With the announcement of the “Project Nimbus” - Israeli government contract for cloud services - tender winners, it was only a matter of time until Amazon joined the ranks of Oracle, Microsoft, and Google. The American eCommerce and tech giant officially announced its plans to build a data center on Israeli soil, providing access to its AWS services.
The plan: H1 2023
AWS, Amazon’s cloud division, announced its Israeli server farm will be up and running by the first half of 2023. The cloud region comprises Availability Zones, which place infrastructure in separate and distinct geographic locations. This is done to provide enough distance to significantly reduce the risk of a single event impacting customers’ business continuity, yet near enough to provide low latency for high availability applications that leverage multiple Availability Zones. According to Amazon, the Israeli cloud region will enable local customers to store their data safely and in accordance with national security regulations.
Currently, AWS operates 81 Availability Zones over 25 different geographical regions, and intends on launching an additional 25 Availability Zones and 7 cloud regions - in Australia, India, Indonesia, Spain, Switzerland, UAE, and as mentioned, Israel.
Not just for government
It’s still unknown if Amazon had already planned on establishing a data-center in Israel, but the “Project Nimbus” demand certainly accelerated the decision. The new data-center will also serve Israel’s startup and technology spheres, including examples such as AppsFlyer, Amdocs, Gett, Fiverr, monday.com, Wix, and Nice.
Peter DeSantis, Senior Vice President of Global Infrastructure at AWS, says: “The new region is a continuation of our investment to support enterprises of all kinds, help startups scale and grow, enable technical skills development, and create cloud literacy. Cloud technology is at the heart of the Israeli government’s digital transformation program, and their approach highlights the importance of setting a strong course for cloud adoption and leading by example to re-invent citizen services.”
With Nimbus or without, all of the major cloud providers have announced their plans to establish data-centers in Israel. Based on the reports, the first one to open its Israeli cloud will be Oracle, which is planned for the upcoming months; Microsoft comes next in 2022, with the two “Project Nimbus” winners following - Google has yet to announce a date for its data-center.
