The data center in Tel Aviv will be the company’s third cloud region in the Middle East, the company said. Credit: Alexander Alperin / Getty Images Amazon Web Services (AWS) has opened its first cloud region in Israel for commercial access and plans to invest about $7.2 billion in the country by 2037. The region (il-central-1), which was first announced in June 2021, will have three availability zones and will be located in Tel Aviv, the company said. The new cloud region in Tel Aviv is the company’s third cloud region in the Middle East. AWS launched cloud regions in Bahrain and UAE, both with three availability zones, in 2019 and 2022 respectively. Rival cloud service providers such as Google and Oracle already have operational cloud regions in Israel. Last year in November, Google launched a new cloud region in Israel (me-west 1) alongside its Doha region (me-central 1) in the Middle East. Oracle, too, operationalized a cloud region in Jerusalem in October 2021. The company plans to launch another cloud region in Israel soon. Microsoft, on the other hand, is yet to open up a cloud region in Israel. It has two operational cloud regions based in Dubai and Doha, launched in 2019 and 2022 respectively. AWS started investing in Israel in 2019 AWS’ first infrastructure investment in Israel came in 2019 with the cloud services provider opening an Amazon CloudFront edge location. In 2020, the company launched AWS Outposts and AWS Direct Connect in Israel to provide enterprises in the country the ability to run AWS technology in their own data centers and establish dedicated connections back to the AWS cloud. In April 2021, the government of Israel announced that it had selected AWS as its primary cloud provider as part of the Nimbus contract. The new cloud region in Tel Aviv, according to AWS, will support a variety of AWS services across compute, storage, networking, and security, including AWS RedShift, Amazon Aurora, AWS CloudFormation, Amazon S3, and Amazon CloudWatch. With the new cloud region, AWS now has 102 availability zones in 32 geographic regions globally. In May, AWS said it is committing $12.7 billion to expand its cloud infrastructure in India by 2030 in order to meet growing customer demand for its cloud services. The announcement came just five months after the company launched its second region in Hyderabad. In March, the company said it was planning to launch a new cloud region in Malaysia and invest $6 billion in the country over the next 14 years. Related content opinion The Importance of Identity Management in Security By Charles Pelton Nov 28, 2023 5 mins Cybercrime Artificial Intelligence Data Management brandpost Sponsored by Rocket Software Why data virtualization is critical for business success Data is your most valuable resource—but only if you can access it fast enough to address present challenges. Data virtualization is the key. By Milan Shetti, CEO of Rocket Software Nov 28, 2023 4 mins Digital Transformation brandpost Sponsored by Rocket Software The hybrid approach: Get the best of both mainframe and cloud Cloud computing and modernization often go hand in hand, but that doesn’t mean the mainframe should be left behind. A hybrid approach offers the most value, enabling businesses to get the best of both worlds. By Milan Shetti, CEO Rocket Software Nov 28, 2023 4 mins Digital Transformation brandpost Sponsored by Rimini Street Dear Oracle Cloud…I need my own space Access results from a recent Rimini Street survey about why enterprises are rethinking their Oracle relationship and cloud strategy. By Tanya O'Hara Nov 28, 2023 5 mins Cloud Computing Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe