André Rodrigues, head of technology for Southern Europe at Amazon Web Services, says that the technology company is interested in investing in the sovereign cloud that the Govt. wants to implement.
Within the global structure of Amazon Web Services, better known as AWS, there are 38 regions, large data centres through which it provides its cloud services, and local zones, which are smaller and closer to customers. The Iberian Peninsula is served by the region in Spain, but the US technology company is preparing to invest in a local zone in Portugal.
“We don’t have a launch date yet, but we believe that we will soon be able to announce a specific date for this Local Zone in Portugal”, said André Rodrigues, head of technology at AWS for Southern Europe, in an interview with the ECO podcast ‘À Prova de Futuro’ (Future Proof), which is supported by Meo Empresas.
The spokesperson for the American technology company in Portugal explains that this local zone “is an AWS service infrastructure for computing, storage, databases, analytics and artificial intelligence”.
AWS is also interested in investing in the sovereign cloud that the Executive intends to launch as part of the National Digital Strategy, which will be launched by the end of the year. The technology giant is just waiting for “the guidelines on what the Government’s policy for the cloud will be” to be defined.
André Rodrigues says that the company is already working with the Government on the digital transformation agenda and the artificial intelligence agenda.
Some studies point to levels of cloud service adoption in Portugal that are below the European Union average. From AWS’s experience, how does Portugal compare to other European countries?
We see the adoption of cloud services in Portugal in a very positive light, not only in start-ups but also in large companies. There is still some delay from the public sector’s point of view, but in general we see the adoption of the cloud with great determination, and this is something we are very proud of.
The cloud enhances the use of artificial intelligence (AI). Do Portuguese companies need to be more ambitious to stay ahead in the adoption of AI?
I would say that all companies, regardless of their area of activity, should be looking at the adoption of cloud and AI services in a very, I wouldn’t say concerned, but attentive way. It’s not just the future, it’s the present. And it’s a way for us in Portugal to remain competitive in an increasingly global market.
And how do we compare in terms of AI adoption?
We recently launched a study that addresses precisely the adoption of AI by Portuguese companies. We had already done this in the past and repeated it this year, and the results are very encouraging. In 2024, 35% of Portuguese companies were actively adopting AI services. This year, we reached 41%, which represents roughly 12 new Portuguese companies using AI per hour, or one every 5 minutes.
And how does that number compare with other European countries?
It’s interesting, and I’d like to divide this into two parts. We see that Portuguese start-ups compare very favourably with their European counterparts, including greater adoption of cloud and artificial intelligence services than other European start-ups. And it’s not superficial adoption, but profound.
A company may say it uses AI, but in fact uses it for very basic and simple things. Another thing is for it to be something that transforms the business.
That transforms the business, that actually changes business processes, that creates new experiences for its internal and external users. And we do see this in Portuguese start-ups, as a result of the positive ecosystem we have in Portuguese start-ups.
So, is the biggest challenge in SMEs?
When we look at SMEs, at Portuguese companies, we see that adoption is on track, but it is not transformative adoption. It is not an adoption of AI tools that actually allows them to transform their business, that allows them to create more wealth, that allows them to be more productive and that actually allows them to conquer new markets and differentiate themselves in the market.
How can this gap be bridged?
In several ways. The first has to do with continuing to transform and empower the talent we have. Because the study indicates that we continue to have, not only in Portugal, but in Europe and worldwide, a shortage of qualified people to maximise the use of artificial intelligence. In this regard, AWS has brought several programmes to Portugal to help retrain and qualify people in this area, such as AWS Educate, AWS Academy and AWS Restart. The first pillar is people.
Acquiring skills.
People, talent, skills. The second pillar is about ensuring that there is a policy and a set of rules and regulations that are simple and do not pose a risk to businesses.
This does not yet exist.
We are all working in this ecosystem, on the side of providers, on the side of companies, on the side of the State, to create legislation that is more cross-cutting, simpler and more innovation-friendly. We support responsible policies, but ones that do not diminish the ability of Portuguese and European companies to innovate and compete in the global market.
The third pillar has to do with the leadership of the companies themselves. This has to be a top-down transformation, it has to come from the top down, and we have to continue to help the leaders of Portuguese companies make that decision, because I truly believe that the future of Portuguese companies will be brighter the sooner they adopt AI services that allow them to differentiate themselves in this global market.
We are still in the infancy of what AI can do.
We talk a lot about AI, which in the last 3, 4, 5 years has been generative AI, but the truth is that artificial intelligence has been around for several decades. Despite this, I believe that we are still at the beginning of what we may see in the medium and long term. We are still only seeing the tip of the iceberg.
Can you give some examples of what that future might look like?
Yes, and you don’t have to look very far. It’s something we’ll start to see as early as 2026, as early as 2027. In the last two to three years, we have begun to see a very high level of automation through artificial intelligence. With the advent of agents, this new AI paradigm, which is the possibility of having intelligent agents that do not just repeat basic functions and automate processes that are always linear, but have the ability to adapt to reality.
And make decisions.
Making decisions, searching for data as variables change, and that is already a very positive leap forward. I want to go on holiday and I can ask my agent to book it for me. As the agent has a level of personalisation that knows me, knows what I prefer, whether it’s a better hotel, a better trip, or the price, they make those decisions for me until they buy the hotel, the agency, the trip, and make those decisions.
At Amazon, in our warehouses or fulfilment centres, every day there are people who cannot go to work because they are sick or because they have to look after their family, and we have [AI] agents who, in real time, update people’s shifts according to the added value and capabilities of each individual. This is something that is already happening.
AI is generating an accelerated increase in demand for cloud computing. Does that mean the cost of using the cloud will tend to rise?
Quite the contrary. What history has shown us is that the cost of computing has been falling. In the case of AWS, since its inception, we have reduced our prices more than 150 times. The trend is that the cost, whether for data, bandwidth, or whatever we want to measure, will continue to fall.
Even with this exponential increase in demand.
It will continue to fall because economies of scale allow benefits to be reaped. It is AWS’s prerogative to pass on these economies of scale advantages to our customers, because it will make our customers increasingly adopt the technology, as it is better and cheaper. This will enable us to gain more customers. It is a virtuous cycle that I believe will continue to perpetuate itself with artificial intelligence.
The AWS cloud was down on 24 October due to a problem in one of its data centres. Does this increase in demand also pose additional challenges in terms of resilience and security?
I wouldn’t say it poses additional problems. For us at AWS, resilience and security have been part of our DNA from day one. If I may, I would like to clarify that the AWS cloud was not down. AWS has 38 regions, and one was affected for two hours. At the end of two hours, once the problem was identified, our main priority was to try to restore all services. The cloud benefits from this scale, this virtually infinite flexibility, and a level of resilience that allows me to quickly restore my services and continue to provide services to my internal and external customers in any of the other regions that are available.
Is AWS the leader in Portugal?
AWS is the leading cloud provider and the founder of what we know today as the cloud. I often joke that the name today would probably not be AWS, Amazon Web Services, but Amazon Cloud Services, because at the time there was no cloud. AWS ended up creating this industry and is not only a pioneer in the cloud, but also the clear global market leader in cloud technologies.
And in Portugal too?
We don’t share data by geography, so I can’t confirm that.
What are the plans for growth in Portugal?
Long before we had an office in Portugal, we already had Portuguese customers, so it was a natural decision to open our first office in Portugal in 2018, to be closer to our customers and closer to our partners. In 2019, we made our first investment in infrastructure on Portuguese soil, and this year we made further infrastructure investments with AWS Direct Connect, which allows any Portuguese SME, any start-up, any large company or the Portuguese government to connect directly to the AWS cloud in Portugal. Previously, it was necessary to connect to another country, but today, at marginal cost, because we are talking about local infrastructure, it is possible to connect directly to this network of 38 regions and more than nine million kilometres of fibre optics that we have.
What did that investment represent?
I cannot disclose the investments, but I can say that each of these regions represents investments of several billion dollars. For example, next month, and this is public knowledge, we will inaugurate the European sovereign cloud in Germany, an investment of 7.8 billion dollars. The region we launched a few years ago here in Spain, which serves the Iberian Peninsula very closely, represented an investment of $15.7 billion.
And for Portugal, is any investment of this kind planned?
No region is planned for Portugal. A few years ago, we announced a Local Zone, which is an infrastructure that depends on a region. We don’t have a launch date yet, but we believe that we will soon be able to talk about a specific date for having this Local Zone in Portugal.
What exactly does having this Local Zone mean?
The Local Zone is an AWS service infrastructure for computing, storage, databases, analytics, and artificial intelligence, with a smaller size than a region. That is why we call it Local Zone, because the goal is to be closer to customers in order to provide what we call low latency and local data residency, which is something we see as an increasingly permanent requirement, not only in Portugal but also for European customers.
The Portuguese government created the Agency for Technological Reform of the State (ARTE), which is now the institute responsible for directing, coordinating and executing the technological transformation and digitisation of public administration in Portugal. Do you think this was just a name change from the Agency for Administrative Modernisation, or do you feel that there is a different energy around the digital transformation of the State?
We have been working with the Portuguese government and all policy-making bodies, and we welcome all initiatives, whether from the Portuguese state, other entities or public-private partnerships, to accelerate the country’s digital transformation. It seems to me, from all the signs we have received and all the work we have done, that ARTE is moving in this direction, and so we can only be satisfied with these initiatives and are 100% available to continue collaborating and accelerating the country’s digital transformation.
You mentioned earlier that in Portugal, the adoption of cloud computing by the State is still comparatively low.
Yes, it is a path that we have to tread together. There are some steps we have to take, and we believe that a digital government, a faster government, will obviously have to take advantage of the cloud and all the native services that the cloud offers. This is not yet the case, but that is why we work on it every day, and I believe that in the short and medium term it is something that could happen.
You mentioned the sovereign cloud in Germany. ARTE also launched a consultation process for a sovereign cloud in Portugal. Did AWS participate in this process?
Yes, we have been working with the government not only on the digital transformation agenda, but also on the artificial intelligence agenda, and whenever we are consulted, whenever our experience and added value are requested, we are happy to share, and this has happened many times.
Is AWS already involved in this process for the Portuguese state’s sovereign cloud?
It is an ongoing process and, whenever we are consulted, we are happy to participate. We are waiting for the guidelines on what the government’s directive for the cloud will be to be defined.
Once these guidelines are defined, will AWS be able to compete for an investment in this sovereign cloud?
Yes. At AWS, our roadmap, what we do, is based on what we see in the market. Ninety per cent of what we do comes from direct feedback we receive from our customers. This is how not only AWS but also Amazon works.
ARTE is chaired by the state’s chief technology officer, who came from Microsoft. The Secretary of State for Digitalisation came from Google. How does AWS view these state hires? Does it view them with concern or does it value the fact that they are people who have a different sensitivity to these issues?
Not at all. I think it makes perfect sense to use the best human resources we have in the country, regardless of where people have worked.
These are companies that compete with AWS.
Right, but the two people in question have always had a positive impact on the country’s digital transformation, and I believe that, obviously, by changing their workplace and now being in the Government, their ideas are no different from what they previously advocated and will certainly help us accelerate the digital transformation that we so badly need in the country.