Amazon.com Inc.’s data center operation is much larger than commonly understood, totaling more than 900 facilities in more than 50 countries, according to documents reviewed by Bloomberg and investigative website SourceMaterial.
Amazon Web Services is best known for sprawling data center hubs in Virginia and Oregon. But those sorts of enormous complexes, which the company owns or operates through long-term leases, don’t account for its full footprint. The cloud unit also stashes server racks in hundreds of so-called colocation facilities, renting space that as of last year provided about a fifth of the computing power at Amazon’s disposal, according to the documents.
