Amazon Web Services Inc. today previewed the AWS European Sovereign Cloud, an upcoming network of data centers that will be used by government agencies and highly regulated enterprises in the European Union.

The data centers in question will operate separately from the eight cloud regions AWS already operates within the bloc. According to the Amazon.com Inc. unit, the European Sovereign Cloud will be operated by EU-resident employees. Existing AWS customers will have to open new cloud accounts to use the infrastructure.

“For more than a decade, we’ve worked with governments and regulatory bodies across Europe to understand and meet evolving needs in cybersecurity, data privacy and localization, and more recently, digital sovereignty,” said Max Peterson, the vice president of sovereign cloud at AWS. “With this new offering, customers and partners across Europe will have more choice to achieve the operational independence they require.”

Government agencies and companies in certain highly regulated industries, such as the financial sector, are subject to stringent data management rules. Those rules often require organizations to keep their information in the jurisdictions where it was generated. There are also more granular, technical requirements that regulate how data should be stored and who may access it.

AWS’ European Sovereign Cloud is designed to help organizations more easily comply with EU data regulations. According to the cloud giant, the platform will allow customers to keep all their metadata within the bloc. This metadata consists of technical information about customers’ cloud environments.

Account information such as billing details won’t be managed the same way. Such data will be “aggregated and used to ensure that you get favorable pricing within any applicable volume usage tiers,” AWS Chief Evangelist Jeff Barr wrote in a blog post. However, the European Sovereign Cloud will use separate billing and usage tracking systems from AWS’ standard cloud data centers.

The first European Sovereign Cloud region is set to launch in Germany. It will include multiple availability zones, or data center clusters. The data centers that make up an AWS region are deployed in different locations with separate power and cooling systems, which means a localized outage at one facility is unlikely to affect the others.

Alongside standard availability zones, the European Sovereign Cloud will provide access to AWS Outposts. The latter service allows customers to deploy AWS infrastructure at their own data centers. This arrangement makes it possible to run applications closer to users than would otherwise be otherwise possible, which reduces network latency.

The European Sovereign Cloud will also support a related offering called AWS Dedicated Local Zones. Similarly to Outposts, the offering allows companies to deploy cloud infrastructure at their own facilities. Dedicated Local Zones are managed by AWS. 

Today’s introduction of the European Sovereign Cloud continues an initiative that AWS first announced about a year ago. Last November, the Amazon unit made a commitment to offer customers the “most advanced set of sovereignty controls and features available in the cloud.” It pledged to deliver new data protection and regulatory compliance capabilities as part of the effort. 

AWS already offers a service similar to the European Sovereign Cloud in the U.S. Known as GovCloud, it provides access to data centers built specifically for use by public sector customers. Those data centers operate separately from AWS’ standard cloud facilities. 

AWS rival Microsoft Corp. is also stepping up its efforts to support highly regulated customers. As part of the effort, it launched an initiative called the EU Data Boundary earlier this year. The initiative will enable customers such as government agencies to keep information they generate in Microsoft 365, Azure and other other services on EU-based infrastructure. 

Photo: Tony Webster/Flickr