The Bahrain government inked a deal with the gargantuan on-line seller Amazon to build three giant data centers by the year 2019.
The deal is with a subsidiary of Amazon, Amazon Web Services (AWB), which chose Bahrain to be the location of its first ever Middle East-located data centers.
Amazon’s plan is to open a number of “availability zones,” in which the company will place at least three data centers. Currently the company has divided the world into 16 “infrastructure regions.” Those are in turn divided into 44 availability zones. Bahrain will be the 22nd infrastructure region, after 5 other global launches of infrastructure regions are in place. This one will be the first in the Middle East.
AWS is a provider of cloud computing services to clients across the world. It has already partnered with other companies in the region, including FlyDubai, Dubizzle, Fetchr, MBC broadcasting, PayFort and Careem.
CEO of AWS, Andy Jassy said: “As countries in the Middle East look to transform their economies for generations to come, technology will play a major role, and the cloud will be in the middle of that transformation.”