Amazon reaffirms UK commitment, will still build data centres

Web giant Amazon reaffirmed its commitment to the UK on Thursday, saying it will plough ahead with plans to build new data centres in the country despite the vote to leave the European Union.

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The boss of the company’s Web Services division, Gavin Jackson, told attendees at an annual summit in London that the referendum result will not disrupt Amazon’s plans.

Amazon had announced in late 2015 that it will open a data centre in the UK to support its Amazon Web Services cloud systems, which are relied on by thousands of online services.

It will be the company’s third European data centre after Frankfurt and Dublin, and Amazon still planned to complete them by the end of this year or early 2017.

The plans were welcomed at the time, as they would give businesses in Britain the option to keep their Amazon Web Services data onshore, which is required by the ‘safe harbour’ court ruling last year over cross-border data transfer.