Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) calls its data centers “global regions” and with the addition of the planned Frankfurt facility, it will now have 11 in total. The German center will be the second in Europe along with the existing center in Ireland. Amazon essentially has Edward Snowden to “thank” for the planned site. While Europe and German had stricter privacy regulations than the United States prior to his disclosures regarding the National Security Agency, his revelations only strengthened said privacy parameters.
Neither Europe nor Germany are calling for changes to either its privacy or security software, but both are insisting that Amazon put the servers in Germany in to comply with regulations. Germany is especially critical of U.S based companies given the understanding that the NSA was tapping German Counsellor Angela Merkel‘s personal mobile phone prior to her switching to a BlackBerry device.
Germany explained product at Amazon Web Services
“This was all about geography,” said Adam Selipsky, vice president of product at Amazon Web Services. “German customers wanted a location on German soil, either for perception or legal reasons.”
German law, he said, “is another form of customer demand.” There also exist regulations in the European Union that force the backup of data stored in Ireland to be backed up in a European Union country. Speaking of these regulations and its existing data facility in Ireland, Selipsky said, “It’s important for redundancy and disaster recovery. There is a perception or cultural reason to keep things in Europe.”
This is not the first time that Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) has bowed to the power of nations. In December, Amazon announced that it would build a Chinese region after officials in the Middle Kingdom demanded that certain data be stored within its borders.
Not the first, won’t be the last
And according to Selipsky it wont be the last time that Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) may be forced to make a similar announcement. “Many countries have regulations to varying degrees,” he said. “[…]There will be a lot more locations, he said, in the Americas and the European, Asian and Middle Eastern markets.”
Amazon does not share its AWS numbers but Macquarie Capital estimates that Amazon will do $5.3 billion in cloud sales this year after $3.4 billion in sales last year. The firm is calling for cloud revenues of $8.1 billion in 2015. Forrester Research believes that Amazon did $3.2 last year but sees similar growth numbers to the diversifying online retail giant.
