AWS Launches Infrastructure Region in Israel

August 01, 2023 at 05:28 AM EDT

AWS Israel (Tel Aviv) Region allows customers to run workloads and securely store data in Israel while serving end users with even lower latency

The new AWS Region is estimated to support an average of 7,700 full-time equivalent jobs annually through a planned investment of $7.2 billion (approx. ILS 26.6 billion) in Israel through 2037

Active customers in Israel include Aidoc, Bank Hapoalim, the Consumer Protection and Fair Trade Authority, Migdal, Ministry of Transport and Road Safety, Tnuva, Wiz, and many others innovating on AWS

Amazon Web Services (AWS), today announced the launch of the AWS Israel (Tel Aviv) Region. Starting today, developers, startups, entrepreneurs, and enterprises, as well as government, education, and nonprofit organizations, have an even greater choice for running their applications and serving end users from data centers located in Israel, using advanced AWS technologies to drive innovation. AWS also released an economic impact study highlighting that the company is planning to invest an estimated $7.2 billion (approximately ILS 26.6 billion) in Israel through 2037 via the new AWS Israel (Tel Aviv) Region. For more information about AWS Global Infrastructure, visit aws.amazon.com/about-aws/global-infrastructure.

“The launch of the AWS Region in Israel provides customers with the ability to build the most advanced cloud technology-based applications and achieve the highest levels of security, availability, and resilience,” said Prasad Kalyanaraman, vice president of Infrastructure Services at AWS. “Israel’s strategy to promote technology innovation, along with its abundance of talent, has created a thriving global hub for entrepreneurs, e-governments, and multinational businesses. Cloud technology is at the heart of any digital transformation program, and AWS is proud to support Israel’s efforts to enhance citizen services for many years to come.”

In 2021, the government of Israel announced its selection of AWS as its primary cloud provider as part of the Nimbus contract for government ministries and subsidiaries. The Nimbus framework provides cloud services to Israeli government ministries—including local municipalities, government-owned companies, and public sector organizations—with the aim of driving innovation and enabling new digital services for the citizens of Israel.

“We are excited to welcome the new AWS Region to Israel as part of project Nimbus and we congratulate AWS for its commitment and hard work in building the Israeli Region,” said Yali Rothenberg, accountant general of Israel. “The establishment of the Israeli Region reflects the long-term commitment of AWS to Israel and to the continuation of their large investments in the Israeli market. The establishment of the Region will enable us to migrate substantial governmental workloads to the cloud, and we are confident that it will help us accelerate digital transformation in the public sector, leverage technology to drive innovation in the government, improve customer experience, and further the development of the technological ecosystem in Israel.”

With the launch of the AWS Israel (Tel Aviv) Region, AWS has 102 Availability Zones across 32 geographic regions, with announced plans to launch 12 more Availability Zones and four more AWS Regions in Canada, Malaysia, New Zealand, and Thailand. AWS Regions are composed of Availability Zones that place infrastructure in separate and distinct geographic locations. The AWS Israel (Tel Aviv) Region consists of three Availability Zones, each located far enough from the other to support customers’ business continuity, but near enough to provide low latency for high availability applications that use multiple Availability Zones. Each Availability Zone has independent power, cooling, and physical security and is connected through redundant, ultra-low latency networks. AWS customers focused on high availability can design their applications to run in multiple Availability Zones to achieve even greater fault tolerance.

The launch of the AWS Israel (Tel Aviv) Region enables customers to securely store data in Israel while providing customers with even lower latency across the country to drive greater productivity, more efficient business operations, and enhanced real-time application performance. Customers also have access to advanced AWS technologies to accelerate innovation, including compute, storage, networking, business applications, developer tools, data analytics, security, machine learning, and artificial intelligence (AI).

AWS released an economic impact study estimating the company’s projected spend on the construction and operation of the new AWS Region, which will support an average of more than 7,700 full-time equivalent jobs at external businesses annually, with a planned $7.2 billion (approx. ILS 26.6 billion) investment in Israel through 2037. The construction and operation of the AWS Israel (Tel Aviv) Region is also estimated to add approximately $13.9 billion (ILS 51.7 billion) to Israel’s gross domestic product (GDP) through 2037.

Customers and AWS Partners welcome the AWS Israel (Tel Aviv) Region

Israeli organizations are among the millions of active customers using AWS in more than 190 countries around the world. Large and small enterprises in Israel choose AWS to innovate, drive cost efficiencies, and accelerate time to market. Customers in Israel using AWS include Amdocs, Bank Hapoalim, Bank Leumi, Harel Insurance, ICL Group, Ituran, Migdal, Netafim, Paz, Phoenix, and Tnuva. Public sector organizations that use AWS to transform the services delivered to Israeli citizens include Ayalon Highway, Government of Israel, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Health, Ministry of Transport and Road Safety, Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, the Consumer Protection and Fair Trade Authority, and Weizmann Institute. Israeli startups, including Aidoc, AI21 Labs, AppsFlyer, Armis, CyberArk, Gong, Jfrog, Logz.io, Monday.com, SentinelOne, TytoCare, Wix, and Wiz, are building their businesses with the use of AWS to rapidly scale nationally and around the world.

Aidoc is a pioneering force in clinical AI. The company aids and empowers health care teams to optimize patient treatment resulting in improved economic value and clinical outcomes. Aidoc’s exclusive aiOS analyzes all types of medical data, including computerized tomography (CT) scans, medical records, and more, to flag acute abnormalities, prioritize life-threatening cases, and expedite patient treatment to improve the quality of care. “Our utilization of AWS infrastructure and services has been pivotal in driving our operational agility and development velocity. What truly sets AWS apart is the constant access to cutting-edge computing technologies, amplifying the effectiveness of our model training,” said Guy Reiner, vice president of Research and Development at Aidoc. “With the new AWS Region, health care providers can now achieve a milestone in data privacy within hospitals and care facilities. AWS’s unwavering commitment to offering HIPAA-eligible services locally, along with its wide array of features and services to support General Data Protection Regulation requirements in cloud environments, instills our unwavering trust.”

Founded in 1921, Bank Hapoalim is one of the largest financial institutions in Israel and offers a broad range of banking and financial services to millions of customers in the country. “AWS enables us to speed up innovation and quickly bring new products and capabilities—such as our FinTech Zone business platform—to market,” said Eti Ben-Zeev, head of Information Technology, chief information officer, and deputy CEO at Bank Hapoalim. “FinTech Zone makes it possible for fintech startups to work together with the bank efficiently and securely, leveraging the benefits of AWS to bring new offerings to the market faster. The new AWS Region will make it easier for us to offer innovative solutions to our customers while continuing to accelerate our digital transformation and meet the strictest regulatory requirements.”

The Consumer Protection and Fair Trade Authority is an independent government agency that is responsible for ensuring legal compliance and consumer rights. The Authority established a new national “Do Not Call” database that is aimed at curbing the problem of unwanted marketing calls in Israel. “The ‘Do Not Call’ database project was a technical challenge that required us to develop a service that was secure, accessible, and simple to use for all users,” said Peleg Shafir, chief technology officer at the Consumer Protection and Fair Trade Authority. “AWS helped us create a scalable solution that meets the needs of every citizen, regardless of their language or digital literacy. With the opening of the AWS Region in Israel, we will have even more possibilities to provide our users with the fastest access to our services and an exceptional digital experience.”

The Ministry of Transport and Road Safety is responsible for the planning, development, and regulation of infrastructure and integrated transport systems in Israel. “Public Transportation has moved to AWS to increase efficiencies in the collection, management, research, and processing of public transportation data in Israel,” said Ortal Niv, chief information officer at the Ministry of Transportation and Road Safety. “We use AI services to accelerate information processing, provide accurate prediction of transportation needs, improve traffic management capabilities, and help reduce traffic jams. The new AWS Region will also allow us to securely deploy new applications, increase efficiencies, improve performance, and meet data residency requirements.”

Cloud security leader Wiz is a pioneer in the rising Cloud-Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP) security market. “Our customers, which include 35% of the Fortune 500, rely on Wiz to help create secure cloud environments that accelerate their business by scanning 230 billion files daily on five million protected cloud workloads,” said Roy Reznik, co-founder and vice president of Research and Development at Wiz. “Building on AWS has helped our business scale during hyper growth and allowed us to maintain high levels of service to our customers, regardless of their location. The new AWS Region in Israel will allow us to replicate our development environments locally, delivering faster product iterations and reducing time to market, and now, we will be able to offer our solutions to local data-sensitive customers, enabling them to consolidate their cloud security programs to a single platform.”

The AWS Partner Network (APN) includes tens of thousands of independent software vendors (ISVs) and systems integrators (SIs) around the world. AWS Partners build innovative solutions and services on AWS, and the APN helps by providing business, technical, marketing, and go-to-market support to customers. AWS ISVs, technology partners, SIs, and consulting partners help enterprise and public sector customers migrate to AWS, deploy mission-critical applications, and provide a full range of monitoring, automation, and management services for customers’ cloud environments. For the full list of AWS Partners, visit aws.amazon.com/partners.

Upskilling Israel’s workforce

AWS Educate and AWS Academy provide free resources to accelerate cloud-related learning and prepare students in Israel for the jobs of the future. Numerous Israeli universities and business schools participate in AWS Educate and AWS Academy programs, including Bar Ilan University, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, MTA–The Academic College of Tel Aviv-Yaffo, Reichman University (IDC), Technion–Israel Institute of Technology, Tel Aviv University, and University of Haifa.

AWS also offers a full range of training and certification programs to help those interested in the latest cloud computing technologies, best practices, and architectures to advance their technical skills and further support Israeli organizations in their digital transformation. A free full-time, classroom-based skills development and training program, AWS re/Start, prepares individuals for careers in the cloud and connects them to potential employers. AWS GetIT, an initiative designed to encourage 12- and 13-year-old girls to consider a career in tech, challenges long-standing gender stereotypes. The program now operates in more than 25 schools across the country, mainly in disadvantaged and rural communities.

To help grow the next generation of Israeli enterprises, AWS began supporting startups in Israel in 2013 through its AWS Activate program. This program gives startups access to guidance and one-on-one time with AWS experts, as well as web-based training, self-paced labs, customer support, third-party offers, dedicated events, and up to $100,000 in AWS service credits—all at no charge.

Commitment to sustainability

Amazon is committed to becoming a more sustainable business and reaching net-zero carbon across its operations by 2040, 10 years ahead of the Paris Agreement, as part of The Climate Pledge. Amazon co-founded The Climate Pledge and became its first signatory in 2019. As part of its Climate Pledge commitment, Amazon is on a path to power its operations with 100% renewable energy by 2025, five years ahead of the original 2030 target. See Amazon's public methodology for more on its approach. In 2022, Amazon set a new corporate record for the most renewable energy announced by a single company in one year and remains the largest corporate buyer of renewable energy—a position it’s held since 2020, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Amazon now has 401 renewable energy projects in 22 countries. Additionally, AWS will be water positive by 2030, returning more water to communities than it uses in its direct operations.

About Amazon Web Services

Since 2006, Amazon Web Services has been the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud. AWS has been continually expanding its services to support virtually any workload, and it now has more than 240 fully featured services for compute, storage, databases, networking, analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), mobile, security, hybrid, virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR), media, and application development, deployment, and management from 102 Availability Zones within 32 geographic regions, with announced plans for 12 more Availability Zones and four more AWS Regions in Canada, Malaysia, New Zealand, and Thailand. Millions of customers—including the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises, and leading government agencies—trust AWS to power their infrastructure, become more agile, and lower costs. To learn more about AWS, visit aws.amazon.com.

About Amazon

Amazon is guided by four principles: customer obsession rather than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence, and long-term thinking. Amazon strives to be Earth’s Most Customer-Centric Company, Earth’s Best Employer, and Earth’s Safest Place to Work. Customer reviews, 1-Click shopping, personalized recommendations, Prime, Fulfillment by Amazon, AWS, Kindle Direct Publishing, Kindle, Career Choice, Fire tablets, Fire TV, Amazon Echo, Alexa, Just Walk Out technology, Amazon Studios, and The Climate Pledge are some of the things pioneered by Amazon. For more information, visit amazon.com/about and follow @AmazonNews.