ATHENS, June 17 – Amazon Web Services (AWS), a company of Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), announced yesterday that its new Local Zone in Athens will be generally available in July. This strategic move aims to bring advanced cloud infrastructure, including computational power, storage, networking, analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and databases, closer to customers in Greece.
AWS Local Zone: Bringing Cloud Closer to Greek Businesses
The Athens Local Zone will enable organizations to store and process workloads within Greece, fulfilling local data residency requirements. It promises low-latency performance with the reliability, security, and familiar tools offered by AWS. Early customers are already utilizing the Local Zone for real-time gaming applications, local data processing, and rapid content delivery.
According to AWS, the Local Zone will allow businesses to modernize legacy workloads and maintain control over their execution, accessing powerful computing units and the full spectrum of AWS services. This includes managed infrastructure with top-tier security, without the cost and complexity of managing on-premises infrastructure.
Why Local Infrastructure Matters
While most workloads run in AWS Regions-geographical locations where AWS clusters data centers-some require infrastructure to be closer to end-users or within specific geographical boundaries. Industries such as financial services, healthcare, and government agencies face challenges where applications need to be fast, workloads must remain local, and infrastructure must meet stringent regulatory requirements.
Traditionally, organizations would procure, operate, and maintain their own IT infrastructure, managing physical facilities, hardware maintenance, and specialized teams. AWS Local Zones eliminate this complexity by extending AWS-managed infrastructure to major cities, providing the same reliability and security expected from AWS Regions.
The Athens Local Zone will deliver single-digit millisecond response times for applications serving end-users in Greece, with seamless connectivity to the full range of AWS services via a high-bandwidth and secure network backbone to nearby AWS Regions. It will also be among the first globally to offer Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) Local Snapshots, providing local storage and snapshot capabilities to meet data residency requirements.
Greek Government Welcomes the Investment
The Greek government has lauded AWS’s investment, highlighting its significance for the country’s digital future.
“The AWS Local Zone is not just another technological investment, but a critical infrastructure that strengthens the capabilities of the Greek economy in the era of artificial intelligence. The decision of a technology giant like AWS to continuously strengthen its presence in Greece constitutes a vote of confidence in the economy’s prospects. At the same time, it underlines the dynamic our country is developing as a regional hub for digital innovation. Our country has made significant strides in recent years, both with the digital modernization of the public sector and with the promotion of a modern innovation and technology ecosystem. From now on, we are intensifying our efforts even further so that Greece in 2030 will be at the forefront of Europe in the applications of artificial intelligence, new technologies, and innovation in general,” stated Mr. Konstantinos Hatzidakis, Deputy Prime Minister of Greece.
Mr. Dimitris Papastergiou, Minister of Digital Governance and Artificial Intelligence, added, “The country’s digital transition is based on a clear goal: to create a more efficient state and more user-friendly services for citizens and businesses. To achieve this, we need strong, reliable, and modern digital infrastructures. Our cooperation with Amazon Web Services, through our entity ‘EDYTE S.A.’, contributes significantly to this direction, giving Public Bodies, Universities, and Research Centers access to advanced cloud computing services, data analysis tools, and Artificial Intelligence applications.”
Adonis Georgiadis, Minister of Health, emphasized the benefits for the healthcare sector: “Health is one of the areas that will benefit most from the existence of cloud infrastructure locally in Greece. From managing sensitive patient data to providing efficient digital health services to citizens across the country, the AWS Local Zone in Athens gives us the foundation to modernize the way we serve millions of Greek patients, while keeping their data within our borders.”
Continued AWS Commitment to Greece
The new AWS Local Zone in Athens is the latest milestone in AWS’s ongoing commitment to Greece. This commitment began in 2020 with the AWS CloudFront edge location in Athens, followed by the opening of the company’s local office in 2021, and the activation of AWS Direct Connect in Athens in 2025.
In line with Amazon’s goal to achieve net-zero carbon emissions across its operations by 2040, Amazon has invested in eight large-scale wind and solar farms in Greece. Once completed, these projects are estimated to provide 656 MW of new carbon-free energy, enough to power the equivalent of more than 350,000 Greek households annually.
“With the new AWS Local Zone in Athens, we are giving every organization operating in Greece the tools and capabilities they need to deliver faster, innovative experiences on Greek soil,” said Thanasis Patsakas, Country Manager for AWS in Greece, Cyprus, and Malta. “We designed AWS Local Zones to support a wide range of use cases, from public sector services that need to meet strict local data residency requirements, to transactional applications that need to respond quickly to market fluctuations, to interactive live event and gaming experiences. We look forward to seeing what our customers will do next.”
Greek Organizations Embrace the Athens Local Zone
Several Greek organizations have expressed enthusiasm for the new AWS Local Zone:
- Omilia: Marios Fakiolas, CTO of Omilia, a conversational AI platform, stated, “Having AWS infrastructure locally in Greece means we can develop and improve this platform closer to the team that manages it, with low latency, while continuing to serve customers worldwide. As we want to be competitive in the AI sector, this combination of local presence and global scale is exactly what we need.”
- Profile Software: Dr. Apostolos Kritikopoulos, Group CTO of Profile Software, an international Financial Services ISV, commented, “This infrastructure milestone allows us to bring the full power of AWS even closer to our customers in Greece and the wider region. We combine the scale and innovation of the cloud with the low-latency performance and local data storage required by regulated financial services.”
- Skroutz: Apollon Oikonomopoulos, CIO of Skroutz, Greece’s most popular online shopping platform, noted, “AWS infrastructure in Athens, combined with access to AWS’s global infrastructure, is exciting for us. Access to local computing and storage capabilities will help us deliver even faster, more personalized experiences to our Greek users and support our data processing needs closer to home.”
AWS Partners Leverage the Athens Local Zone
AWS partners are also ready to utilize the new Local Zone to assist their clients:
- EPAM Systems: George Papadimitrakis, Director, Client Partner, Greece Market, EPAM Systems, stated, “With the AWS Local Zone in Athens providing single-digit millisecond response times, we can now build and deploy cloud and AI solutions for our customers in Greece with faster performance and local data processing.”
- Kyndryl: Apostolos Leonidopoulos, Managing Director, Kyndryl Greece and Cyprus, said, “The AWS Local Zone in Athens enhances our ability to support Greek businesses, from public sector organizations to regulated financial institutions, in their cloud migration and modernization efforts.”
The new AWS Local Zone in Athens joins AWS’s global network of Local Zones in over 30 metropolitan areas across six continents. Like all AWS infrastructure, the Athens Local Zone is built with the same physical and logical security controls that customers rely on across AWS, supporting over 143 security standards and compliance certifications globally.
Source: https://www.businessnews.gr/epixeiriseis/texnologia/item/339855-aws-fernei-neo-local-zone-stin-athina-me-ypologistiki-isxy-kai-ai-apo-ton-fetino-ioylio
