AWS to pitch up in the UK in 2016 - prepare your CV now

Now you can keep your data in the cloud, in the UK, safe from the prying eyes of everyone except the government

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is to open a new data centre in the UK, a move that will help public sector organisations, in particular, to use services based in the Amazon cloud.

The move will also provide a solution, of sorts, for organisations currently wrestling with the issue of "safe harbour" after the agreement between the US and European Union was struck down by the European Court of Justice.

And it should also help in terms of latency, which is a particular issue with financial trading and banking organisations located in and around the City of London.

The plans were unveiled by AWS chief technology Werner Vogels (pictured) in a blog post. "The AWS UK region will be our third in the European Union," he said, "and we're shooting to have it ready by the end of 2016 (or early 2017). This region will provide even lower latency and strong data sovereignty to local users."

The new data centre will add to the facility AWS already runs in Dublin, Ireland, and Frankfurt, Germany, and comes after the company announced plans to open a string of new data centres in South Korea, with a hint that there's even more to come soon.

"We have always believed that you need to be able to exercise complete control over where your data is stored and where it is processed," said Jeff Barr, an AWS "cloud evangelist", wrote in a blog post regarding the South Korea openings.

Not surprisingly, the announcement was jumped on by government ministers, with Lord Maude - who as an MP was the Cabinet Office minister until May this year - described it as "great news" for the UK.

He continued: "Having secure cloud services on UK soil will further grow our 'digital economy' and it is further proof the UK is the most favoured location in Europe for inward investment with the skills, infrastructure and digital capability to support the world's leading businesses."

Government chief technology officer Liam Maxwell added: "It's great to see that Amazon Web Services will be providing commercial cloud services from data centres in the UK. Not only will this mean a significant investment in the UK economy, but means more healthy competition and innovation in the UK data centre market. This is good news for the UK government given the significant amount of data we hold that needs to be kept onshore."