Amazon Web Services creates 500 jobs in Germany

Amazon Web Services said on Monday it was creating 500 jobs in Germany and opening a new office in Munich that will showcase what cloud computing can do for potential clients in Europe’s largest economy.

AWS, which grew out of the technology that runs Amazon’s e-commerce platform, is gaining scale in Germany after addressing concerns about privacy that led many manufacturing firms to keep their servers on-site.

“Those clients have overcome those compliance and security constraints and are now in catch-up mode,” said Klaus Buerg, general manager of AWS in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

“Because of that kind of constraint, habit and behaviour in the past, they are now working more like a fast follower than a front runner,” he told Reuters in an interview.

AWS has received a cloud computing security certification from Germany’s cyber-security authority, providing assurances that data is safe even if it is hosted on remote servers outside the country.