Some AWS, Azure and GCP availability zones run out of third party (at least Equinix) datacenters. It's easier and cheaper for the more "niche" regions - nobody will use the Paris region outside of customers in and around France, does it make sense to build and operate 3 DCs for such a market? Apparently AWS decided that it doesn't and they use Equinix PA2 and PA3, among others, for that.
> nobody will use the Paris region outside of customers in and around France, does it make sense to build and operate 3 DCs for such a market? Apparently AWS decided that it doesn't and they use Equinix PA2 and PA3, among others, for that.
There may be something else to it... they are launching a Spain region [1] this year with three data centers. My guess is that it will be both heavily subsidized and much cheaper to operate than a similar project in France.
I think it might also be, that if you are a company working on public sector projects, servers being within the country is required or preferred to win the contracts.
Haven't been in this space in a long time, but when I did work on such projects in Switzerland mid 2000s having anything outside the country would at least raise eyebrows. Back then we had to run most things on-premise, but from what I have heard, they opened up to the cloud to a degree.
See also the tags of the article "[...] Education, Government, Healthcare, Nonprofit, Public Sector, [...]"
