Amazon Web Services is planning to open cloud datacenters in Spain in late 2022 or early 2023. The AWS Europe Region in Spain will have three zones when it launches, according to a blog post by AWS Chief Evangelist Jeff Barr. Barr said developers in Madrid and Barcelona are using AWS to build applications for retail management, entertainment, analytics for online advertising, investment recommendations and social scoring.
AWS has been seeding its efforts in Spain for some time. Barr said that several "born-in-the-cloud" companies have already made use of the entire line of AWS database services, such as AWS RedShift, along with AWS Lambda and AWS CloudFormation.
"Some were building for the domestic market and others for the global market, but I am confident that they will all be able to benefit from this new region," Barr said. "We launched AWS Activate in Spain in 2013, giving startups access to guidance and one-on-one time with AWS experts, along with web-based training, self-paced labs, customer support, offers from third-parties, and up to $100,000 in AWS service credits.
"This upcoming region is the latest in a long series of investments that we have made in the Iberian Peninsula. We opened an edge location in Madrid in 2012, and an office in the same city in 2014.We added our first Direct Connect location in 2016, and another one in 2017, all to support the rapid growth of AWS in the area. We now have two edge locations in Madrid, and an office in Barcelona as well."
The Spain region will be AWS' seventh in Europe after AWS Regions opened in Sweden, Hong Kong and Bahrain in the span of less than a year. AWS is also working on opening regions in Jakarta, Indonesia Cape Town, South Africa and Milan, Italy.
RELATED: Don't sweat the declining revenue growth rates for AWS and Azure
Last week, Amazon reported that its cloud division revenue increased 35% in the third quarter, which was down from 37% in the previous quarter, and its lowest growth rate in five years.
Also last week, Microsoft said on its earnings call that Microsoft Azure's revenue growth rate had grown by 59%, but that was down from the 64% posted in the prior quarter and a decline from the growth rate of 76% a year ago.
Despite the slowdown, Amazon is still far and away the market leader in public cloud with a 40% market share, according to Synergy Research Group. Microsoft is second in the public cloud market followed by Google and Alibaba.