Amazon Web Services steps up efforts in China

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is intensifying its efforts supporting Chinese enterprises digitize their operations and will continue to introduce new technologies in cloud infrastructure, said a company executive.

Elaine Chang, corporate vice-president and managing director for AWS China, said the company aims to maintain its leadership in stability, reliability, security and resource efficiency through its advanced architecture design.

Chang said AWS, Amazon's cloud service platform, prioritizes data security.

"We insist that customers own and control their own data and provide sophisticated technology and physical measures to prevent unauthorized access," Chang said at AWS Summit Beijing 2019.

AWS holds more third-party security and compliance certifications than other companies and possesses more third-party security partners that provide security solutions for customers, said Chang.

The company claims that Huashan Hospital Affiliated to Fudan University has adopted AWS to accelerate its digital transformation.

The hospital has successfully transferred reservations, quantitative pharmacological analysis and clinical research phase one onto AWS China (Beijing).

The move is expected to reduce infrastructure costs and help the hospital improve its medical teaching and research.

AWS announced the opening of AWS Middle East (Bahrain) on Tuesday.

With this launch, AWS now spans 69 zones in 22 regions around the world and has announced plans for nine more availability zones across three more regions in Indonesia, Italy and South Africa.

Developers, startups and enterprises, as well as governmental, educational, and non-profit organizations, can run their applications and serve end-users from data centers in the Middle East.

AWS landed its AWS China (Beijing) region, operated by Beijing Sinnet Technology Co Ltd in 2016, and AWS China (Ningxia) region, operated by Ningxia Western Cloud Data Technology Co Ltd in 2017, as well the AWS Hong Kong region in April 2019.

AWS has a presence in 19 cities in China, which also includes the first AWS machine learning and AI lab in Asia.

As of July 10, 2019, AWS had built seven joint innovation centers in Qingdao, Shanghai, Nanjing, Xi'an and Chengdu, with two in Taipei.

Since January 2016, over 85,000 students have participated in AWS training events.