Amazon has stopped soliciting new cloud customers in Russia and Belarus and improved its response to the invasion of Ukraine, but has not completely cut off cloud services in these countries.
In a statement to the New York Times, the company’s spokesman drew herdener attributed the decision to “current events and Russia’s current uncertainty and lack of credit”, which broke this statement.
Microsoft, which operates rival azure cloud computing platform, also said last week that it would suspend “all sales of Microsoft’s new products and services in Russia”
Amazon’s e-commerce business does not operate in Russia.
Amazon said last week: “unlike other US technology providers, AWS has no data center, infrastructure or office in Russia, and our long-term policy is not to do business with the Russian government.”.
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Analyst: it’s only a matter of time before us cloud computing companies shut down their services in Russia
Ukrainian Minister of digital transformation and Deputy Prime Minister mikheilo Fedorov last week called on Amazon and its founder Jeff Bezos to cut off the company’s cloud services in Russia.
Russia’s major cloud computing companies and executives told them that this would be a serious move. At the same time, this will bring the thorny problem of defining “Russian companies” and the difficult challenge of determining the best technical means to prevent access to services.
Amazon previously said that its largest customer using AWS in Russia is headquartered elsewhere and the development team is in Russia.
The New York Times reported that the change in AWS registration policy took effect over the weekend. After receiving the newspaper’s inquiry, Amazon updated its Ukrainian assistance page on Tuesday and released a description of the new policy.
Amazon previously said: “AWS has clear terms of service. If customers use AWS services to threaten, incite, publicize or actively encourage violence, terrorism or other serious harm, they will not be allowed to use our services.”. “Any customer we know who is involved in such activities will be suspended from accessing AWS.”
Amazon has been providing cybersecurity assistance to companies and government organizations in Ukraine, as well as humanitarian relief and support to non-governmental organizations in the country.