The President of the Government of Spain, Pedro Sánchez, and the President of Aragón, Javier Lambán, have shared the agenda for the presentation in society of the eighth European region of AWS in Spain that is located in Aragón, specifically in three locations: Villanueva de Gállego, Huesca and El Burgo de Ebro, whose mayors have also attended the presentation ceremony.
The General Manager of AWS, Miguel Álava, confirmed the multinational’s investment in Aragón of 2,500 million euros over ten years and an impact of 1,800 million, as well as the creation of 1,300 jobs.
The President of Aragón, Javier Lambán, highlighted the fact that the company has chosen Aragón and the impact that its installation has for the community even before starting, as well as strengthening its self-esteem due to the opportunity of being next to Dublin, Paris or London.
Likewise, he shared the duties that the Government of Aragon has imposed on itself so that the “very strong inertia that will generate its implementation can be at the service of an environmentally sustainable economic model and sustained over time”.
Lambán shared with the guests at the conference organized in the Spanish capital together with companies and media that, in the last two decades, Aragon has taken importance of its endogenous resources, taking advantage of them, taking into account the talent, water, wind and sun, as well as an “enviable” strategic position. He believes that AWS also took note of all this when deciding to set up here, in addition to the political and social climate of stability and calmness, proactive with economic development.
Precisely, from the activation of all these elements, “overwhelming” realities have already emerged, according to the Aragonese president, related to traditional sectors that have experienced a great boost, such as logistics, which has turned Aragon into one of the most important regions in southern Europe, facilitating exports and attracting investment from abroad. But also new sectors such as pharmaceuticals and aeronautics are underway.
AWS’s decision to set up in Aragon was undoubtedly a wake-up call for Lambán, as the company realized that Aragon had the territory to connect the three data centers, a very useful fiber optic interconnection for its objectives, as well as an electrical network and the capacity to generate reliable renewable energies. In addition, he had institutional interlocutors who were at his service from the beginning.
On April 4, 2018 the first formal contact and in the temporal chronicle until today, Lambán has thanked the management of President Pedro Sánchez to whom he asked, during his stay at the Davos summit in 2019 to be interested in this investment and he did so. On October 31, his commitment to Aragon was finally formalized.
Among the duties of the autonomous Executive, Lambán has cited all the efforts to democratize everything related to the cloud, being the first parliament to legislate in this regard, with a Cloud Law that is currently being processed in Cortes. In addition, there is a clear commitment to training and on January 26th the Digital Campus will be launched, closely linked to AWS’s own commitment in this area.
One of the main efforts of the Government of Aragon is to speed up and stimulate the attraction of investments, which has already led to three important actions associated with the implementation of AWS in Aragon, such as BWB, which will invest 230 million in Huesca and create 2,200 jobs in construction and 260 in the data center. There are also other company expansions such as those of DXCTechnology, which will expand its workforce in Zaragoza to exceed 1500 professionals. In addition, it consolidates its presence in our territory, Seidor, the technology services and solutions consultancy that launched in Aragon its first Competence Center specialized in Amazon Web Services (AWS) in Spain. Seidor has a team of 120 professionals and closed the 2021 financial year with a turnover of 15 million euros. The third expansion corresponds to NTT Data, according to the DGA of AWS, Miguel Álava.
The celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Statute of Autonomy of Aragon, according to Lambán, has been good for the community to develop its capabilities, such as providing industrial land for the implementation of companies for which millions of m2 of industrial land have already been enabled, streamlining the administration offering greater security in the deadlines, in addition to the commitment to renewable energies, taking advantage of the endogenous resources of wind and sun. More than 5,700 MW have been installed in Aragon and almost 20,500 more are in process. When everything is up and running, Aragon will be the region with the highest production of renewable energies, surpassing, as Lambán called it, the energy colonization stage of the 20th century. Lambán has assured that in the present times this cannot happen again and, without ceasing to be in solidarity with others, Aragón has proposed to take advantage of its resources for the take-off of Aragon’s own territory. For this, they are trying to reconcile with the Ministry of Energy Transition the supply and consumption of networks, putting an end to monopolies.
For his part, the President of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, has announced the approval of a cloud services strategy for public administrations that will facilitate collaboration with the private sector to help entrepreneurship, in addition to facilitating digital autonomy, data protection and cybersecurity.
To this end, a hybrid cloud infrastructure will be adopted, consisting of a cloud owned by the General State Administration and located in its own data centers, which is going to be combined with those of other administrations and external providers.
“This is going to be a decisive step in technological autonomy and also in security,” he assured before explaining that the data centers of the General Administration are going to be consolidated in a smaller number than at present but with better features.For Sánchez, more common and secure data spaces must be implemented to help boost business innovation in the main strategic sectors of the economy, including sustainable mobility, health or trade.
The AWS Conference “Innovation in the cloud as an opportunity for Spain” can be viewed at the following link ? http://bit.ly/3Xo81Rn
