AWS has announced the availability of its Amazon Q Business platform in Europe in a move sure to please sovereignty-conscious customers.
The tool, which can be used by staff to find internal data sources more efficiently, will now be available in AWS’ Ireland region in the city of Dublin.
Until now the tool has only been available to AWS customers in the US, and the director of worldwide go-to-market for Amazon Q, David Pessis, said there’s been a lot of pent-up demand for the product in Europe.
“Our European customers have been begging us to launch in Europe, so Dublin will be, hopefully, our first of many data centers in Europe to serve our European customers and we’re pretty excited,” Pessis told ITPro.
Central to this demand is a customer’s sense of safety with AWS, Pessis said, as many have been with the firm for a long time and trust the safety and security policies that are in place.
There’s also the data residency aspect, he added. This version of Amazon Q Business will run, store, and process all of its data within the region, thereby improving regulatory compliance and latency.
Pessis said it was important to provide sovereignty capabilities to its European customers. He noted that many of these customers prefer to access support in-region and benefit from improved performance.
“Even if it wasn’t a legal issue they want to keep it in Europe, because if they start moving into other data centers, right, that’s expensive,” Pessis said.
“It’s a win across all those three dimensions – bringing Q business where their data is, data sovereignty, and performance,” he added.
Europe is a key focal point for AWS and an area in which the firm is planning to “aggressively” expand and continue investing, Pessis revealed.
“I can’t get dates, but I can just say that it’s a top priority for us,” Pessis said.
Data sovereignty is a hot topic
Firms are becoming increasingly receptive to customer demands for sovereign services or platforms that ensure data residency in regions, particularly in Europe.
In May 2024, for example, AWS announced a €7.8 billion investment into ‘AWS European Sovereign Cloud’ to establish sovereign cloud infrastructure in the German region of Brandenburg.
Oracle has also been bullish on sovereignty offerings, with one of the firm’s execs telling ITPro that demand for the service is “truly global” in September 2024 following Oracle’s establishment of a sovereign cloud region in Europe back in 2023.
Research from earlier this year found that data sovereignty is a growing priority for customers in the UK, with 51% of UK organizations describing it as a crucial aspect of their data management strategy.
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