AWS Launches Infrastructure Region in Switzerland

Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com, Inc. firm (NASDAQ: AMZN), at the moment introduced the launch of the AWS Europe (Zurich) Region. Starting at the moment, builders, startups, entrepreneurs, and enterprises, in addition to authorities, schooling, and nonprofit organizations, could have even higher alternative for operating their functions and serving finish customers from knowledge facilities positioned in Switzerland, utilizing superior AWS applied sciences to drive innovation. AWS additionally launched an financial impression research estimating that the corporate’s spending on the development and operation of the brand new Region will assist a mean of greater than 2,500 full-time jobs yearly at exterior companies in the Swiss knowledge middle provide chain, with a deliberate $5.9 billion (5.9 billion Swiss francs) funding by means of 2036. The AWS Europe (Zurich) Region may also add an estimated $16.3 billion (16.3 billion Swiss francs) to Switzerland’s gross home product (GDP) in the course of the subsequent 15 years. For extra details about AWS Global Infrastructure, go to aws.amazon.com/about-aws/global-infrastructure.

“From startups and midsized businesses to enterprises and government organizations, thousands of commercial, nonprofit, and public sector organizations across Switzerland are engaging their end users and growing globally with the support of AWS,” mentioned Prasad Kalyanaraman, vice chairman of Infrastructure Services at AWS. “With the new AWS Europe (Zurich) Region, we have seven AWS Regions and 21 Availability Zones across Europe in Frankfurt, Ireland, London, Milan, Paris, Stockholm, and now Zurich. This is a continuation of our investment to support customers of all kinds, help startups scale and grow, enable technical skills development, and help organizations create cloud-powered applications that reinvent services for end users.”

“We are delighted that AWS continues to invest in Switzerland, enabling new possibilities for businesses and citizens to leverage innovative cloud technologies,” mentioned Dieter Egli, authorities councillor and head of the Department of Economic and Interior Affairs of the canton of Aargau, Switzerland. “The opening of the new AWS infrastructure Region is a key milestone for our regional enterprises and the digital transformation agenda that will further promote and accelerate the rapid introduction of new digital solutions in our technology and engineering location in the heart of Europe.”

With the launch of the AWS Europe (Zurich) Region, AWS has 90 Availability Zones throughout 28 geographic areas, with introduced plans to launch 21 extra Availability Zones and 7 extra AWS Regions in Australia, Canada, India, Israel, New Zealand, Spain, and Thailand. AWS Regions are composed of Availability Zones that place infrastructure in separate and distinct geographic places. The AWS Europe (Zurich) Region consists of three Availability Zones and is the seventh AWS Region in Europe. Availability Zones are positioned far sufficient from one another to assist prospects’ business continuity, however close to sufficient to supply low latency for top availability functions that use a number of Availability Zones. Each Availability Zone has unbiased energy, cooling, and bodily safety and is related by means of redundant, ultra-low latency networks. AWS prospects centered on excessive availability can design their functions to run in a number of Availability Zones to realize even higher fault tolerance. The launch of the AWS Europe (Zurich) Region will allow native prospects with knowledge residency necessities to retailer knowledge securely in Switzerland, whereas offering prospects with even decrease latency throughout the nation.

AWS is planning to speculate an estimated $5.9 billion (approx. 5.9 billion Swiss francs) in Switzerland in the course of the subsequent 15 years by means of the brand new AWS Europe (Zurich) Region. This funding consists of capital expenditures on the development of knowledge facilities, operational bills associated to ongoing utilities and facility prices, and the acquisition of products and companies from regional companies. The funding can be estimated to assist a mean of greater than 2,500 jobs yearly throughout this time. These jobs, together with building, facility upkeep, engineering, telecommunications, and jobs throughout the nation’s broader economy, can be a part of the AWS provide chain in Switzerland. The building and operation of AWS infrastructure in Switzerland can be estimated so as to add $16.3 billion (approx. 16.3 billion Swiss francs) to Switzerland’s GDP in the course of the subsequent 15 years.

Customers welcome the AWS Europe (Zurich) Region

More than 10,000 prospects in Switzerland be part of hundreds of thousands of energetic prospects utilizing AWS each month in greater than 190 international locations around the globe. Large and small Swiss enterprises that use AWS to run their mission-critical workloads to drive price financial savings, speed up innovation, and velocity time to market embody Buildigo, Clariant, Crisalix, Datwyler, Dentsu Tracking, Explora Journeys, Fisch Asset Management, GSR Zug, Helvetia Group, Hexagon, Hilti, Idorsia, iNovitas, Invit Travel, iptiQ, Klarpay, Kudelski Group, lastminute.com, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, OC Oerlikon Corporation AG, Partners Group, Richemont, Ringier, Swiss Marketplace Group, Swiss Re, Swisscom, Syngenta, Ubique, u-blox, and Zurich Insurance Group. The nation’s prime startups that constructed their companies on AWS to scale quickly and increase their geographic attain in minutes embody ANYbotics, Edgelab, FemTec Health (previously AVA), flovtec, GenomSys, holo|one, RetinAI, Smallpdf, SonarSource, and Verity. Public sector organizations that use AWS to remodel the companies they ship to Swiss residents embody AI Center at Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich (ETH Zürich), BERNMOBIL, EF Education First, Radiotelevisione svizzera (RSI), Swiss Federal Office of Topography (Swisstopo), and Swiss Post.

As one of many world’s main specialty chemical firms, Clariant addresses key challenges together with vitality effectivity, renewable uncooked supplies, emission-free mobility, and conserving finite assets. From 2020 to 2022, Clariant migrated their regional knowledge facilities around the globe to AWS. “When deciding to maneuver from on-premises managed companies to the cloud, we sought an agile however cost-effective resolution to assist our business mannequin in addition to merger and acquisition actions. AWS enabled us to construct a safer infrastructure, enhance the standard and velocity of provisioning, and standardize and consolidate our service mannequin. Since migrating to AWS, we’ve reduce our world knowledge middle prices by 27% and constructed a brand new inner cloud competence staff inside solely two years,” said Ali Khosravi, head of Global Technology Operation at Clariant. “As a world firm working out of Switzerland and operating on the world’s main cloud, we welcome the launch of the brand new AWS Europe (Zurich) Region to even higher serve the wants of our business and prospects around the globe.”

iNovitas, a number one Swiss supplier of cloud-based picture companies, delivers a high-resolution, geo-referenced 3D panoramic picture surroundings (3D road pictures) to simplify infrastructure upkeep and administration. “We chose AWS as our preferred cloud provider at a very early stage as it provided the highest reliability, flexibility, and scalability required to develop and run our services,” mentioned Joel Burkhard, chief know-how officer at iNovitas. “Since starting the business in 2011, we have relied on AWS services such as Amazon S3 and Amazon EC2 to build and scale our cloud-built business and digitize more than 77,000 kilometers of streets, 11,000 kilometers of rail tracks, and 200 kilometers of river banks across Switzerland, Germany, Austria, and Sweden, resulting in the processing and storing of more than 2.6 petabytes of image data. For a small enterprise with limited technology resources like ours, the benefits of AWS are compelling. Using AWS allows us to innovate quickly and access machine learning technologies such as Amazon Rekognition for image and video analysis that would otherwise be unavailable to us or too costly. The new AWS Region opens up new opportunities for us to serve more customers, especially those who prefer to keep their data stored in Switzerland.”

Global luxurious group Richemont—proprietor of the Cartier, Montblanc, IWC Schaffhausen, and Van Cleef & Arpels manufacturers—moved its whole enterprise data know-how (IT) infrastructure, together with 120 SAP cases, to AWS, its most popular cloud supplier. “AWS, with its depth and breadth of services, enables us to provide our customers with new digital experiences faster, including personalized storefronts and styling services, video chat consultations featuring fashion shows customized to the shoppers’ tastes, and tailored offers for early access to new items before they hit stores,” mentioned Kim Hartlev, group chief data officer at Richemont. “We are delighted that AWS has brought a new infrastructure Region to our home market in Switzerland because it will be a major booster for scaling, curating, and further personalizing the shopping experiences for our customers.”

Swisscom, a number one telecom firm in Switzerland, chosen AWS as its most popular cloud supplier to speed up its digital transformation technique and assist its transfer towards a built-for-the cloud 5G community. Swisscom can be an AWS Partner with deep technical and business experience, serving to Swiss firms transfer to the cloud and undertake superior applied sciences. “Our customers have always relied on Swisscom to connect them to the world using the best technology available,” mentioned Frank Dederichs, chief know-how data officer at Swisscom. “We have enjoyed a successful relationship with AWS for several years, not only as a cloud and technology provider, but also as a trusted and inspiring partner, delivering top-grade cloud services to our business customers. The opening of the new AWS Europe (Zurich) Region with the same high levels of data protection, user privacy, and regulatory compliance as their other Regions around the world is great news for us and to all tech companies in Switzerland.”

Swisstopo, Switzerland’s federal mapping company, adopted AWS in 2010 to empower its digital geographic data system and companies for over 80,000 every day customers throughout the nation. “Thanks to automatic provisioning, we were able to scale horizontally on demand and achieved a decrease in the setup time for hardware from 10 weeks to under one hour,” mentioned Hanspeter Christ, head of GeoIT at Swisstopo. “The new AWS Region will open up new possibilities to provide users with even faster access to our services and best-in-class experiences with the additional choice to host data in Switzerland.”

Founded in 2014, deep-tech startup Verity supplies an automatic stock administration system powered by self-flying drones, which units a brand new normal for big-box retailers, third-party logistics suppliers, and producers. “Our system uses drones to collect and process accurate inventory data at the edge—up to 10 gigabytes per flight per drone—and uses AWS to transfer data to the cloud,” mentioned Raffaello D’Andrea, founding father of Verity. “With the ability to identify discrepancies between data stored in a customer’s warehouse management system and where inventory actually is or isn’t in the warehouse, customers gain valuable insights that enable greater operational efficiencies and help cut labor and equipment costs, eliminate errors and disruptions, and reduce waste and CO2 emissions. AWS’s powerful APIs and managed services have helped us take our business to the next level and scale fast. Using AWS’s technology services, Verity is making the zero-error warehouse a reality for our clients.”

Switzerland-based AWS Partners additionally welcome the AWS Europe (Zurich) Region

The AWS Partner Network (APN) consists of tens of hundreds of unbiased software program distributors (ISVs) and programs integrators (SIs) around the globe. AWS Partners construct modern options and companies on AWS, and the APN helps by offering business, technical, advertising and marketing, and go-to-market assist to prospects. AWS SIs, consulting companions, and ISVs assist enterprise and public sector prospects migrate to AWS, deploy mission-critical functions, and supply a full vary of monitoring, automation, and administration companies for patrons’ cloud environments. Examples of Switzerland-based AWS Partners embody 1plusX (a TripleLift Company), Amanox Solutions, amazee.io, Appway, Avaloq, Beekeeper, BSI, copebit, crealogix, dbi companies, ELCA Cloud Services SA, Finnova, Ingram Micro, Nexthink, Secutix, SmartWave, SoftwareONE, Swisscom, TD SYNNEX, Trivadis, WebGate Consulting, and Zühlke Technology Group. For the complete listing of AWS Partners, go to aws.amazon.com/companions.

ELCA Cloud Services SA, referred to as ELCA, focuses on cloud and office managed companies and is a part of the ELCA Group, one of many largest unbiased Swiss full-service IT suppliers. “The opening of the new AWS Region is a pivotal moment in the acceleration of transformation and innovation for Swiss companies, particularly those in highly regulated industries such as financial services, health care, and government. It is key for ELCA to be able to benefit from AWS’s cloud portfolio in Switzerland to help us best serve our customers’ needs,” mentioned Maxime Claux, vice chairman at ELCA. “The new AWS Region will unleash the full potential of the cloud for Swiss public sector organizations, midsize businesses, and enterprises. It will enable them to securely deploy applications, increase efficiencies, improve performance, and meet data residency requirements. AWS’s continued investment will also help ELCA to expand our business and train local cloud professionals to further support Switzerland’s digital transformation efforts.”

SoftwareONE is a world chief in software program and cloud portfolio administration with greater than 9,000 know-how consultants in greater than 90 international locations offering end-to-end software program and cloud know-how options. “Like AWS, SoftwareONE has been a pioneer in shaping the way customers deploy technology and innovate around the world. We are proud to work closely with AWS to help our customers strengthen their reliability, flexibility, scalability, security, and compliance in the cloud,” mentioned Reinhard Waldinger, president at SoftwareONE EMEA. “As a global company headquartered in Switzerland, we welcome the continued growth and investment AWS is making in the region as it demonstrates how important Switzerland is in the global technology space. We look forward to empowering our customers with the scale and agility of AWS Cloud to further thrive and grow while improving security and cloud skills.”

AWS funding in Switzerland

Swiss firms have been among the many earliest adopters of cloud companies in Europe, and because the variety of Swiss prospects has grown, so has the dimensions of AWS’s presence in the nation. The new AWS Europe (Zurich) Region is the newest in AWS’s ongoing funding in Switzerland. In order to assist its quickly rising buyer base throughout the nation, AWS opened two places of work in Switzerland, Zurich (2016) and Geneva (2017), and created new jobs, together with technical consultants, options architects, technical account managers, accomplice managers, programs engineers, {and professional} companies consultants.

AWS established Points of Presence in Zurich (2017 and 2019), connecting Switzerland to the AWS community spine and providing prospects entry to AWS companies like Amazon CloudEntrance and AWS Direct Connect, amongst others. Amazon CloudEntrance is a extremely safe and programmable content material supply community that accelerates the supply of knowledge, movies, functions, and software programming interfaces (APIs) to customers worldwide with low latency and excessive switch speeds. AWS Direct Connect permits prospects to determine personal connectivity between AWS and their knowledge middle, workplace, or colocation surroundings. This can scale back community prices, improve bandwidth throughput, and supply a extra constant community expertise.

In December 2019, AWS launched AWS Outposts in Switzerland. AWS Outposts affords prospects and companions in Switzerland entry to the identical AWS infrastructure companies, APIs, and instruments in just about any knowledge middle, colocation house, or on-premises facility for a very constant hybrid expertise. AWS Outposts permits prospects and companions to run key AWS companies in their very own knowledge facilities whereas connecting to a broad vary of AWS world infrastructure companies.

AWS continues to speculate in the upskilling of native builders, college students, and the subsequent era of IT leaders in Switzerland by means of applications like AWS re/Start, AWS Academy, and AWS Educate. These applications assist learners of all backgrounds and experiences put together for careers in the cloud. From larger schooling programs to full-time coaching applications and self-paced studying content material, AWS education schemes provide entry to the abilities wanted to start or develop a cloud profession. Several universities in Switzerland, together with Fachhochschule Luzern, Fachhochschule Nordwestschweiz (FHNW), and Technische Berufsschule Zürich, have delivered AWS Academy programs as a part of their curriculum. To date, 32 Swiss establishments participated in the AWS Academy program, and 16 provided courses in 2022.

As a part of its AWS re/Start program, AWS collaborates with Swiss academic and coaching suppliers like Powerhouse Lausanne and Powercoders on applications focused to unemployed and underemployed people. The applications put together people with no technical expertise for careers in the cloud and join them to potential employers.

AWS has partnered with the ICT Berufsbildung Schweiz affiliation for a number of years to ship vocational schooling and coaching to Swiss employees. In 2020, AWS supported the affiliation in its efforts to remodel the nationwide IT curriculum by serving to develop new cloud modules which have been taught to each Swiss IT apprentice (3,000 per yr) since 2021.

To proceed fostering entrepreneurship in Switzerland, AWS affords startups and small companies assist by means of the AWS Activate program. This program supplies entry to steerage, one-on-one time with AWS consultants, web-based coaching, self-paced labs, buyer assist, third-party affords, and a chance to entry as much as $100,000 in AWS service credit—all at no cost. AWS additionally works with enterprise capital buyers, startup accelerators, and incubators to assist startups develop in the cloud. In Switzerland, this consists of fostering entrepreneurs such because the Swiss Startup Association and Swisspreneur, in addition to enterprise capital corporations like btov, F10, Redalpine, Verve Ventures, and Wingman Ventures to assist the speedy development of their portfolio firms.

Commitment to sustainability

Amazon is dedicated to turning into a extra sustainable business and reaching net-zero carbon throughout its operations by 2040, 10 years forward of the Paris Agreement, as a part of The Climate Pledge. Amazon co-founded The Climate Pledge and have become its first signatory in 2019. As a part of its Climate Pledge dedication, Amazon is on a path to energy its operations with 100% renewable vitality by 2025, 5 years forward of the unique 2030 goal. Amazon is the world’s largest company purchaser of renewable vitality, and as of the top of 2021, the corporate reached 85% renewable vitality throughout its business. See Amazon’s public methodology for extra on its strategy. Organizations that transfer compute workloads to AWS can profit from the online impact of Amazon’s sustainability efforts to cut back their carbon footprint. Compared to the computing assets of the common European firm, AWS infrastructure is as much as 5 instances extra vitality environment friendly.

About Amazon Web Services

For over 15 years, Amazon Web Services has been the world’s most complete and broadly adopted cloud providing. AWS has been frequently increasing its companies to assist just about any cloud workload, and it now has greater than 200 totally featured companies for compute, storage, databases, networking, analytics, machine studying and synthetic intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), cellular, safety, hybrid, digital and augmented actuality (VR and AR), media, and software improvement, deployment, and administration from 90 Availability Zones inside 28 geographic areas, with introduced plans for 21 extra Availability Zones and 7 extra AWS Regions in Australia, Canada, India, Israel, New Zealand, Spain, and Thailand. Millions of shoppers—together with the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises, and main authorities companies—belief AWS to energy their infrastructure, change into extra agile, and decrease prices. To study extra about AWS, go to aws.amazon.com.

About Amazon

Amazon is guided by 4 ideas: buyer obsession relatively than competitor focus, ardour for invention, dedication to operational excellence, and long-term considering. Amazon strives to be Earth’s Most Customer-Centric Company, Earth’s Best Employer, and Earth’s Safest Place to Work. Customer opinions, 1-Click buying, customized suggestions, Prime, Fulfillment by Amazon, AWS, Kindle Direct Publishing, Kindle, Career Choice, Fire tablets, Fire TV, Amazon Echo, Alexa, Just Walk Out know-how, Amazon Studios, and The Climate Pledge are a number of the issues pioneered by Amazon. For extra data, go to amazon.com/about and comply with @AmazonNews.

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