ZARAGOZA, 22 May. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The general director of Amazon Web Services (AWS) in Spain and Portugal, Suzana Curic, has assured that “it is no coincidence” that the multinational has chosen Aragon to invest 15,700 in the expansion of its data centers, in “great news” which he has described as “the fruit of shared work” and which reaffirms them to continue promoting the technology sector to continue positioning Spain and Aragon as a “reference” in southern Europe.
This was stated by the AWS board at an informative breakfast held this Wednesday in Zaragoza, in which the president of the Government of Aragon, Jorge Azcón, announced that the company will invest 15.7 billion euros until 2033 in the three data centers that has in the Community – in Huesca, El Burgo de Ebro and Villanueva de Gállego (Zaragoza) -, with which the creation of 17,500 jobs is expected throughout the country, 6,800 of them in the Aragonese community.
Curic has also highlighted the economic impact of this investment amounts to 21,600 million euros in the Spanish GDP until 2033 and 12,900 in the Aragonese GDP.
Thus, he assured that they are “firm defenders” of innovation and the push for digital transformation, through machine learning technologies or artificial intelligence, which are “on everyone’s lips”, but they need to have an infrastructure ” solid and safe” to drive its adoption.
In the words of the general director of AWS in Spain and Portugal, “there is no transformation without training”, which is why the company’s commitment is to train more than 29 million people worldwide in cloud technologies up to 2025 and two million specifically in AI.
As for Aragon, it has announced that it will strengthen collaboration with educational centers and universities and encourage young people to study the so-called STEAM careers -Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Mathematics-.
Suzana Curic recalled that four years have passed since, in 2020, the multinational made the decision to locate its Cloud Region in Aragon and almost two since, in November 2022, the three data centers located in the Community began operating. , which provide services to “tens of thousands of clients”, including more than 75% of the Ibex35, many SMEs, administrations or NGOs. A bet, he continued, that has not only been beneficial for them, but for the entire territory.
Since that moment, an ecosystem has been created in Aragon that is the result of listening, dialogue, continuous learning and the “rasmia” – a word used in the region to express drive or determination – typical of the place.
In this sense, he pointed out that Aragon has “a solid business fabric” that includes “an endless number” of local companies and businesses with strong roots, to which Amazon wants to continue contributing with actions of social impact in education, sustainability and improvement of local communities.
Furthermore, Curic highlighted that, in terms of local talent, the Autonomous Community is carrying out important work to train professionals “for a future that is already here” and has recognized the Amazon project as “of general interest.” and a project “from Aragon, for Spain and for Europe.”
Likewise, he highlighted that AWS always works closely because they want to be “the best neighbors”, which they want to demonstrate by collaborating to enhance Aragonese talent, the creation of quality employment, the expansion of regional businesses and collaboration with institutions. educational institutions, social groups or neighborhood communities, all with the desire to contribute to a land in which they feel “one more”.
In another vein, Curic has highlighted that the AWS project is “sustainable” and that it represents “a cloud to help the region be a green economic engine”, with a commitment to the efficient and sustainable functioning of its operations.
Thus, he stressed that, since 2022, all the company’s data centers use electricity from renewable sources and that this Tuesday, without going any further, they gave the green light to 12 new renewable generation projects in Spain, which already total a total of 79 throughout the country.
The technology multinational will continue to advance in this sustainability proposal because they always find “new ways to innovate”, including the development of more efficient chips to promote artificial intelligence, the board has stated.
AWS therefore aims to minimize the impact of the carbon footprint generated by AWS activity and return resources to the community. Its project to restore basins and improve hydrographic infrastructure in the regions where its data centers are located is framed along these lines.
The goal is that, before 2030, they will be able to return more water to the environment than their data centers use, because innovation is only such “if it makes a better future possible for everyone,” he concluded.