MILAN/STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – Amazon’s computing unit AWS is in talks with Italy to invest billions of euros in expanding its data center operations in the country as part of the tech giant’s efforts to boost its cloud offering in Europe, four people with data sources said. the matter said.
According to the sources, discussions between parties about the size and location of the investment are ongoing, with one of them saying that Amazon Web Service (AWS) is considering expanding its current site in Milan or building a new one.
Both AWS and a spokesperson for the government’s digital transition department declined to comment. A spokesperson for Italy’s industry ministry was not immediately available for comment.
AWS launched its first cloud region in Italy in 2020 as part of a plan to invest 2 billion euros ($2.2 billion) by 2029.
It counts luxury carmaker Ferrari and insurer Assicurazioni Generali among its clients in the country, its website showed.
AWS recently unveiled a €15.7 billion investment in data centers in Spain’s northeastern Aragon region, replacing a previous 10-year plan announced in 2021, when the company earmarked €2.5 billion for the country.
According to one of the sources, AWS’s investments in Italy would amount to billions, but would not reach the scale of the plans for Spain. An announcement is not imminent.
In Germany, AWS plans to invest 7.8 billion euros until 2040.
AWS is also building infrastructure to deliver cloud services to telecom customers, which requires enormous resources.
It landed its first customer earlier this month when Telefónica Deutschland announced plans to move 1 million customers to the AWS cloud.
AWS announced plans last year to store data on servers in the European Union to protect data privacy for government and customers in highly regulated industries.
Analysts and executives say many large enterprise customers have started spending on cloud computing again after a lull last year, as interest in artificial intelligence fuels a return to growth in the $270 billion cloud infrastructure market.
Alphabet, which signed a landmark deal in 2020 to provide cloud services to Italy’s largest bank Intesa Sanpaolo, has invested 1 billion euros in Italy to set up the two cloud regions that Intesa relies on.
Microsoft said a year ago it would launch its first cloud region in Italy as part of a $1.5 billion investment plan it announced in 2020.
($1 = 0.9211 euros)
(Reporting by Elvira Pollina and Valentina Za in Milan, Supantha Mukherjee in Stockholm; additional reporting by Giuseppe Fonte in Rome; editing by Tomasz Janowski)
