Amazon Web Services Inc. is meeting Europe’s diversity of needs through the AWS European Sovereign Cloud, an independent cloud designed to foster artificial intelligence adoption across Europe.

Since Europe has many different cultures and languages, AI adoption has been promising but not equally accessible to all businesses. The European Union has also instituted a number of regulations that Amazon needs to navigate, according to Tanuja Randery (pictured), managing director of Europe, Middle East and Africa at AWS.

AWS’ Tanuja Randery talks about the barriers to AI adoption in Europe.

“Europe is sitting on the brink of a very unprecedented opportunity,” she said. “It’s a phenomenal hub for AI and innovation. We did some research recently that shows that we could unlock approximately 600 billion euros of economic value just through the application of AI technology. When you couple that with the total investment in cloud in digital technologies, that’s almost a 3.2 trillion euro opportunity for that region.”

Randery spoke with theCUBE Research’s John Furrier for theCUBE’s “Cloud AWS re:Invent Coverage,” during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed the culture of AI adoption in Europe.

How the European Sovereign Cloud supports innovation

AWS has supported 18 EMEA startups that tackle everything from antibiotic resistant bacteria to calculating exactly how many paninis are needed on a Ryanair airplane. The AI-fueled business wave will likely happen faster than the digital transformation wave in Europe, both Furrier and Randery predict.

“One of the areas we [Europe] are particularly unique … is language and culture,” Randery said. “We’ve been working with large language models in local languages. A great example is the Slovak model that we’ve been working on … I think taking the models, bring[ing] them into local language will also help us get more democratization of this technology.”

The three biggest barriers to more widespread AI adoption in Europe are regulations, a lack of digital skills and the slower adoption rate of small to medium businesses compared to enterprises, according to Randery. She hopes that the European Sovereign Cloud will bring more businesses up to speed and support innovation in a variety of sectors.

“European Sovereign Cloud will then be a very unique solution,” she said. “It’s got all of the advantages of the AWS cloud but located in Europe. Then, of course, we like to bring the cloud to where our customers want it. We recently announced the launch of our region in Saudi Arabia, which will be coming in about 18 months time.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s “Cloud AWS re:Invent Coverage”:

Photo: SiliconANGLE