– The pandemic has been a catalyst for digital transformation
The Nordic head of AWS, Marielle Lindgren, believes that demanding pandemic years have been a time for learning in the Nordic countries.
Stockholm: Amazon Web Services (AWS) has in a short time taken a firm grip on the market for cloud-based infrastructure (Iaas), well over 6,000 attendees at a Nordic ‘summit’ speak their clear language. The company has been one of the innovators and drivers behind the fact that a server has gone from being a hardware you buy and install software on, to a server being a programmable resource on the web.
– We have a deep tradition of innovation in the Nordic region. In the Nordic region, the pandemic has been a catalyst for cloud adoption and digital transformation, as the new Nordic head of Amazon Web Services, Marielle Lindgren, during the opening earlier today.
The company currently has 84 accessibility zones in 26 regions worldwide. Both Lindgren and Deepak Singh, vice president of compute at AWS, who also attended the opening, assured in his speeches that the expansion of the core network must continue.
– Amazon has invested heavily in infrastructure, other with new local zones in Oslo, Helsinki and Copenhagen. We must continue to make Nordic companies more competitive, Lindgren said.
Missing people
Lindgren pointed out that there is still an enormous potential for AWS and the rest of the supplier industry in the cloud. She referred to a study by Deloitte which should show that just 5-15 percent of global it has moved to the cloud.
– The journey to the cloud has only just begun. The biggest challenges are the lack of people with real skills, she said.
This is the background to the free AWS training program, which runs with optimistic goals of educating, or training, 29 million people worldwide. These are initiatives the company is investing heavily in in the Nordic region as well.
Green sky
Because data centers draw extremely much power from the power grids, the company is extremely clear in its commitment to green energy. They claim that sharing resources in the cloud is several times greener than IT in the data room.
– We want to base all our data centers on renewable energy, and Amazon is the largest corporate buyer of renewable energy worldwide. In Sweden, we have also invested in the Nysäter wind farm, she said during the opening.
Worldwide, AWS has invested in nine renewable energy power plants. Nysäter is under construction in Värmland, between Karlstad and Årjeng, and when it is in full operation, it will have 21 turbines with a total capacity of 474 megawatts.