<span>Amazon Web Services – the biggest cloud services provider in the world – </span><span>projects huge business potential in the Middle East</span><span>, as an increasing number of its global partners express an interest to enter the </span><span>market.</span> <span>In July, AWS opened three data centres in Bahrain – its first in the region, bringing its global network to 69 centres in 22 locations.</span> <span>"Our intent is not to be small, but to grow and scale fast</span><span>," said Teresa Carlson, vice president for worldwide public sector business at AWS.</span> <span>“The Middle East region is already doing very well and we have every indication that this will be very successful for us … [It will be] one of our top-performing regions.”</span> <span>AWS has invested a huge amount in its </span><span>facilities in Bahrain, said Ms Carlson, but </span><span>declined to disclose the dollar figure.</span> <span>“We not only put servers or data centres but we made a very significant investment in land, utilities, networking and people. We look at building a hyper-scale region with a lot of growth opportunities,” she added.</span> <span>The company said it will </span><span>hire nearly 30,000 people across different verticals globally, and many will be from the Middle East</span><span>.</span> <span>“AWS is committed to this region. Part of these [30,000 jobs] will be here in the Middle East. It’s not only about AWS jobs but also about creating new jobs locally in other businesses,” said Ms Carlson.</span> <span>“We opened an office here [Bahrain], hired quite a few people and have openings here. We also have offices in the UAE and Saudi Arabia and you will continue to see us opening more [offices in the region].”</span> Nearly 36 AWS global partners launched customised offers to facilitate their local clients in the Middle East in July when the company’s data centres went live. <span>“Middle East was one of the most requested regions by AWS global partners. Most of them wanted to launch their business here.”</span> <span>The company's regional customers include Bahrain Economic Development Board, Al Tayyar Travel, flydubai, Union Insurance, Careem, StarzPlay, Anghami and Sarwa</span>. <span>Ms Carlson said security is no longer a concern with cloud computing, saying "today customers are </span><span>moving to cloud because of security".</span> <span>To train local talent</span><span>, AWS on Sunday announced a cloud computing degree programme with the University of Bahrain – the first in the region.</span> <span>A growing number of enterprises are embracing cloud services</span><span>, with the public cloud services market in the Middle East and North Africa projected to grow to $1.9 billion (Dh7.97bn) by 2020, double the size it was in 2016, according to data from researcher Statista.</span> <span>Moving to a cloud system hosted by a specialist company can be cheaper for companies than building their own infrastructure of servers, hardware and security networks. </span> <span>"Using AWS solutions, we have been able to adopt a sustainable digital business strategy that includes modernising, evolving and disrupting our traditional banking operations," said Sael Al Waary, deputy group chief executive of </span><span>Bank ABC in Manama.</span> <span>As part of its cloud-first strategy, Bank ABC is planning to launch a mobile-only digital entity, ila Bank, later this year.</span> <span>“Today, most of the tech innovations are cloud-native or cloud-inspired, and it is helping us to reach the right audience,” added Mr Waary.</span> <span>AWS reported revenue of $8.38bn in the second quarter of this year, a 37 per cent year-on-year rise. In April, AWS added Arabic language support to Amazon Polly, a service that converts </span><span>text into </span><span>speech.</span>