LISBON, Portugal – July 31, 2019— Amazon Web Services (AWS), an Amazon.com company, announced the decision to invest in an Amazon CloudFront Edge location in Portugal, which is expected to be operational in 2019. Located in Lisbon, the new Edge location brings the full suite of services provided by Amazon CloudFront, including integration with compute, networking, and security services like, AWS Lambda@Edge, Amazon Route53, Amazon S3 Transfer Acceleration, AWS Shield, and AWS Web Application Firewall (WAF). Portugal is the latest country to be connected to the AWS global infrastructure network of 187 Points of Presence (including 176 Edge Locations and 11 Regional Edge Caches) in 69 cities across 30 countries. For more information on AWS’s global infrastructure, go to aws.amazon.com/about-aws/global-infrastructure.
Amazon CloudFront is a fast content delivery network (CDN) service. It securely delivers applications, data, and videos to customers while also making advanced functionality available, via Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), with low latency and high transfer speeds, all within a developer-friendly environment. Amazon CloudFront’s expansion into Portugal further improves availability and performance to end-users, with customers across the country seeing up to a 60 percent reduction in latency for delivery of their content.
“We are thrilled to bring our customers in Portugal advanced and secure technology infrastructure, after opening our first AWS office in Lisbon last year,” said Miguel Alava, AWS Director for Southern Europe. “AWS is committed to investing in Portugal and has been supporting customers in the country in their cloud journey for many years. Adding this Amazon CloudFront Edge location will help Portuguese organizations achieve lower latency, while delivering the same levels of security that they have come to expect from AWS Cloud, ultimately resulting in a better overall experience for their end users.”
The announcement of the AWS Edge location was welcomed by the Portuguese government with Mr. António Costa, Prime Minister of Portugal, saying, “Amazon Web Services’s commitment to investing in Portugal, through its new AWS Edge Location in Lisbon, shows how Portugal continues to build a more central role in the digital world, and reaffirms the importance of cloud computing in the digitalization of Portugal. A digital pioneer, such as Portugal, must harness a secure and robust cloud to bolster the technological development of our country and its enterprises. We are glad that AWS is investing in playing a key part in this process.”
Portuguese customers across all industries are benefitting from the flexibility, scalability, and security of AWS. The improved and faster user experience with local Amazon CloudFront infrastructure will help in driving the usage of even more web applications across Portugal, including eCommerce, educational, entertainment, gaming, healthcare, media, mobile banking, and government services. In addition, with the arrival of Amazon CloudFront infrastructure to Portugal, customers can now protect their applications using AWS’s perimeter security service, AWS Shield, which provides always-on detection and automatic inline DDOS mitigations that minimize application downtime. Like other AWS technologies, Amazon CloudFront is a self-service, pay-per-use offering, requiring no long term commitments or minimum fees, and can be used either standalone or in combination with other AWS services, to provide additional benefits to customers.
Customers in Portugal already using Amazon CloudFront include Impresa, Miniclip, Uniplaces, and many more. One organization welcoming the arrival of Amazon CloudFront is Federação Portuguesa de Futebol. Federação Portuguesa de Futebol (FPF), founded in 1914, is the governing body of football in Portugal that will launch shortly Channel 11, FPF’s TV channel, broadcasting football matches, debates, and analysis of key fixtures and top Portuguese teams’ performances. Fernando Gomes, President of FPF, said of the expected launch, “The AWS Edge location in Portugal is a game changer and will empower us to deliver on our vision to promote Portuguese football and to reach out to the millions of Portuguese fans all over the globe, not just via traditional TV, but also via our Channel 11 website. By leveraging the global network of AWS Edge locations, we will be able to achieve our goal to reunite the Portuguese diaspora on one online platform, knowing the content will be readily available to viewers wherever they are. Thanks to the new Amazon CloudFront location in Lisbon, we will not have to worry about content delivery latency issues or data transfer speeds, and the embedded security features bring us peace of mind, allowing us to focus on creating the best and most inspiring content for our viewers.”
Also welcoming the launch of the AWS Edge location in Portugal is the City of Cascais, a municipality located in the Lisbon District of Portugal. Miguel Pinto Luz, Deputy Mayor of Cascais said of the launch, “We want to be the first municipality in the country to start leveraging the new AWS Edge location. Cascais is at the forefront of innovation, fully embracing technology and cloud computing as enablers of the city’s digital transformation, which will benefit all Cascais residents. To meet this goal, we will be using the new Amazon Cloudfront location for Cascaisjovem.pt, our public service platform for Caiscais’ youth, which allows them to access and register to cultural, health, social, and sports events, study grants, as well as jobs and internships offers. This Edge location is a stepping stone for Cascais to start experimenting with more advanced AWS services such as AWS IoT to further strengthen Cascais’ position as the most innovative city in Portugal.”
The new Amazon CloudFront Edge location forms part of AWS’s continued investment in Portugal. In 2018, AWS opened the first office in Lisbon and has growing teams of account managers, solutions architects, partner managers, professional services consultants, support staff, and various other functions helping organizations speed up their digital transformation initiatives and more rapidly innovate for the customers and citizens of the country.
Customers looking to learn more about AWS services should visit: https://aws.amazon.com/pt/. Individuals interested in career opportunities with AWS in Portugal can learn more and apply online at aws.amazon.com/careers.
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For 13 years, Amazon Web Services has been the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform. AWS offers over 165 fully featured services for compute, storage, databases, networking, analytics, robotics, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), mobile, security, hybrid, virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR), media, and application development, deployment, and management from 69 Availability Zones (AZs) within 22 geographic regions, spanning the U.S., Australia, Bahrain, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, India, Ireland, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Sweden, and the UK. 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, visit aws.amazon.com.
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