Will expand data residency controls and transparency in India: AWS

As the Indian government asks Big Tech and enterprises to store the residents' data locally, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has said that it will continue to expand its existing capabilities in the country to provide even more fine-grained data residency controls and transparency.

 

The Amazon's Cloud subsidiary, during its annual flagship conference 'AWS: Reinvent 2022', announced last week introduced the 'Digital Sovereignty Pledge' -- a commitment to offer its customers the most advanced set of sovereignty controls and features available in the cloud.

The company said that its approach to delivering on this pledge is to continue to make the AWS Cloud sovereign-by-design -- as it has been from day one.

"The launch of the AWS Asia Pacific (Hyderabad) Region and our AWS Asia Pacific (Mumbai) Region will support this by enabling local customers with data residency preferences to store data securely in India, while providing customers with even lower latency across the country," Puneet Chandok, President, Commercial Business, AWS India, and South Asia, AISPL, told IANS.

"We have also designed and delivered first-of-a-kind innovation to restrict access to customer data," he added.

AWS recently announced the launch of its second infrastructure region in the country in Hyderabad.

Through this, it is planning to invest an estimated $4.4 billion (about Rs 36,300 crore) in India by 2030, which includes capital expenditures on the construction of data centres, operational expenses related to ongoing utilities and facility costs, and purchases of goods and services from regional businesses.

The investment is also estimated to support an average of more than 48,000 full-time jobs annually at external businesses during this time.

"AWS's current Region in Mumbai, together with our newly launched second Region in Hyderabad will provide customers with more flexibility and choice," said Chandok.

The construction and operation of the AWS Asia Pacific (Hyderabad) Region is also estimated to add approximately $7.6 billion (nearly Rs 63,600 crore) to India's gross domestic product by 2030.

Hundreds of thousands of customers in India, including Acko General Insurance, Axis Bank, Clevertap, Digital India Corporation (MeitY), Dr. Reddy's Laboratories, Government of Telangana, HDFC Life, Jupiter, Lendingkart, National Skill Development Corporation, PhysicsWallah, and Tata Elxsi are innovating on AWS.

"AWS is powering small-and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) of every size and across every industry in India with the world's leading cloud," Chandok said.

Chandok said that they have heard from many customers in the last 18 months regarding concerns of having to choose between the full power of AWS and a feature-limited sovereign cloud solution that could hamper their ability to innovate, transform, and grow.

"We firmly believe that customers shouldn't have to make this choice.

AWS has always believed that for the cloud to realise its full potential it would be essential that customers have control over their data," he added.

Nishant Arora can be reached at nishant.a@ians.in)

--IANS

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