• Pending Amazon’s choice of our country or Argentina as the location for its regional data center, the company will install an Edge location in Chile for its CloudFront service. The project is estimated to represent an investment of US$50 million.

Amazon Web Services (AWS), a subsidiary of global technology giant Amazon, has announced a million-dollar investment in Chile.

It consists of a data center known as an Edge location or Edge Data Center, which forms part of its Amazon CloudFront service and will enable it to offer clients a high-speed data service.

The company has yet to decide between Chile and Argentina for the installation of its regional data center, which is estimated to cost as much as US$1,000 million. Press reports have suggested that Argentina is the winner, but this has not been confirmed by Amazon.

With the recently announced project, Santiago will form part of a global network of 191 points of presence (180 edge locations and 11 regional edge caches) in 73 cities in 33 countries. In the region, Amazon already has infrastructure in Sao Paulo and Río de Janeiro in Brazil and, a few months ago, announced a similar investment in Argentina.

CloudFront delivers content through a global network of data centers, to which our country will now be added, permitting the distribution of data, videos, applications and application programming interfaces (APIs) to clients around the world, with low latency, high transfer speeds and the highest security standards.

“Without doubt, the development of the projects of Amazon Web Services in Chile is good news in complicated times. Our country is progressing towards becoming a digital hub in Latin America, enhancing its connectivity and developing its capacity to provide high-end digital services,” said the director of InvestChile, Cristián Rodríguez.

“The announcement by AWS of the installation of a center of this type – a project by a leading company in its sector which, as InvestChile, we have been supporting for more than two years – reflects its confidence in Chile and its future,” he added.

Although the amount of the investment was not disclosed, sources in the technology sector put it at around US$50 million.

Results

Yesterday, Amazon reported its first quarterly decline in earnings in over two years, amid increased spending to reduce shipping times. In response, its shares fell by more than 7% in after-hours trading.

The third-quarter earnings of the e-commerce giant reached US$4.23 per share, compared to US$5.75 in the same period last year, the Seattle-based company reported.

Analysts had, on average, anticipated US$4.59 per share, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Source: Pulso/InvestChile