Microsoft Azure launched a long-awaited new cloud area in Doha, Qatar, on Monday.
The Qatar Azure cloud area was first introduced in December 2019, months earlier than the consequences of COVID-19 hit. The pre-pandemic announcement now feels quaint because it contained a promise to speed up the Qatari authorities’s efforts for digital transformation with a completion date of 2021. That date was finally delayed to 2022.
“Within the coming two weeks we shall be launching the area globally, however undoubtedly the datacenter is already right here in Qatar,” Lana Khalaf, common supervisor of Microsoft Qatar, advised native media outlet The Peninsula in late June.
Khalaf mentioned the datacenter would create 24,000 new jobs and that Microsoft would prepare 50,000 individuals over the following 5 years.
Regardless of the launch, Microsoft’s Azure web site confirmed no merchandise out there in Qatar on the time of publication.
The corporate does have Azure areas close by in Dubai within the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Google Cloud can be enjoying catch-up within the space. Though it at present has no cloud areas within the UAE or Qatar, the corporate mentioned it has plans elsewhere within the Center East – in Tel Aviv, Israel; Doha, Qatar; and Dammam, Saudi Arabia. Alibaba Cloud, in the meantime, opened a area in Dubai in 2016.
AWS plans to open a cloud area within the UAE this yr. The corporate already has a one in Bahrain, and plans for one more in Israel.
Microsoft Azure mentioned on Monday that the brand new datacenter in Doha will provide “further resiliency for… functions by designing the area with distinctive bodily datacenter areas with unbiased energy, community, and cooling for added tolerance to datacenter failures.”
The brand new area makes Qatar the fifty fifth for Azure globally. ®
