Amazon Web Services launches new region in France

Today, Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com company (NASDAQ:AMZN), announced the launch of the AWS EU (Paris) Region. With this launch, AWS now provides 49 Availability Zones across 18 technology infrastructure regions globally with another 12 Availability Zones and four regions in Bahrain, Hong Kong SAR, Sweden, and a second AWS GovCloud Region in the US expected to come online by early 2019. The AWS EU (Paris) Region is AWS’s fourth in Europe, joining existing regions in Germany, Ireland, and the UK. Tens of thousands of French customers already use AWS in other regions, and starting today, developers, startups, and enterprises, as well as government, education, and non-profit organizations, can leverage AWS to run applications and store data in France by going to: https://aws.amazon.com/fr/paris/

The AWS EU (Paris) Region offers three Availability Zones. AWS Regions are comprised of Availability Zones, which refer to technology infrastructure in separate and distinct geographic locations with enough distance to significantly reduce the risk of a single event impacting availability, yet near enough for business continuity applications that require rapid failover. Each Availability Zone has independent power, cooling, physical security, and is connected via redundant, ultra-low-latency networks. AWS customers focused on high availability can design their applications to run in multiple Availability Zones to achieve even greater fault tolerance. Additionally, the new AWS EU (Paris) Region gives customers with data sovereignty requirements the ability to store their data in France with the assurance that their content will not move unless they move it. The new Region adds to the existing infrastructure AWS already has in France, which includes three Edge Network Locations in Paris and one in Marseille, for customers looking to deliver websites, applications, and content to end users with low latency. These are part of AWS’s existing network of 107 Points of Presence (96 Edge Locations and 11 Regional Edge Caches) globally.

“For over a decade, AWS has been supporting French builders and entrepreneurs, in enterprises and startups, on their quest to reinvent and evolve their customer’s experiences,” said Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon Web Services, Inc. “We have tens of thousands of French customers using AWS from regions outside of France, but we’ve heard them loud and clear and are excited to deliver them an AWS Region in France, so they can easily operate their most latency-sensitive workloads or house any data that needs to reside on French soil.”

Politicians and officials, from French central and local government, also welcomed the opening of the AWS EU (Paris) Region. "The establishment of the AWS Region in France reinforces the attractiveness of our country for digital companies, strengthens the trust of French organizations in the cloud, and creates the right conditions for their digital transformation,” said ?ric Bothorel, La R?publique En Marche! representative in the French National Assembly and member of the Economic Affairs Commission, with a focus on Digital Affairs. “The digital revolution is bringing about major economic, social, and societal changes and represents a tremendous growth opportunity for the benefit of the French economy as a whole. The cloud is the essential tool to ensure the development of this new economy and the digital transformation of businesses. It is also an important generator of jobs and we are glad to see AWS is a key part of this."

Val?rie P?cresse, President of Ile de France, also welcomed the new AWS infrastructure region saying, "We are delighted that Amazon Web Services is investing heavily in the opening of its datacenters in ?le-de-France. It is a recognition of the strength and attractiveness of Ile de France, which is establishing itself as the technical hub of Europe. The region has already become established in the eyes of large companies and startups that have set up their headquarters in the metropolitan area. AWS’s choice to locate their datacenters here will help to attract even more companies and validates our ambition to be the first smart region of Europe.”

One of the reasons customers in France are moving to AWS is the company’s investment in security, compliance, and data protection. All AWS infrastructure regions around the world are designed, built, and regularly audited to meet the most rigorous compliance standards and to provide high levels of security for all AWS customers. These include ISO 27001, ISO 27017, ISO 27018, SOC 1 (Formerly SAS 70), SOC 2 and SOC 3 Security & Availability, PCI DSS Level 1, and many more. This means customers benefit from all the best practices of AWS policies, architecture, and operational processes built to satisfy the needs of even the most security sensitive customers.

AWS is certified under the EU-US Privacy Shield and the AWS Data Processing Addendum (DPA) is GDPR-ready and available now to all AWS customers to help them prepare for May 25, 2018, when the GDPR becomes enforceable. AWS’ DPA terms allow customers to transfer personal data to countries outside the European Economic Area (EEA) in compliance with European Union (EU) data protection laws. AWS also adheres to the Cloud Infrastructure Service Providers in Europe (CISPE) Code of Conduct. The CISPE Code of Conduct helps customers verify that AWS is using appropriate data protection standards to protect their data, consistent with the GDPR. In addition, AWS offers a wide range of services and features to help customers meet the requirements of the GDPR, including services for access controls, monitoring, logging, and encryption.