AWS Launches South Korea Data Centres

Amazon Web Services, the cloud computing arm of Amazon that is predicted to hit revenues of $16bn in just two years, has opened a string of data centres in South Korea.

The new region will be AWS’ twelfth region globally, and its fifth region in the Asia Pacific area.

Announcing the region on the AWS blog, Amazon top cloud evangelist Jeff Barr said: “The region-based AWS model has proven to be a good match for the needs of our global customer base.

“We have always believed that you need to be able to exercise complete control over where your data is stored and where it is processed.”

AWS already controls a number of customers in South Korea, including phone giant Samsung. The cloud division also caters to the large number of video gamers in the region, and provides cloud services to gaming companies Nexon, Gamevil, and Wemade.

Latency

Providing a region in Korea means that customers in the region will benefit from lower latency, with AWS hoping the data centres will also spur innovation in Big Data and the Internet of Things, two subject the company was keen to promote at this year’s Re:Invent in Las Vegas.

But AWS won’t be alone for long in the country. Primary public cloud competitor Microsoft Azure has had plans in the pipeline to establish a Korean data centre for more than a year now. IBM SoftLayer also has plans to build a data centre in the country.

This week, AWS was said to be the “fastest-growing enterprise technology company in history” in a note by Deutsche Bank.

Analyst Karl Keirstead predicted that AWS will hit revenues of $16bn (£10.3bn) in 2017, meaning it could have a valuation of $160bn (£104bn).

“We conclude that a 2017 revenue multiple of 10x seems fair for AWS, which given our 2017 AWS revenue estimate of $16bn implies a valuation of $160bn,” the note said.

“Measured by revenues, AWS is approximately 6x larger than its biggest rival Microsoft Azure and is arguably the greatest disruptive force in the entire enterprise technology market today,” the note stated.

It was in its most recent quarter that Amazon’s cloud business grew a whopping 78 percent year over year, hauling in $2.1bn in revenue. Profits stood at $521m in the last quarter.