Amazon’s next data center could inspire trust in gun-shy EU companies

When you’re the top dog in an industry, you can make some bold moves. That’s certainly the case with public-cloud provider Amazon Web Services.

Now it’s possible that the Amazon cloud could get a little wider, perhaps with an expansion into Germany.

Amazon customers in Germany have been asking for a data center in their country, the company’s cloud chief, Andy Jassy, said in an article on a Wall Street Journal blog today.

Basically, we and others suspect that these companies don’t trust U.S.-based data centers due to ongoing revelations about government spying on corporate and consumer data.

Amazon probably will erect data centers “in multiple major countries over time,” Jassy said, implying that such an expansion could come eventually.

Another new geographical area for Amazon could make the company’s cloud even more appealing to companies. A wide network of data centers translates into a smaller amount of wire over which data must travel to reach end users. And a data center in Germany could help companies in Germany adopt the cloud or take advantage of Amazon’s perks.

Amazon already stands out by making price cuts all the time. Earlier this week the company lowered prices for its cloud infrastructure services for the 42nd time. It also frequently introduces new flavors of infrastructure and services with which developers and companies can run their applications.

And its geographical footprint expands on a regular basis, too, with an announcement of a new region — a cluster of Amazon data centers near each other — in Beijing last December.

But recently other public-cloud providers, like CenturyLink, IBM, VMware, have been looking to gain business in Europe by building data centers in that continent. Amazon surely doesn’t want to be beaten there, even if it does already have a region in Ireland.

Generally speaking, a wide-spanning footprint is a good sign for a multinational company that wants to use cloud resources. A lack thereof could prevent cloud providers from taking on such big customers. Amazon has a leg up in that department, and it naturally wants to build on that.