Investments in data centers in Türkiye continue to increase, a trend that is also encouraged by talks with tech giants including Microsoft, Google, Facebook and Amazon Web Services (AWS). The momentum could be added extra impetus by data center-oriented regulation works by the Justice Ministry.

The matter was particularly weighed on during the AWS re:Invent 2022 conference, attended by more than 50,000 AWS customers and partners and over 300,000 virtual attendees from around the world.

One of the most anticipated events of the year gathered top business executives, software developers, IT executives and other technical decision-makers in Las Vegas.

Speaking about the data center investments, AWS Europe Public Sector General Manager Cameron Brooks said they were in talks with Türkiye’s Presidential Digital Transformation Office.

"We are working closely with the president of the Digital Transformation Office, Mr. Ali Koç, and his team on the needs of Türkiye in order to understand the opportunities of an investment to be made in Türkiye and its return to the private sector as well as the government. We will continue to evaluate this issue," Brooks said.

Importance of skills

According to Brooks, people love to focus on data centers.

"In fact, there is something about data centers that is often overshadowed; it is the skills. We think that cloud skills are probably a more important factor for economic development. Because what will really make innovation possible is to ensure that people can use the cloud, rather than building a data center," he noted.

That is why, Brooks says, they have skill programs that they had started before in Türkiye.

"Specifically for the public sector, we have trained more than 200 people in cloud skills. We offer our education programs, which we call Educate, through universities. I think we are doing this through 48 universities in Türkiye. We also have a training program called re/Start for people who have other careers or have worked in other jobs but want to shift to the IT sector. This program also focuses on women. In fact, the first graduates of the program in Türkiye consist of 17 women," he explained.

Investments in Europe

The executive also underscored what he said was an important increase in data center investments across Europe.

"Customers are excited about the possibilities of innovation, providing more advanced services to citizens and increasing efficiency. For instance, we have seen many customers in the education sector who have had to move their learning processes online quickly. This was made possible thanks to the scale of the cloud. So it was proved there how useful the cloud can be," Brooks noted.

He said they also saw customers who have had to shift their employees to a work-from-home system.

"For example, the employment office in Spain had to continue to provide services to the unemployed through digital call centers. In doing so, all office workers became people who work from home. They did this by using some of our digital call center technologies," he noted.

Then, in the field of health, Brooks said all data related to the coronavirus pandemic, such as case rates in different countries, were collected in the cloud.

"The World Health Organization is also one of our clients, and using all the data gathered in the cloud, they were able to make an assessment of the situation of the pandemic in different countries."

Effects of data nationalism

In addition, Brooks said they have been seeing many customers taking advantage of the opportunities provided by the cloud, such as France, which has moved railway information systems to the cloud, the Meteorological Office of Switzerland, or customers using educational technology in Scandinavia.

Brooks also elaborated on the impacts of data nationalism.

"We are always working with governments to make them understand what is possible with the cloud. We are aware of the concerns of governments about where the data is located or how much control they can have over the data. We recently published a blog about data sovereignty to remind our customers that they have complete control over their data at AWS," he said.

At AWS, Brooks stressed data is completely under customers’ control. "You can move it, delete it, you know where they are, and in addition, we provide you with mechanisms to make sure exactly who has access to them."

Brooks also cited AWS’ new service called External Key Store, which he says allows customers to control the encryption of data.

"The data is completely under your control, but if you also want to encrypt them, these keys are managed by you, so after all, everything is under your control again."

Meanwhile, after months of evaluation, the National Security Agency (NSA) of the United States decided to award AWS a $10 billion cloud computing contract despite Microsoft’s protest.