Petit a petit, l’oiseau fait son nid: AWS to open data center in Montreal

Amazon Web Services will open its first data center in Canada later this year, allowing folks to use AWS's cloud services in North America but not necessarily in the US.

The new region will go live in Montreal, Quebec, and will compete against nearby rivals, such as OVH. AWS also offers locations in Northern Virginia (US East), Northern California (US West) and Oregon (US West) as well as the US government's AWS GovCloud facility at an unspecified "Northwestern US" location.

AWS did not specify which of the AWS services will be supported by the Montreal facility.

The cloud computing giant also plans to launch a regional facility in Ohio later this year.

"This region will be carbon-neutral and powered almost entirely by clean, renewable hydro power," blogged AWS evangelist Jeff Barr.

"The planned Canada-Montreal region will give AWS partners and customers the ability to run their workloads and store their data in Canada."

For those in Canada, the new regional base should provide improved speeds and latencies between themselves, their customers, and their AWS instances. This should be particularly useful for companies required by law or by contract to physically store Canadians' data within the nation's borders.

For international organizations weary of keeping their data within the US, the launch of the Montreal region will also provide the option for operating in the North America region without sending data to and hosting virtual servers in a facility that is just a quick drive from Washington DC.

On the other hand, Amazon is an American company, and the Feds think they have worldwide jurisdiction over US businesses.

AWS said the launch is the first in a series of new region locations it hopes to open up this year. Along with the Ohio region, Amazon is planning to open up facilities in the UK, India, China, and South Korea. ®