The Middle East is increasingly becoming a key focus area for cloud providers. A spate of recent developments point to this trend. Amazon Web Services (AWS) has added the United Arab Emirates as a Region. Similarly, Microsoft added Qatar as a Region.
The second region in the Middle East that Amazon has recently announced is in the United Arab Emirates. In Qatar, where Google also intends to create a new location, Microsoft just inaugurated its first global datacenter region.
The official name of the new AWS region is Middle East (UAE) and the API name is me-central-1. The launch increases the AWS global infrastructure to 87 availability zones across 27 regions. AWS opened a region in Bahrain in 2019 and has since expanded its presence in the Middle East, with a region in Israel expected in the first half of 2023.
According to Marica Villalba senior developer advocate at AWS,
In addition to the two Regions—Bahrain and UAE—the Middle East has two AWS Direct Connect locations, allowing customers to establish private connectivity between AWS and their data centers and offices, as well as two Amazon Cloud Front edge locations, one in Dubai and another in Fujairah. The UAE Region also offers low-latency connections to other AWS Regions in the area.
Lana Khalfa country manager at Microsoft, said:
This data center has the largest number of cloud services since the history of Microsoft. It helps companies in major industries to accelerate their digital transformation and innovate from Qatar to the world . The data center will contribute to Qatar National Vision 2030.
AWS is not the only cloud provider expanding their datacenters in the Middle East. In collaboration with the Qatari Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Microsoft announced the launch of its new datacenter region in Qatar. Microsoft is the first major cloud provider to open in Qatar, supporting Microsoft Azure services and Microsoft 365. Available with three zones, the new region is based in Doha and available to all customers and partners.
