AWS to launch data centers in United Arab Emirates

Amazon Web Services (AWS) air expanding its presence in the Middle East, with three new data centers based in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

They will go live in the first half of 2022 and expand the company’s presence in the region, which is currently limited to Bahrain, the company announced Wednesday. AWS currently has 80 such centers around the world.

“We are excited to build on the great momentum of cloud adoption in the Middle East by providing more choice for customers in the UAE to run applications and store data locally,” said Peter DeSantis, senior vice president of global infrastructure at AWS.

AWS remains a major cloud service provider to the U.S. government. It remains in a protracted legal battle with the Department of Defense after it was passed over for a $10 billion Joint Enterprise Defense Information (JEDI) cloud computing contract.

In the Middle East, AWS contracts with governments including Egypt, Kuwait and Bahrain.