Now Open – AWS Middle East (Bahrain) 

September 8, 2021: Amazon Elasticsearch Service has been renamed to Amazon OpenSearch Service. See details.

The first AWS Region in the Middle East is now open and it is available for you to use today. The official name is Middle East (Bahrain) and the API name is me-south-1.

With today’s launch, the AWS Cloud now spans 69 Availability Zones within 22 geographic regions around the world.

The Middle East (Bahrain) Region consists of three Availability Zones (AZ’s). Having three Availability Zones enables Middle East organizations to meet business continuity and disaster recovery requirements and also build highly available, fault-tolerant, and scalable applications.

Instances and Services
Applications running in this 3-AZ region can use C5, C5d, D2, I3, M5, M5d, R5, R5d, and T3 instances, and can make use of a long list of AWS services including Amazon API Gateway, Application Auto Scaling, AWS Certificate Manager (ACM), AWS Artifact, AWS CloudFormation, Amazon CloudFront, AWS CloudTrail, Amazon CloudWatch,CloudWatch Events, Amazon CloudWatch Logs, AWS CodeDeploy, AWS Config, AWS Config Rules, AWS Database Migration Service, AWS Direct Connect, Amazon DynamoDB, EC2 Auto Scaling, EC2 Dedicated Hosts, Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS), Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Elastic Container Registry (Amazon ECR), Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS), Application Load Balancers (Classic, Network, and Application), Amazon EMR, Amazon ElastiCache, Amazon Elasticsearch Service, Amazon Glacier, AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM), Amazon Kinesis Data Streams, AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS), AWS Lambda, AWS License Manager, AWS Marketplace, Amazon Neptune, AWS Organizations, AWS Personal Health Dashboard, AWS Resource Groups, Amazon Redshift, Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS), Amazon Aurora, Amazon Route 53 (including Private DNS for VPCs), AWS Shield, AWS Server Migration Service, Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS), Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS), Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon Simple Workflow Service (SWF), AWS Step Functions, AWS Support API, AWS Systems Manager, AWS Transit Gateway, AWS Trusted Advisor, Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC), and VM Import/Export.

Edge Locations and Direct Connect
Amazon CloudFront edge locations are already operational in two cities in the Middle East (Dubai, and Fujairah, in the United Arab Emirates).

These cities also host existing AWS Direct Connect locations (Equinix DX1 in Dubai, and Etisalat Smart Hub datacenter in Fujairah). In addition we are now opening a new AWS Direct Connect location, AWS Bahrain DC53, in Manama, Bahrain. This new location is the first to be operated by AWS and features 1 Gbps and 10 Gbps connections. See the AWS Direct Connect website for details on our locations, associated home regions, logical redundancy, and pricing.

AWS Customers in the Middle East
Our customers in the Middle East are already using AWS to do incredible things, for example:

Emirates NBD is a leading banking Group in the Middle East that is utilizing AWS’s artificial intelligence and machine learning services, data analytics, and natural language processing technologies to better engage with customers and simplify banking.

Al Tayer Group, one of the largest privately held family-run conglomerates in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) with interests in automobile sales and services, luxury and lifestyle retail, and hospitality, relies on several AWS managed database services such as Amazon Aurora, and was able to cut costs by 40%, while increasing performance by four times, compared with proprietary database technologies.

Bahrain’s National Bureau of Revenue (NBR), needed a solution that would enable a seamless VAT rollout, without delays and with the highest levels of security. By launching SAP S/4 Hana on AWS, the NBR was able to go to market in just under two months while lowering costs by 40%.

The most well-known and fastest growing businesses in the Middle East are also choosing AWS to launch and grow their businesses. Careem, the leading technology platform for the region, started working with AWS in 2012 to help it scale fast and wide across 14 countries in under seven years. Today, Careem hosts some 33 million customers and one million drivers on its platform, and has expanded its services to offer on demand deliveries as well its original core business, ride hailing.

And that Makes 22
AWS Cloud now has 22 regions with 69 Availability Zones, and we’re not close to being done. We are currently working on nine more Availability Zones and three more AWS Regions in Cape Town, Jakarta, and Milan.

Investing in the Future
To support the growth in cloud adoption across the region, AWS has made significant investments in education, training, and certification programs to help those interested in the latest cloud computing technologies, best practices, and architectures, to advance their technical skills and further support Middle East organizations in their digital transformation.

AWS Activate – This global program provides startups with credits, training, and support so that they can build their businesses on AWS.

AWS Educate – This global program teaches students about cloud computing. It provides AWS credits to educators and students, along with discounts on training, access to curated content, personalized learning pathways, and collaboration tools.

AWS Academy – This global program is designed to bridge the gap between academia and industry by giving students the knowledge that they need to have in order to qualify for jobs that require cloud skills. The program is built around hands-on experience, and includes an AWS-authored curriculum, access to AWS certification, accreditation for educators.

Training and Certification – This global program helps developers to build cloud skills using digital or classroom training and to validate those skills by earning an industry-recognized credential. It includes learning paths for Cloud Practitioners, Architects, Developers, and Operations.

The Middle East (Bahrain) Region is now open and you can start creating your AWS resources in it today!