The growth of cloud computing and AI are the main factors in the increased investment of the technology giant.
Amazon’s cloud computing arm, Amazon Web Services (AWS) announces to invest £8 billion over the next five years in the UK. The company aims at building, operating, and maintaining data centres. The investment by the company is to build data centres in order to support the customers in the west of England and London, according to Chancellor Rachel Reeves.
The maintenance of the newly created AI technologies involves the growing quantities of the processing power and server space. This indicated that most companies like AWS are put in a position to benefit from the growing demand in cloud computing capacity.
The growth of cloud computing and AI are the main factors in the increased investment of the technology giant. This could result in contributing a total of £14 billion to the GDP of the UK from 2024 to 2028 and help in the creation of about 14,000 jobs every year.
The same was mentioned by the Chancellor, Racheal Reeves, that the investment could create 14,000 bobs in local businesses and at Amazon as well. The investment was said to be a part of the long term mission of the UK government to boost growth and develop every part of Britain.
Chancellor Reeves stated that the investment made by Amazon Web Series (AWS) would be the main source of employment in the data centres of the company. The jobs would further generate employment in facility maintenance, construction, telecommunications engineering and engineering.
The news may be overshadowed by the impending revelation of the loss of 2,500 jobs at the Port Talbot steelworks in south Wales, despite a £500 million taxpayer-backed rescue agreement.
Reeves said: “I am under no illusion to the scale of the challenge facing our economy. Two quarters of positive economic growth does not make up for 14 years of stagnation under the previous government. However, this £8bn investment marks the start of the economic revival and shows Britain is a place to do business.”
When the announcement was made, the GBm had their fair share of doubts, which ended in the loss of the company in the battle against Amazon over union recognition in July at its Coventry warehouse.
Gary Smith, the general secretary of GMB, stated that the newly introduced investments and jobs are a positive welcome, but the serious question arises whether Amazon Web Series is a good company to celebrate.
The Competitions and Markets Authority (CMA) of the UK is looking into AWS after the telecom regulator, Ofcom, expressed concerns that the US company was limiting competition with its market power during its initial investigation of the cloud computing services market.
IT services like the data storage and computing power of IT or cloud computing over the web with a pay-as-you-go pricing structure are majorly used by businesses. This has also appeared to be a significant piece of infrastructure in the growth of the next generation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) models.
Big tech companies like Microsoft and AWS were previously accused of refraining them from switching with rival cloud providers.
“The market for IT services is well-functioning, innovative, dynamic, highly competitive, and produces considerable benefits for customers,” stated AWS in response to the CMA probe.
Trade unions have criticised Amazon, the more well-known online retailer, for working conditions and for allegedly using “union-busting” techniques, which the company disputes.
In line with its new arrangement for workers, the government has committed to facilitate union organising in workplaces.
The new data centres’ locations will not be made public, according to AWS, “for security reasons.” Regarding investments in other regions of the UK, the government said it was “actively engaged in conversations” with the corporation.
