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Why not Israel? * We have multiple fiber links * A lot of AWS heavy workloads comes from Israeli companies * Easy connection to other location through Egypt and

by isotop 10y ago

Why not Israel? * We have multiple fiber links * A lot of AWS heavy workloads comes from Israeli companies * Easy connection to other location through Egypt and Jordan

wavefunction 10y ago
Why not Africa for Africa. Infrastructure for Africans. Jobs for Africans, network effects as technology use and extension takes off and salaries rise and hopefully lift up those who can't take direct part in the digital economy yet. No offense to you or Israel, but it would be nice to see African interests managed somewhat "locally" whenever possible, with the benefits accrued and distributed locally as well. I think that's a future many people hope for, and it's nice to see an effort towards that direction where possible.
solatic 10y ago
As much as I'd personally love for an AWS region to be built in Israel, the fact of the matter is, Israel is a poor development target for AWS. * Biggest problem is that Israel is an Internet cul-de-sac - there aren't any overland Internet links to Arab countries because of politics. Which means that the only people who are going to get great pings are Israelis. * Sure, there are a ton of Israeli tech companies, but if they're going to spin up instances in an Israeli region, they're going to be low-traffic/requirement dev instances. Production instances are going to be located close to customers, and almost no Israeli tech companies sell to the tiny local market. * Israeli customs infrastructure has a long way to go before it's probably reliable enough for Amazon to risk investment. Imagine a vital shipment of server hardware getting held up at Ashdod because Histadrut went on strike.... shudder I refuse to believe that the bean counters at Amazon are ignorant - they've more probably come to the conclusion that it's just not profitable.
discodave 10y ago
Israels economy is too small to justify an AWS region (yet). To find out where the next AWS regions are going, go to wikipedia and sort countries by GDP, any large country without a region is a target. Obviously there is some massaging happening, like AWS is considering all the nordic countries near Sweden. Another thing would be if AWS started building smaller regions with only 1 DC. Right now a region requires at least 3 DCs with the AZ model... so that's a lot of capacity to fill.
- jen20 10y ago
  While what you say makes perfect sense to _everyone_, sadly it is not true. London and Canada - both very new regions for AWS - each only have two availability zones (making them basically useless for a large class of infrastructure).
bdcravens 10y ago
There are a number of cities (Cairo, Riyadh, and Tehran come to mind) that are closer to Israel than Austin is from its nearest AWS data center, so plenty of other options as well to service Israel.

by isotop 10y ago

Why not Israel? * We have multiple fiber links * A lot of AWS heavy workloads comes from Israeli companies * Easy connection to other location through Egypt and Jordan

wavefunction 10y ago

Why not Africa for Africa. Infrastructure for Africans. Jobs for Africans, network effects as technology use and extension takes off and salaries rise and hopefully lift up those who can't take direct part in the digital economy yet. No offense to you or Israel, but it would be nice to see African interests managed somewhat "locally" whenever possible, with the benefits accrued and distributed locally as well. I think that's a future many people hope for, and it's nice to see an effort towards that direction where possible.

solatic 10y ago

As much as I'd personally love for an AWS region to be built in Israel, the fact of the matter is, Israel is a poor development target for AWS. * Biggest problem is that Israel is an Internet cul-de-sac - there aren't any overland Internet links to Arab countries because of politics. Which means that the only people who are going to get great pings are Israelis. * Sure, there are a ton of Israeli tech companies, but if they're going to spin up instances in an Israeli region, they're going to be low-traffic/requirement dev instances. Production instances are going to be located close to customers, and almost no Israeli tech companies sell to the tiny local market. * Israeli customs infrastructure has a long way to go before it's probably reliable enough for Amazon to risk investment. Imagine a vital shipment of server hardware getting held up at Ashdod because Histadrut went on strike.... shudder I refuse to believe that the bean counters at Amazon are ignorant - they've more probably come to the conclusion that it's just not profitable.

discodave 10y ago

Israels economy is too small to justify an AWS region (yet). To find out where the next AWS regions are going, go to wikipedia and sort countries by GDP, any large country without a region is a target. Obviously there is some massaging happening, like AWS is considering all the nordic countries near Sweden. Another thing would be if AWS started building smaller regions with only 1 DC. Right now a region requires at least 3 DCs with the AZ model... so that's a lot of capacity to fill.

jen20 10y ago
While what you say makes perfect sense to _everyone_, sadly it is not true. London and Canada - both very new regions for AWS - each only have two availability zones (making them basically useless for a large class of infrastructure).

bdcravens 10y ago

There are a number of cities (Cairo, Riyadh, and Tehran come to mind) that are closer to Israel than Austin is from its nearest AWS data center, so plenty of other options as well to service Israel.