The cloud provider is significantly expanding its workforce in Germany.
(Photo: Reuters)
Dusseldorf The cloud specialist AWS has significantly expanded its business in Germany – because of the corona pandemic, many companies are investing in digitization. This is noticeable when looking for personnel: 600 new jobs will be created over the course of the year, said Klaus Bürg, who is responsible for the German-speaking area at the Amazon subsidiary, the Handelsblatt.
The positions are to be created in all areas – in central functions and sales as well as in development and operation of the data centers. For example, the group is building a research center for artificial intelligence with the Max Planck Institute in Tübingen. The innovation potential of the German market for the cloud is great, and there are also many technological talents in the country, explained Bürg.
Germany is seen as a latecomer when it comes to digitization. The European Center for Digital Competitiveness places the Federal Republic in second to last place of the seven most important industrial nations (G7). However, a lot has happened in recent years when it comes to the use of cloud services. According to a survey by the statistics agency Eurostat, usage is now slightly above the EU average.
The corona crisis has contributed a lot, emphasized Bürg: Digitization helps to better meet customer requirements, cloud computing is “an important lever”. The technology makes it possible to access IT resources at short notice and on demand. At best, the result is more speed and flexibility.
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The manager also observes that the narrative is changing: while in the past there were many concerns about data protection, for example, it is now often about the “advantages of the data economy”. Politicians want to promote data exchange across company boundaries, for example with a data strategy and projects such as the digital infrastructure Gaia-X.
billions in added value
According to a survey by market researcher IW Consult on behalf of AWS, 37.5 percent of the approximately 1,500 companies surveyed with at least ten employees used the public cloud in the past year, in which the data is processed exclusively in the data centers of the service providers. Amazon is number one in the market for infrastructure from the data cloud, ahead of Microsoft and Google.
In the Corona period, usage has increased rapidly. A good 58 percent of companies operated at least a third of their IT infrastructure in the cloud last year – in 2019, i.e. before the pandemic, it was only a good 40 percent. AWS is therefore building new locations, new data centers are currently being built in Berlin and Munich, which are intended to ensure a lower response time (latency) during data transmission.
Many companies have so far used relatively simple cloud services such as office software (78 percent), virtual storage (78 percent) and video platforms (62 percent). The technology also helps with web applications (57 percent) and process automation (56 percent). Virtual servers (30 percent), platforms for app development (17 percent) and artificial intelligence (11 percent) are used less frequently.
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Bürg pointed out that many companies initially use individual applications and then move more and more IT to the cloud. There are also customers who build their own platforms on the AWS infrastructure, such as Volkswagen with the Industrial Cloud or Deutsche Börse with a system for data analysis that is used to test trading algorithms.
According to the economic researchers, the economic benefit of the cloud is also significant: savings in IT infrastructure and additional business will result in an added value of 68.5 billion euros for 2021 – that is just as much “as in the economic sectors of aviation and shipping together”. The market leader AWS therefore accounts for 11.2 billion euros. IW Consult belongs to the German Economic Institute (IW) and does contract research.
However, a majority of 63 percent of companies still do not use the public cloud. In addition to the lack of relevance to the business model (71.4 percent), concerns about data security (51 percent) and data protection (44 percent) are the most important arguments. However, a significant proportion (43 percent) have simply not yet engaged with the technology.
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