat its biggest rival in the cloud market – Microsoft Azure, in launching data centers in the Nordics. In June, Microsoft reportedly announced its plan to launch two Azure cloud regions in Norway, which is expected to be launched in the second half of next year.
Speaking of launching data centers, reliable sources reveal that Google has beat both Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure in the Nordics, when it first launched an availability region in Finland in June. IBM in fact, has beat all these companies by launching a cloud center in Norway last year. However, Alibaba Cloud does not have a data center in this region serving all its European clients out of London and Frankfurt.
Reliable sources claim that Microsoft, Google, and Amazon are some of the prime companies investing heavily on cloud data center construction. In the third quarter, Google’s parent Alphabet Inc. spent close to about $5.6 billion on data center construction, production equipment, and facilities.
Amazon claimed that its data center expenditure is actually a part of the capital leases bucket, which was $2.33 billion during the quarter. Capital expenditure of Microsoft for its cloud services were $4.3 billion in the third quarter, cite credible reports.