Not only is this the first AWS Wavelength Zones in Africa, but also the first Wavelength Zones in countries without an existing AWS Region or AWS Local Zone
Orange Middle East & Africa (OMEA) and Amazon Web Services (AWS), announced they are bringing AWS Wavelength to Morocco and Senegal later this year, supporting use cases across regulated industries that require data to remain local, such as telecom, finance, public sector, and healthcare, as well as industries that depend on low-latency applications like gaming.
The new Wavelength Zones will support Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances and Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) volume types such as gp2. Users can also access Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS), Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS), Amazon EMR and Application Load Balancer (ALB) to support a broad set of workloads.
With AWS Wavelength, customers can take advantage of the cloud’s on-demand scaling and pay-as-you-go pricing model, enabling them to keep their data localized while benefiting from the same reliable, secure, and high-performance infrastructure as AWS Regions. By extending AWS infrastructure, services, APIs, and tools to localized in-country infrastructure, AWS Wavelength allows customers to process and store their data locally while leveraging the scalability and security of the AWS Cloud.
Orange and AWS said these are the first AWS Wavelength Zones directly accessible both through wireless and wireline connections, allowing any customer to deploy and run applications locally on AWS compute and storage located in Orange data centres.
As an AWS Advanced Tier Services Partner, Orange has a strong track record of supporting enterprises on their cloud journeys and will leverage the new local infrastructure capabilities, as well as existing AWS Regions, to foster cloud adoption in Africa. Orange will also be an anchor customer for the AWS Wavelength Zones, running some of its IT workloads in-country.
“The announcement of AWS Wavelength Zones for North & West Africa is a major achievement in our strategy to foster the cloud transformation of African businesses,” said Orange Middle East and Africa CEO Jérôme Hénique (above). “We are providing the benefits of AWS to Moroccan and Senegalese organizations, from SMBs to MNCs, while ensuring data residency in secure Orange datacentres in combination with our best-in-class connectivity solutions.”
Regionless zones
Historically, AWS Wavelength Zones have existed in countries with AWS Regions. According to the partners, this announcement showcases “a new and evolved AWS Wavelength Zone design” to help meet the needs of customers in these emerging geographies, providing the key benefit of bringing AWS services into countries without an AWS Region or AWS Local Zone.
Customers can deploy their applications to AWS compute and storage located within Orange’s data centres in Morocco and Senegal, so application traffic only needs to travel from the device to the local AWS Wavelength Zone either via Orange’s network or the network of another mobile or internet service provider. With the new design, customers can deploy applications with low latency and granular data residency controls, providing further choice to help customers address stringent data residency requirements, such as in-country for regulatory, contractual, or security reasons.
“The deployment of AWS Wavelength Zones in North and West Africa, in collaboration with Orange, will further empower customers in growing geographies with local AWS services,” said AWS VP of EC2 Edge Jan Hofmeyr. “Customers of all sizes and all industries in Morocco and Senegal will be able to access local AWS compute and storage for data residency, low latency, and security needs for applications across real-time gaming and regulated industries, helping customers unlock new innovation and accelerate digital transformation.”
Happy gamers
To prove the point the partners asked local telco-grade gaming technology provider Swarmio whether the arrival of AWS via Orange was a good thing. “There is a dynamic and growing gamer community in Africa, including Morocco and Senegal, and we want to provide them with advanced gaming experiences but run into technical hurdles involving locally available cloud services,” said Swarmio CEO and founder Vijai Karthigesu. “AWS Wavelength will help us transform the worldwide gaming landscape by combining the power of AWS with our Swarmio Edge platform to provide an unmatched, low-latency experience that allows creators to connect and delights global game publishers and developers.”