Amazon Web Services local zone
Amazon Web Services (AWS) has confirmed in a statement its planning for the creation in Athens of its first local zone in Greece.
The subsidiary of Amazon has developed one of the most popular cloud platforms in the world. Following the completion of its first 16 local zones in the US it is proceeding with the creation of new local zones in 32 metropolitan areas in 26 countries. This investment, amounting to 150-200 million euros, was first announced in early December at the annual AWS re:Invent conference in the US, by Amazon.com Chief Technology Officer Werner Vogels.
Local zones are an AWS type of infrastructure placing computing capacity, data storage, data bases and other services closer to major cities and industrial hubs. That way AWS clients will be able to develop applications requiring minimum latency, below one hundredth of a second, close to the final users. That entails an unhindered experience in applications such as real-time gaming, multimedia and entertainment content creation, livestreaming, assimilations, enhanced and virtual reality applications etc.
With AWS undertaking and supporting the local zones by itself, its clients do not have to shoulder the cost of creation, operation and maintenance of such infrastructure in various locations to support ultra-fast applications, as AWS stressed yesterday. Therefore local zones will allow companies in the domains of healthcare, financial services and the broader public sector to store their data within the country.
Local zones may also be used by clients wishing to store their data locally and run specific applications at in-house data centers, while utilizing the AWS services and making the most of the very fast response time such hybrid applications provide.
Among the clients of local zones is the Netflix audiovisual platform, which boasts 214 million subscribers across 190 countries and territories. Also Fox Corporation utilizes local zones through which the company’s producers are able to generate remotely their work and store directly in the local cloud the necessary effects, a process that requires exceptionally fast response times.
