Iran war poses continuing challenges for cloud providers Amazon Matt Garman, head of Web Services, said Tuesday.
In early March, the Amazon unit announced that drone attacks had damaged its data centers in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates.
“It’s a very difficult situation and we’re working incredibly hard,” Garman told CNBC’s Kate Rooney at the HumanX conference in San Francisco on Tuesday. “In fact, we have teams working 24/7 to ensure we maintain our infrastructure for our customers in the region.”
Dozens of AWS services in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates remain unavailable, according to the company’s status page.
Last week, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Navy announced it had targeted Amazon’s data center infrastructure in Bahrain. Amazon declined to comment at the time.
Data centers, especially those housing chips that can process generative artificial intelligence models, consume large amounts of energy, and that energy has become more expensive since the conflict began in February.
Oil prices soared on Monday after President Donald Trump threatened attacks on civilian infrastructure unless the Islamic Republic committed to reopening the Strait of Hormuz.
“This is obviously a huge disruption to the global economy because we all rely so heavily on energy, and it’s also just a distraction for industry and for us,” Garman said. “You know, there are no short-term, immediate issues, but really all you have to think about is the impact on the global economy.”
Amazon Web Services is the world’s leading supplier of cloud infrastructure that businesses can use to run their websites and applications. google, microsoft and oracle We are also working on building more data centers to provide cloud services around the world.
Garman said technology isn’t the only industry seeing an impact.
“To find something, you just have to go further down the supply chain, so we are no different,” he said.
Restrictions on movement through the Strait of Hormuz have increased the price of helium, a key ingredient in semiconductor manufacturing. According to some estimates, Qatar, located west of the strait, produces more than a third of the world’s helium.
Garman struck an optimistic tone about the Middle East.
“There’s a great entrepreneurial spirit,” he says. “The investment appetite is there, so our and my excitement for long-term investment in this region is as strong as ever.”
