AWS pledges to invest £1.8bn in building out its UK datacentre footprint over next two years

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is to invest more than £1.8bn over the next two years in building out its UK datacentre presence, as demand for its public cloud services continues to grow.

The cloud giant said this commitment meant it was on course to more than double the total investment it has made in the UK to date, since opening its first datacentre region in London in December 2016.

During the intervening years, its presence in the UK has enabled AWS to secure a number of high-profile and lucrative deals with central government departments, as well as private sector organisations in the healthcare, pharmaceutical and financial services sectors.

The additional investment will benefit existing customers, the company said, while also enabling it to do its bit to strengthen the UK’s digital infrastructure.

“Over the last five years, we have been committed to investing in the UK to create the conditions for organisations in all industries to become global leaders in their use of technology,” AWS said in a statement.

Since its UK-centric region went live, the firm has invested in further datacentre capacity, adding a third availability zone to the London region in 2018.

“We’ve also established edge locations across the UK, which are connected to the [main] AWS region through the AWS network backbone, providing secure, reliable, low-latency and high-throughput network connectivity to organisations across the country,” the company statement said.

It went on to list the investments the firm has made in recent years in skills initiatives, job creation and in measures designed to support its transition to using renewable sources of energy to power its operations.

“We’re not done investing in the UK,” the statement continued. “As a whole, Amazon has made direct investments in our UK operations of more than £32bn since 2010.”

“The UK remains full of opportunity and we continue to be excited by the potential to continue supporting our customers, partners and citizens across the UK over the years to come”