Why Public Sector Organizations Around the World Trust AWS

Amazon Web Services (AWS) launched the AWS Public Sector Generative AI Impact Initiative last week at the AWS Summit in Washington, D.C. The two-year initiative will provide public sector companies with cloud infrastructure and generative AI services to help them advance existing and new missions.

“Security is our top priority. It’s the foundation on which we support customers around the world. And public sector customers trust AWS. They trust us to maintain the integrity of their most sensitive assets and their most sensitive missions. Stewardship is our top priority as we explore and enable new technologies like generative AI,” said Dave Levy, vice president, Worldwide Public Sector, AWS.

Levi said OBJECTIVE that the propensity of public sector organizations to trust AWS stems from the fact that AWS focuses on trust itself.

“Security is critical internally, so it’s also critical for our customers. It gives them a sense of comfort with us that we’re going to be transparent and that their data and their business are very important to us,” he said.

But that’s not the only reason AWS has gained the trust of many global public sector organizations.

Early Player

In the early 2010s, AWS was one of several pioneers to begin offering its services to government agencies, starting with the launch of AWS GovCloud, a service tailored specifically to the needs of government organizations in compliance with regulations.

AWS then became one of the few companies to consistently focus on offering cloud services to the public sector, which was especially important as the U.S. government began its transition to cloud computing in the mid-2010s.

This led to contracts from numerous government agencies, including the CIA, which secured its services for a mammoth $600 million contract back in 2013. AWS is currently working on establishing the AWS European Sovereign Cloud by 2025, with a massive investment of €7.9 billion.

AWS is a pioneer in enabling public sector organizations to proactively migrate from traditional physical servers to cloud computing, enabling overall better data storage solutions.

With its leadership position in cloud computing in the United States, AWS has quickly become the go-to cloud provider for many countries, including India, where public sector organizations leverage AWS’ capabilities in areas such as agriculture, healthcare, and education.

So far, AWS has partnered with organisations and ministries such as MeitY, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, and the governments of Telangana and Madhya Pradesh, along with several universities and the National Skill Development Corporation.

Underscoring this, Levy said India remains a key market for the company. “India is very important to us. We’ve made a lot of investments over the years. We’ve been here for a long, long time and it’s also a very exciting market for us. We see a lot of opportunities for AWS and for our team working with the public sector,” he said.

In line with this, AWS recently launched Amazon Bedrock for the Mumbai region at the AWS Summit held in Bengaluru in May this year. The inclusion of Mumbai means that customers in the region can build applications using Amazon’s internal bedrock models as well as Anthropic, Cohere, and Meta models.

“Bedrock actually landed in Mumbai before it landed here (Washington). So India is a very important place for us,” he said.

At AWS we trust

Despite its history, Levy is right that AWS is able to adhere to the strict privacy and security requirements set by public sector organizations. AWS and its competitors, Microsoft and Google, have comprehensive policies on how to work with the public sector.

However, its early market lead, as well as the fact that the company continues to hold a majority of the market (31% as of May 2024) in providing cloud infrastructure services, means that AWS is often the first choice when public sector organisations are considering moving to cloud computing.

Now, with the recent partnership with Accenture and Anthropic, where AWS will provide cloud infrastructure services to Accenture clients, that market share is likely to grow, overtaking players like Microsoft.

Interestingly, this deal also comes at a time when Microsoft seems to have started to catch up with AWS in terms of cloud computing, as its share has grown this year while AWS has declined by one percent. However, its recent partnership with Oracle, integrating Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, suggests that there may be some gaps in Microsoft Azure’s performance that only OCI can address.

Meanwhile, AWS Outposts offers expanded capabilities to provide customers with on-premises private cloud services, adding another layer of security to an already secure product.

Still, it seems like Microsoft still has a long way to go, and AWS remains the first choice for many public sector organizations, thanks to its current market leadership position, which basically proves that customers, both public and non-public sector, are more willing to entrust their data to AWS.

As Levy said, “We believe that accountability drives trust, trust drives adoption, and adoption drives innovation.”