Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced its commitment to invest £8 billion in the establishment and upkeep of new data centers in the UK by 2028. The public cloud leader anticipates that its five-year data center investment initiative will contribute approximately £14 billion to the UK’s GDP by the end of this period and create an average of 14,000 full-time equivalent jobs annually in local businesses.
According to the company, these roles will encompass various aspects of the AWS data center supply chain, including construction, facility maintenance, engineering, telecommunications, and additional positions within the wider local economy.
AWS launched its first data center region in the UK in December 2016 in London and has since expanded its infrastructure to include three availability zones along with multiple edge computing locations in both the capital and Manchester. With this latest investment, AWS projects that it will have invested over £11 billion in its UK data center network between 2020 and 2028, building upon its previous £3 billion investment from 2020 to 2023.
The driving force behind this significant investment is the rising demand for AWS’s public cloud services, which the company reports is growing across businesses of all sizes and sectors. “Organizations, from rapidly growing startups and small to medium-sized enterprises to large corporations, public sector entities, educational institutions, and government agencies, are increasingly leveraging AWS,” the company stated.
The adoption of AWS technologies in the UK public sector has surged since the company opened its first region, as evidenced by sales data from the UK government’s Digital Marketplace. When AWS established its UK data center in December 2016, it had recorded a relatively small £2.93 million in expenditures through the G-Cloud procurement framework since its inception in 2012. However, over the years, this figure has skyrocketed, with sales exceeding £940 million.
Moreover, as Computer Weekly previously reported, AWS made headlines in January 2024, revealing that it had generated more revenue from three multimillion-pound government contracts launched in December 2023 than what it had earned during its entire ten-year tenure in the G-Cloud program.
Tanuja Randery, vice president and managing director for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) at AWS, highlighted that this investment comes at a crucial juncture for the UK digital economy. “The coming years could prove to be pivotal for the UK’s digital and economic landscape, as organizations increasingly adopt technologies like cloud computing and artificial intelligence (AI) to drive innovation, enhance productivity, and remain competitive globally,” Randery remarked.
“We are excited to unveil our plans to invest £8 billion in digital and AI infrastructure over the next five years to address the growing needs of our customers and partners while contributing to the transformation of the UK’s digital economy.”
This investment announcement arrives amid scrutiny from the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) regarding AWS’s dominance in the UK cloud infrastructure market.