Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced that it will launch an AWS infrastructure Region in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) in 2026. The new AWS Region aims to provide developers, start-ups, entrepreneurs, and enterprises, as well as healthcare, education, gaming, and non-profit organizations, with greater choice for running their applications and serving end users from data centers located in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. This will ensure that customers who want to keep their content in-country can do so.
As part of its long-term commitment, AWS is planning to invest more than US$ 5.3 Billion in the Middle Eastern nation. In a press release, the company said, “The new AWS Region will consist of three Availability Zones at launch, adding to the existing 105 Availability Zones across 33 geographic regions globally.”
“Today’s announcement supports the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s digital transformation with the highest levels of security and resilience available on AWS cloud infrastructure, helping serve fast-growing demand for cloud services across the Middle East,” said Prasad Kalyanaraman, vice president of Infrastructure Services at AWS, adding, “The new AWS Region will enable organizations to unlock the full potential of the cloud and build with AWS technologies like compute, storage, databases, analytics, and artificial intelligence, transforming the way businesses and institutions serve their customers.”
“The partnership with AWS and their announcement of an AWS Region, backed by a $5.3 billion investment, ignites a new era of technological excellence and innovation for the Kingdom,” said His Excellency Engineer Abdullah Alswaha, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Minister of Communications and Information Technology.
New AWS Regions and Availability Zones
With this new announcement, AWS has plans to launch 18 more Availability Zones and six more AWS Regions in Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Thailand, and the AWS European Sovereign Cloud. AWS Regions consist of Availability Zones that place infrastructure in separate and distinct geographic locations.
AWS says that the Availability Zones are located far enough from each other to support customers’ business continuity, but near enough to provide low latency for high availability applications that use multiple Availability Zones. Each Availability Zone has independent power, cooling, and physical security and is connected through redundant, ultra-low-latency networks.
AWS offers a portfolio of services, including analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), compute, database, Internet of Things (IoT), machine learning (ML), mobile services, storage, and other cloud technologies.
Amazon’s Inclusion and Upskilling Initiatives
The company further said that to support the growth in cloud adoption across KSA, it will continue to scale its training programs and help accelerate the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 goal of empowering women to increase participation in the workforce. To help support this goal, AWS is launching a new upskilling program, “AWS Saudi Arabia Women’s Skills Initiative,” in partnership with Skillsoft Global Knowledge. AWS will train up to 4,000 women on AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials, at no charge, through classroom trainings with AWS-certified professionals. This initiative is designed to help women jumpstart a career in cloud computing.
In addition, AWS will continue to invest in upskilling students, local developers and technical professionals, nontechnical professionals, and others through offerings such as AWS Academy, AWS Educate, AWS re/Start, and AWS Skill Builder.
AWS will establish two new innovation centers and provide startups in the Middle East and North Africa with technical mentorship and trainings on AWS technologies such as AI and ML. AWS will also make grants available to fund graduate student research and provide free AWS Skill Builder subscriptions for up to 4,000 individuals working for small and medium enterprises established in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. AWS Skill Builder is a digital learning center with more than 600 free courses in up to 14 languages, and covering more than 30 AWS services from foundational to advanced levels.
