It was announced more than a year ago and reassured to attendees at their recent summit in Dubai, and now it’s official by Amazon. AWS Middle East is now live and uplinked to their global network of data center regions. Don’t believe it? Hear it straight from Dr. Werner Vogels.
AWS benefits for the region
Attention Arabic speakers, there’s an Arabic version of the website to help you understand the benefits and the different products available to them. Amazon has also updated the region table with the services offered based on the regions.
This will definitely make work easier for some of the existing businesses in the region. Careem, Anghami, Lulu Hypermarket, Bayt, Aramex, Zain, and Amazon UAE will be some of the biggest beneficiaries of this news.
Amazon has also expanded the AWS Activate Program to the Middle East, which provides resources to help startups launch their businesses on AWS and go global in minutes. The support is available in the form of AWS credits, in-person technical support, AWS trainings, and go-to-market help.
Does this mean… Fortnite will be faster?
Fortnite gamers in the region will be erupting with joy on this news, since Epic Games has fully committed to AWS for their backend work. It also powers all their servers to handle 200M players worldwide.
Just one read on the Amazon Game Tech blog will give you enough insight to their workings. Not enough info? This case study video gives the complete overview on how AWS powers Fortnite’s 200 million players worldwide.
Back in January 2019, there was a major outcry from gamers in the Middle East, complaining about high latency which put a big dent in their Fortnite play sessions. It became a regional trending story that the game devs had to put out a response to it. Would this mean that Epic Games can just flick a few backend switches to duplicate their servers to the Middle East region? Time will tell, as I’ve already posed this very question to them.
With the new Middle East now connected to their network of regions worldwide, it also makes sense that the next AWS Summit will be held in Bahrain. Whether you’re a newbie or even a current customer, you can visit their event page for more updates on when registration will open. The event will be held in late September.
