Amazon Extends Online Storage Arm to Europe

By Greg McNevin

November 8, 2007: After launching its online data storage service in March 2006 in the US, Amazon S3 has decided to extend its offering to Europe.

A branch of the pioneering online retailer Amazon.com, Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) has launched a Europe-specific branch of its online storage service, promising low-cost and low-latency data storage “in the clouds”.

Europeans have already been able to use the service, however, by launching locally Amazon S3 says it can offer much greater speeds plus compliance with European data storage regulations.

The service is run off the same infrastructure that Amazon runs its sales network, and while local servers will only run a few milliseconds faster than those in the US while being accessed from Europe, those few milliseconds make all the difference for businesses using the service for transaction-heavy database operations.

The downside for European customers is the service currently has no language localisation, and payment must still be made in US dollars. Amazon S3 says full localisation options in these regards will be offered in 2008.

The European service will also be US$0.03 per megabyte more expensive than its US counterpart due to the higher costs of energy in Europe.

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