Amazon in Athens Ushers New Era of Innovation in Greece
Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced that they will soon open their first office in Athens as part of the conglomerate’s ongoing investment in Greece.
The firm had previously opened a CloudFront location in the capital city and the addition of the AWS office is seen as another important development which grew out of the Memorandum of Understanding signed in 2020 with the country’s Ministry of Digital Governance.
Amazon says that the addition of these on-the-ground services will help Greece compete by building a modern economy powered by cloud computing.
Cameron Brooks, the director of public sector, Europe, at Amazon Web Services (AWS) said that he was “impressed by how the city nurtures its innovators and reinvents itself thanks to technology, placing Greece at the forefront of the digital economy.”
The office will support organizations of all sizes—startups, enterprises, and public sector agencies—as they make the transition to the cloud.
“Teams of AWS account managers, partner managers, solutions architects, and many other functions are already supporting Greek customers to run everything from development and test environments to big data analytics, mobile, web, social, enterprise business applications, Internet of Things (IoT), and mission-critical workloads,” Brooks said.
“The opening of the office is our latest investment in Greece. For many years, we’ve had a strong, dedicated, and growing community of customers in Greece using AWS technologies to innovate for the benefit of the citizens of the country.”
Only part of its ongoing investment plan, the company says that it is continuing to expand its presence in Greece to support the growing number of customers and partners in the country.
To learn more about AWS, please visit its website, here.
Vibrant user group in Athens
Teams of AWS account managers, partner managers, solutions architects, and many other functions already support Greek customers to run everything from development and test environments to Big Data analytics, mobile, web and social, enterprise business applications, the Internet of Things (IoT), and mission-critical workloads.
AWS counts some of Greece’s fastest-growing and most well-known startups and businesses as customers including Beat, Deepsea Technologies, futurehome.gr, Madinad, Marpoint, Money Market, Orfium, Omilia, PAOK FC, Qivos, Spitogatos, Voiceland, Wind Hellas, Workathlon, and Xrysi Eukairia, as well as public sector organizations.
AWS also has a vibrant Greek user group in Athens, with hundreds of members that organize local meetups for developers to share best practices, knowledge, and to network among peers. Those looking to join the AWS Greece user group can visit their own site, here.
“We are excited to open our first AWS office in Greece,” said Przemek Szuder, AWS Central and Eastern Europe Leader.
“We have seen increased customer adoption of AWS in the country and decided to open an office in Athens to better support new customers who are looking to use AWS to innovate, lower their IT costs, and grow their organizations on the cloud.
“We look forward to fostering the country’s pioneering spirit alongside our customers and helping them accelerate their digital transformation and deliver innovative new products and services to Greek customers and citizens.”
For many years, AWS has supported the Greek startup and technology community by bringing programs like AWS Activate and AWS Academy to the country.
AWS Activate provides startups with the resources they need to get started on AWS – including up to $100,000 in credits, training, support, as well as contact with incubators, accelerators, and venture capital firms, such as CrowdPolicy, Marathon, MBriyo, Metavallon, MIT EF, National Bank of Greece, OK!Thess, and Venture Friends.
AWS has also been active in the Greek education sector as well, training and educating students and the next generation of IT leaders with AWS Academy.
AWS Academy helps university students and educators to develop knowledge and skills about AWS cloud computing in order to accelerate cloud-related learning.
AWS Academy member institutions in Greece include American College of Thessaloniki, Athens University of Economics and Business, and International Hellenic University.
Building innovative solutions
Greek-based AWS Partner Network (APN) Partners also welcomed the opening of an AWS office in the country. The APN includes tens of thousands of Independent Software Vendors and Systems Integrators around the world.
APN Partners build innovative solutions and services on AWS and the APN helps by providing those entities with business, technical, marketing, and go-to-market support.
APN SIs such as Accenture, ALEF, and others are working with enterprise and public sector customers in Greece such as municipalities, academic institutions, national broadcasting TV and Radio, national infrastructure and energy and utilities, helping them to migrate to AWS, deploy mission-critical applications, and provide a full range of monitoring, automation, and management services for customers’ cloud environments.
ISVs in Greece using AWS to deliver their software to customers around the world include Blendo, INTERXION, Lenses.io and Upgrade. Customers in Greece can also easily find, trial, deploy, and buy software solutions for AWS on the AWS Marketplace.
AWS delivers secure computing, storage, networking, databases, and other advanced technologies, like artificial intelligence and machine learning, as on-demand, pay-as-you-go services for customers. S
ome of the world’s most successful startups such as Airbnb and Netflix, as well as enterprise companies, like BMW, Formula 1, and Twitter, as well as government organisations, such as the European Space Agency, the European Comission, the UK Ministry of Justice, and NASA are using AWS to innovate, increase agility, and lower IT costs.
Customers looking to learn more about AWS services should visit our website here. Individuals interested in career opportunities with AWS in Greece can learn more and apply online, here.
About Amazon Web Services
For fourteen years, Amazon Web Services has been the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform.
AWS offers over 175 fully featured services for computing, storage, databases, networking, analytics, robotics, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT).
They also help bring to consumers mobile, security, hybrid, virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR), media, and application development, deployment, and management from 77 Availability Zones (AZs) within 24 geographic regions, with announced plans for 18 more Availability Zones and six more AWS Regions in Australia, India, Indonesia, Japan, Spain, and Switzerland.
Millions of customers—including the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises, and leading government agencies—trust AWS to power their infrastructure, become more agile, and lower costs. To learn more about AWS, please visit its site, here.