Amazon Web Services (AWS) launched a new cloud region in Milan, Italy, which marked its sixth European region overall. Italy, along with Spain, has been one of the European countries that has suffered the most due to the coronavirus pandemic, which has included a nationwide lockdown.
Amazon Web Services didn't directly say how the COVID-19 crisis impacted its new cloud region in Milan, but it did note that it will help Italian startups, enterprises, governments, education and non-profit organizations run their applications and serve end-users from data centers located in Italy.
"The opening of the AWS (Milan) Region demonstrates our ongoing commitment to the people of Italy and the long-term potential we believe there is in the country," said Amazon CTO Werner Vogels in a blog post. "Now, more than ever, we are seeing customers use efficient and secure cloud computing infrastructure to make a meaningful impact on lives around the world.
"In Italy, many organizations are leveraging AWS to tackle the challenges brought on by the pandemic, whether it is to empower scientific research, facilitate remote working and remote learning, or providing new services to answer the emergency at hand."
The AWS Milan region has three Availability Zones comprised of one or more data centers that are located in separate geographic locations to insure redundancy. Each Availability Zone has its own power, cooling and physical security. Customers can run their applications across multiple zones to achieve better fault tolerance.
With the addition of the Milan region, AWS now spans more than 76 Availability Zones across 24 global regions. AWS has announced plans for nine more Availability Zones and three more AWS Regions in Indonesia, Japan and Spain.
Prior to opening the doors on its Milan Region, AWS launched an edge location in Milan in 2012 followed by offices in Milan and Rome in 2014 and 2016, respectively. In addition to Milan, AWS's European regions include Dublin, Ireland, Frankfurt, Germany, London, Paris and Stockholm.
Three years ago, an AWS location was opened in Palermo, and in 2019 an AWS Direct Connect endpoint launched in Milan, helping customers establish a dedicated network connection from their premises to AWS. Last year, AWS launched two additional edge locations in Milan and one in Rome.
RELATED: Amazon Web Services: A knockout performance in Q4
Amazon reports its first quarter earnings Thursday afternoon.