THE DATA CENTRE INTERVIEW
AWS scales and innovates without compromising sovereignty standards One concern that prospective customers frequently raise is whether operating within a sovereign framework means accepting a reduced or trailing service. AWS’ position is that the AWS European Sovereign Cloud runs the same software, services and systems as its global regions, including its leading AI capabilities, and that the consistency of approach underpinning the build is precisely what makes that possible.
“ The AWS European Sovereign Cloud runs our same full hyperscale services, the same software and the same systems that we run elsewhere. We haven’ t had to make compromises or cut corners or reduce our offerings,” Colm says.“ We’ re able to offer our leading-edge AI services in the AWS European Sovereign Cloud. That’ s very much what we want to provide for customers – we don’ t want customers who have sovereignty needs to have to accept anything less than the best.”
The operational model reflects the same logic. Although the AWS European Sovereign Cloud has dedicated operators, Colm describes the day-to-day running of the infrastructure as consistent with AWS’ s standard approach to managing all of its systems.“ Our consistency in approach and all of that automation means that for us this is business as usual,” he says.
“ We don’ t want customers who have sovereignty needs to have to accept anything less than the best”
Colm MacCárthaigh VP & Distinguished Engineer AWS
For Colm, the message to customers ultimately rests on two pillars: familiarity and rigour.“ The European Sovereign Cloud is the AWS that you know and love. It’ s all of our APIs and services, a full hyperscale cloud, with the benefits that we have everywhere.
“ This includes, for example, the AWS Nitro System – purpose-built hardware and software that provides the underlying platform for all Amazon EC2 instances. By design, the Nitro System has no operator access, meaning there is no mechanism for any system or person at AWS to access customer data running on EC2 instances.
“ Only the customers have visibility and control over their own data. But then, on top of that, what we add in the AWS European Sovereign Cloud is those dedicated operators. We’ ve also dotted every‘ i’ and crossed every‘ t’, and made sure that every dependency we have is within the EU. We’ ve gone really, really deep on that.”
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