AWS to Open Data Centers in Switzerland
SEATTLE, Nov. 2, 2020 -- Amazon Web Services (AWS), an Amazon.com company, today announced it will open an infrastructure region in Switzerland in the second half of 2022. The AWS Europe (Zurich) Region will comprise three Availability Zones and join existing regions in France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Sweden, and the UK. Currently, AWS provides 77 Availability Zones across 24 geographic regions globally, with announced plans for 12 more Availability Zones and four more AWS Regions in Switzerland, Indonesia, Japan, and Spain. The new AWS Europe (Zurich) Region will enable even more developers, startups, and enterprises as well as government, education, and non-profit organizations to run their applications and serve end users from data centers located in Switzerland. For more information, visit: https://aws.amazon.com/local/switzerland.
"For more than 14 years, AWS has supported organizations across almost every industry in Switzerland to speed up innovation, lower their IT costs, and transform their operations,” said Peter DeSantis, Senior Vice President of Global Infrastructure and Customer Support, Amazon Web Services, Inc. “AWS is excited to announce our upcoming region in Switzerland and help Swiss institutions, innovative startups, and world-leading pharma companies deliver cloud-powered applications to fuel economic development across the country.”
AWS Regions consist of Availability Zones, which are technology infrastructure in separate and distinct geographic locations with 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. Each Availability Zone has independent power, cooling, and 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. The addition of the AWS Europe (Zurich) Region will enable local customers with data residency requirements to store their data in Switzerland, with the assurance that they retain control over the location of their data, while also providing even lower latency across the country. Organizations using this region will also be able to access advanced technologies from the world’s leading cloud with the broadest and deepest suite of cloud services including analytics, artificial intelligence, compute, database, Internet of Things (IoT), machine learning, mobile services, serverless technologies, storage, and more to drive innovation.
Customers and AWS Partners welcome the news of the AWS Europe (Zurich) Region
Millions of active customers are using AWS each month in over 190 countries around the world. Organizations moving their mission-critical workloads to AWS to drive cost savings, accelerate innovation, and speed time-to-market include Swiss enterprises such as adfocus, AFO Marketing, Appway, COFCO International, Crisalix, Crowdhouse, DFRC (Data Fusion Research Center), Datwyler IT Services, Dentsu Tracking, DroneAnalytics, EF Education First, Endress+Hauser, enersis, Finnova, Fisch Asset Management, GSR Zug, Hexagon Leica Geosystems, Helvetia, Hilti, IATA (International Air Transport Association), Idorsia, Isobar, iptiQ, Kempinski, Kudelski Group, Menu.app, Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ), Novartis, Richemont, Ringier, SCOTT Sports, Swiss Re, and TX Group. Hot startups such as 1plusX, Advanon, Archilogic, Ava, Beekeeper, Billte, Bring!, ChemAlive, Coople, flovtec, Frontify, Genedata, KNIME, Medical Informatics, Medisanté, Meteomatics, Modum, Numbrs, Onedot, OTO, Pix4D, QoQa, SecuTix, Sitasys, Smallpdf, Smartfrog, and Uepaa have built their businesses on top of AWS, enabling them to scale rapidly and expand their geographic reach in minutes. In the Swiss public sector, organizations using AWS to transform the services they deliver to the citizens of the country include Computer Vision Lab (CVL) at Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich (ETH Zürich), Swiss Broadcasting Corporation (RSI), Swiss Federal Railways (SBB), Swiss Post, the Swiss Federal Office of Topography (swisstopo), and more.
Based in Zurich, Ringier is the largest multi-national media company in Switzerland operating over 100 media brands in 19 countries. Since adopting AWS, Ringier has increased user engagement by 24 percent while tailoring content distribution, digital advertising, and marketplace strategy to their customer’s needs. “A great reader experience is at the core of a successful media business model,” said Zhao Wang, Head of Data Technology for Ringier. “Using AWS services, especially managed services with analytics and machine learning, we can better understand our readers’ interests, improve content production, and optimize content distribution for Blick as well as many other renowned media brands – all tailored to our customers’ needs. The planned opening of an AWS Region in Switzerland is great news for us as it reflects AWS’s dedication to Switzerland.”
Swiss-based AWS Partner Network (APN) Partners also welcome the news of the AWS Europe (Zurich) Region. The APN includes tens of thousands of Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) and Systems Integrators (SIs) around the world. AWS Partners build innovative solutions and services on AWS, and the APN helps by providing business, technical, marketing, and go-to-market support. APN SIs, consulting partners, and ISVs working in Switzerland such as 56k.Cloud, Amanox Solutions, copebit, COREXPERT by TeamWork, dbi services, ELCA Informatique SA, Innovation Process Technology AG (ipt), isobar technologies Switzerland, Netcloud, One Step Beyond Group, SmartWave, Swisscom, ti&m, Trivadis, and Zühlke Technology Group help enterprise and public sector customers migrate to AWS, deploy mission-critical applications, and provide a full range of monitoring, automation, and management services for customers' AWS environments.
One AWS Partner using AWS to move Swiss enterprise businesses to the cloud is Swisscom, Switzerland’s leading telecommunications company and one of its leading IT companies. Swisscom partners with AWS to provide customers such as SeedImpulse, a provider of orthopedic and medical software, with deep technical and industry expertise, helping them to adopt advanced technologies such as blockchain, IoT, machine learning, and more while reducing their IT costs by 75 percent. Urs Lehner, Head of Swisscom Business Customers, said of the new AWS Region, “AWS has a broad and deep portfolio of cloud services and a large network of experts. Learning that AWS is bringing a new region to Switzerland is good news for us and our joint customers.”
Investing in Switzerland’s Future
The new AWS Europe (Zurich) Region continues AWS’s investment in Switzerland. As the number of Swiss customers has grown, so has the size of AWS’s presence in the country. In April 2016, AWS opened its first Swiss office in Zurich, which was followed by a second office in Geneva in December 2017. In March 2017, AWS established two Points of Presence (PoPs) in Zurich, which deliver Amazon CloudFront, Amazon Route 53, AWS Shield, AWS WAF, and Lambda@Edge as well as Amazon Direct Connect to the country. AWS also continues to build teams of account managers, technical account managers, partner managers, systems engineers, solutions architects, professional services, and more roles to help customers of all sizes move to AWS.
For Swiss students and educators, the AWS Educate and AWS Academy programs are providing free resources to accelerate cloud-related learning and preparing today’s students in Switzerland for the jobs of the future. Dozens of Swiss universities and business schools already participating in the AWS Educate program include Bern University of Applied Sciences (BFH), Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich (ETH Zürich), HES-SO Valais-Wallis (HES-SO), Hochschule für Technik Rapperswil (HSR), University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland (FHNW), University of Applied Sciences and Arts South Switzerland (SUPSI), University of Basel, and Università della Svizzera Italiana (USI). Major institutions taking part in AWS Academy include University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland (FHNW), University of Applied Sciences OST, and International University of Geneva. AWS also offers a full range of training and certification programs to help those interested in the latest cloud computing technologies, best practices, and architectures to advance their technical skills and further support Swiss organizations in their digital transformation.
To help grow the next generation of Swiss enterprises, AWS supports startups in cities across Switzerland and launched AWS Activate in 2013. This program gives startups access to guidance and one-on-one time with AWS experts as well as web-based training, self-paced labs, customer support, third-party offers, and up to $100,000 in AWS service credits – all at no charge. This is in addition to the work that AWS already does with the venture capital community, startup accelerators, and incubators to help startups grow in the cloud. In Switzerland, AWS works with accelerator organizations such as F10, A&I Kickstartaccelerator, TrustSquare, and Masschallenge as well as venture capital firms like CV VC, investiere, Venturelab, and Redalpine in order to support the rapid growth of their portfolio companies.
About Amazon Web Services
For 14 years, Amazon Web Services has been the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform. AWS offers over 175 fully featured services for compute, storage, databases, networking, analytics, robotics, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), mobile, security, hybrid, virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR), media, and application development, deployment, and management from 77 Availability Zones (AZs) within 24 geographic regions, with announced plans for 12 more Availability Zones and four more AWS Regions in Indonesia, Japan, Spain and Switzerland. Millions of customers—including the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises, and leading government agencies—trust AWS to power their infrastructure, become more agile, and lower costs. To learn more about AWS, visit aws.amazon.com.
About Amazon
Amazon is guided by four principles: customer obsession rather than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence, and long-term thinking. Customer reviews, 1-Click shopping, personalized recommendations, Prime, Fulfillment by Amazon, AWS, Kindle Direct Publishing, Kindle, Fire tablets, Fire TV, Amazon Echo, and Alexa are some of the products and services pioneered by Amazon. For more information, visit amazon.com/about.
Source: Amazon
