AWS teams working around the clock to keep Middle East services up after drone strikes, CEO says
by Jordan Novet · CNBCKey Points
- Matt Garman, CEO of Amazon Web Services, said the cloud infrastructure provider has teams working around the clock to keep its infrastructure operating in the Middle East.
- AWS data centers in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates were damaged in drone strikes last month.
- Dozens of services that rely on its data centers in the region continue to be unavailable.
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The Iran war poses ongoing challenges for cloud provider Amazon Web Services, its chief, Matt Garman, said Tuesday.
The Amazon division said in early March that drone strikes had damaged its data centers in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates.
"It's a really difficult situation, and we're working incredibly hard," Garman told CNBC's Kate Rooney at the HumanX conference in San Francisco on Tuesday. "In fact, we have teams, 24/7, working to make sure that we can keep our infrastructure up for our customers in that region."
Dozens of AWS services in Bahrain and United Arab Emirates continue to be unavailable, according to the company's status page.
Last week, Iran's Revolutionary Guard navy announced it had targeted Amazon data center infrastructure in Bahrain. Amazon declined to comment at the time.
Data centers, particularly those housing chips that can handle generative artificial intelligence models, consume large amounts of energy, which has become more expensive since the conflict began in February.
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On Monday, oil prices shot higher as President Donald Trump threatened attacks on civilian infrastructure if the Islamic Republic does not commit to reopening the Strait of Hormuz.
"It's obviously hugely disruptive for the global economy, as we're all very dependent on energy, and also just distracting for industry, for us," Garman said. "You know, there's not short-term, immediate things, but it really is just the drag on the global economy that we have to think about."
Amazon Web Services is the world's top supplier of cloud infrastructure that companies can rely on to run websites and applications. Google, Microsoft and Oracle are also working to build more data centers to provide cloud services worldwide.
Technology isn't the only industry seeing implications, Garman said.
"You just have to go further down the supply chain to find something, and so we're not different than that," he said.
The restriction of movement through the Strait of Hormuz has pushed up the price of helium, a key ingredient in semiconductor manufacturing. Qatar, which sits west of the strait, produced more than one-third of helium globally, according to one estimate.
Garman struck an optimistic tone about the Middle East.
"There's a fantastic entrepreneurial spirit," he said. "There's a willingness to invest. And so our and my excitement about investing long term in that region is just as strong as it's ever been."