New AWS Region expands cloud pioneer’s global footprint, enabling customers to innovate faster and run workloads from data centers located in the Middle East

Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com company (NASDAQ:AMZN), announced the opening of the AWS Middle East (Bahrain) Region. With this launch, AWS now spans 69 Availability Zones within 22 geographic regions around the world, and has announced plans for nine more Availability Zones across three more AWS Regions in Indonesia, Italy, and South Africa.

Starting today, developers, startups, and enterprises, as well as government, education, and non-profit organizations can run their applications and serve end-users from data centers located in the Middle East, as well as leverage advanced technologies from the world’s leading cloud, to drive innovation. Customers can get started today from here.

“The cloud has the chance to unlock digital transformation in the Middle East.”, said Andy Jassy, CEO, Amazon Web Services. “Today, we are launching advanced and secure technology infrastructure that matches the scale of our other AWS Regions around the world and are already seeing strong demand in the Middle East for AWS technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning, data analytics, IoT, and much more.

We are excited to see how our cloud technology will provide new ways for governments to better engage with citizens, for enterprises to innovate for their next phase of growth, and for entrepreneurs to build businesses and compete on a global scale.”

Customers and APN Partners welcome the new AWS Middle East (Bahrain) Region Millions of active customers are using AWS each month in over 190 countries around the world, including tens of thousands of customers in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).

Startups like Alef Education, Almentor, Altibbi, Anghami, Bayt.com, BitOasis, Babil Games, Bey2ollak, Boutiqaat, Careem, Classera, Clicksco, Crowd Analyzer, Dubizzle, EKar, Elephantsocial, Fetchr, Fish.me, Haraj, Health at Hand, Jeeny, Little Thinking Minds, Maestro Pizza, Mawdoo3.com, Mrsool, Naseej, Ngwa, Opensooq, Property Finder, Sarwa, Souqalmal, StarzPlay, Tajawal, ToDoorStep, Ureed, Vezeeta, and Yallacompare are building their businesses on top of AWS, enabling them to scale rapidly and expand around the world.

Enterprises across the region are moving to AWS to become more agile and innovative, and include Al Jouf Cement, Al Tayer Group, Arab Banking Corporation (Bank ABC), Aramex, Bahrain Bourse, Bank Al-Etihad, Batelco, Emirates NBD, Flydubai, Gulf News, Hassan Allam, Lulu International Exchange, MBC Group, OSN, Seera Group, Union Insurance, Virgin Middle East, and many more.

Public sector organizations, including Government of Bahrain’s Ministries, such as the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Information Affairs, Ministry of Labor and Social Development, and Bahrain iGA, as well as other public sector organizations such as Bahrain Polytechnic, Communications and Information Technology Regulatory Authority of Kuwait (CITRA), Mumtalakat, Paris Sorbonne AD, Tamkeen, University of Bahrain, and many more, are also using AWS to drive cost savings, accelerate innovation, and better serve the citizens of the region.

The most well-known and fastest-growing businesses in the Middle East are also choosing AWS to launch and grow. Careem, the leading technology platform for the region, started working with Amazon Web Services in 2012 to help it scale fast and wide across 14 countries in under seven years.

Today, Careem hosts 33 million customers and one million drivers on its platform and has expanded its services to offer on-demand deliveries as well as its original core business, ride-hailing.

Magnus Olsson, Chief Experience Officer and Co-founder of Careem said: “When we started building Careem, we knew that the ability to scale fast, and in a secure and reliable way, would be critical to our long term success. As one of AWS’s early adopters in the region, we have grown with them.

Thanks to AWS, we have been able to focus our efforts on geographical and new vertical expansion and to innovate new technologies and services. With the opening of the new AWS Middle East Region, we will now be able to benefit from data centers with lower latency in the region.

AWS’s commitment to our region shows the enormous potential of the local technology scene and will be instrumental to the success of the new wave of startups to come. We look forward to having them as a strong contributor to the Middle East tech ecosystem.”

Investing in the future of the Middle East The new Amazon Web Services Middle East (Bahrain) Region adds to the infrastructure investments AWS has been making across the Middle East, to provide customers with advanced and secure cloud technologies.

Today, Amazon Web Services is also launching a new AWS Direct Connect location in Bahrain, which is the first to be operated by AWS, joining the two AWS Direct Connect locations and two Amazon CloudFront Edge locations in the UAE that launched in 2018.

AWS Direct Connect makes it easy for customers to establish a dedicated private network connection between AWS and their data center, office, or colocation environment. Amazon CloudFront gives customers an improved experience for their end-users, including faster content delivery and added cybersecurity protection.

To support the growth in cloud adoption across the region, Amazon Web Services has made significant investments in education, 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 Middle East organizations in their digital transformation.

AWS offers instructor-led training programs for customers and partners, as well as general public training events such as AWS Summits, AWSome Days, Immersion Days, and Game Days as well as over 500 free online training courses. To help drive diversity in the tech industry, AWS has also extended its global ‘We Power Tech’ program to the region, providing events and free training courses to support technology skills development for women in the Middle East.

Growing Entrepreneurship in the Middle East

To help grow the next generation of businesses in the Middle East, Amazon Web Services is supporting startups across the region through the AWS Activate Program. Working with accelerators, angel investors, incubators, government organizations, and Venture Capital firms, Amazon Web Services Activate provides resources to help startups launch their businesses on AWS and go global in minutes.

Across the Middle East, AWS has been working with organizations such as 500 startups, Area 2071 in Abu Dhabi, BADIR in Saudi Arabia, BECO Capital, EDB in Bahrain, Flat6Labs, Hive, MEVP, Oasis500, Seed Stars, Startupbootcamp, Techstars, and many more, providing startups with AWS credits, in-person technical support, AWS trainings, and go-to-market help.

Developers and businesses can access the AWS Middle East (Bahrain) Region beginning today. A full list of services and details on pricing is available here.