Amazon Plans $800 Million Data Center In Argentina

Amazon's cloud division plans to build a regional data center in a free-trade zone in Argentina. Bloomberg reports: The Seattle-based company is preparing to invest about $800 million in the project over 10 years and will reap considerable tax benefits by locating the data center in the Bahia Blanca-Coronel Rosales districts of the province of Buenos Aires, [said people familiar with the matter.] Amazon's decision to put part of its cloud infrastructure in South America's second-largest economy is a big win for the Argentine government, which is keen to diversify the economy into digital services, nanotechnology, aerospace and more. Earlier this year, the national congress unanimously passed a law creating incentives for tech companies to set up shop there -- a major achievement in an election year that has polarized society.

Amazon, like any company benefiting from the new Knowledge Economy Law, will receive export tax breaks, an income tax reduction from 35% to 15% and will effectively pay lower labor costs. Moreover, by locating in the free-trade zone, Amazon will pay no national or provincial taxes on energy consumption, a generous benefit for a data center. Amazon, through a spokeswoman, declined to comment. The Argentina project isn't final and could still be changed, one of the people said.

Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Argentina is a net importer of electricy and broke. I suspect Amazon considers retreating from this plan after the October 27th election.

Anyone at Amazon understand Argentina's probems?

[Futurepower(R)]

It would be FAR better to put the data center in Porto Alegre, Brazil.

Argentina is not well organized, in my experience.

Human rights problems in Argentina [hrw.org].

Argentina's economic crisis is the result of avoidable mistakes [theguardian.com]

Argentina's crisis: What went wrong and what is next [aljazeera.com]

Re:

[buchanmilne]

It would be FAR better to put the data center in Porto Alegre, Brazil.

AWS already has a 3-AZ region in Brazil, in Sao Paolo, which looks like it would be about 10-15ms RTT away from Porto Alegre ...

Argentina is not well organized, in my experience.

The question is, are there opportunities for efficient companies such as Amazon/AWS to make money there, and enable local small businesses by doing the hard work (of providing reliable infrastructure on-demand at reasonable prices without long-term financial commitments.

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[Jason1729]

$800 million probably includes an on-site solar or wind farm and batteries. Even if Argentina had enough electricity, I can't imagine amazon betting such a major facility on its reliability.

So, little benefit to the country

[fustakrakich]

But plenty for "tribute" to the politician. Gangsters...

Will this be bigger than the NSA's database in Utah?

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[Anonymous Coward]

Little benefit to the country until Kirchner and friends get in power and seize it without compensation.

Then Argentina gets a free data centre.

Not sure why anyone would be dumb enough to invest in such a risky backwards country that has stolen from foreigners so much in recent history when you've got stability just over the border in places like Chile.

Latency will be a bitch

[williamyf]

But setting up these datacentewrs in LatAm depends largely on the fiber trunks, and sadly the pacific coast is less wired than the atlantic one. Ecuador or peru would have been better choices... Also the caribbean coast of colombia...

Having said that, ios good they set up a Datacenter in a spanish speaking country in LatAm...

More often than not, non-hispanic/Ibric corporations make the mistake of handling all spanish speaking countries from Brazil. Brazil is such a big economy (in LatAm terms) that it deser

Not as much as you think

[rsilvergun]

there's been a ton of work done on undersea cabling in the last few years. Us IT folk can no longer count on network latency to save our jobs. And you'd be shocked how many people in LA are bilingual. They speak English and will use it as a common language.

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[williamyf]

...And you'd be shocked how many people in LA are bilingual. They speak English and will use it as a common language.

rsilvergun... your reasoning is a prime example of one of the many pitfalls that besiege non iberian/hispanic companies when they come to LatAm...

I am Venzuelan and still live in venezuela. I've got 286/300 in my ToEFL way back when*.

So I am well aware of what people in LatAm (me included) can and can not do.

A great percentage of the folks in Brazil will overestimate their capacity to Speak Spanish (mostly because their capacity to listen and comprehend Spanish is awesome in most if not all cases). And the

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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[hagnat]

psst.. Argentina is on the Atlantic side of South America. Chile is on the pacific side.

India is smart

[rsilvergun]

they just passed a law saying if you do business in their country your data centers have to be there too. Good for privacy, but also good for jobs. Sure wish my country would do that. We're busy shipping everything overseas we can.

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[williamyf]

Canada does something similar (NW traffic that originates in Canada and terminates in Canada shall remain in Canada [or outter space] at all times), so does the Russian Federation, and also other countries.

As a matter of fact, more often than not, for banking, that is the law in most countries...

And I second you, I hope more countries dictated similar laws.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Amazon in the Amazon

[nospam007]

Isn't that a little too much on the nose?

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