Brazil’s Edge UOL, Embratel extend ties with Amazon Web Services

Two Brazilian technology and IT companies have announced new investments in the cloud computing business and have leveraged strategic partnerships with Amazon Web Services (AWS), the world’s biggest public cloud provider.

Edge UOL, an IT infra services firm created in 2021 by Brazilian content and internet group UOL, will serve its own parent company with the AWS Outposts portfolio. 

An Outpost is a pool of AWS computing and storage capacity deployed at a customer site. For UOL, the solution will modernize the group's container services platform applications.

“We know that edge computing is the natural evolution of cloud computing, that's why we are going headfirst into this area, including with IoT, 5G and security solutions,” Edge UOL's COO Rodrigo Lobo said in a statement.

Edge UOL also claims to have become the first partner-led firm for AWS Outposts in Latin America, levelling up a previous alliance with the cloud giant.

Last year, Edge UOL announced a partnership with AWS and Scala Data Centers to explore edge computing.

As part of that deal, Edge UOL became a managed services provider based on the AWS Outposts on-premise infrastructure servers installed at Scala’s datacenters.

ACQUISITION AND NEW UNIT

Meanwhile, América Móvil’s Embratel, said it completed the acquisition of cloud solutions startup Ustore, created a new cloud unit to serve industry verticals and signed a new agreement with AWS to certify its cloud specialists.

The new unit will be led by Fabiana Falcone, who was COO at Ustore.

Embratel has a Cloud Center of Excellence (CCoE) and, like Edge UOL, is also betting on the edge computing business. AWS is one of its closest partners. 

In the last three years, Embratel said it has tripled its cloud business revenues, although it does not disclose figures. Despite the more challenging scenario at present, the company forecasts rapid growth in this segment in the coming quarters.

Founded in 2012, Ustore was created in the Porto digital technological park, in Recife, Pernambuco state. In 2019, Embratel acquired a 40% stake in the company.

“Since the initial phase of the agreement, signed over three years with the purchase of 40% of the company, Embratel has expanded its cloud solutions with MultiCloud offers for managing hybrid environments, with flexible, simple, fast supply and safe implementation models,” Embratel said in a statement.

With the acquisition, 100% of Ustore's portfolio was incorporated into Embratel's, as well as its team of around 60 specialists. The financial details of the deal were not disclosed.

In 2022, AWS announced plans to open new edge computing zones, or Local Zones, in different Latin American cities by the end of 2023.

As of mid-December, AWS had some 25 local zones around the world, with announced plans to launch 27 more globally.

The new structures are being activated in Rio de Janeiro, Bogotá, Buenos Aires, Lima, Querétaro and Santiago. The latest launch took place in Argentina.

“We don't have an exact date, but we're going to continue launching the others over the next few months of 2023,” Rafael Mattje de Carvalho, manager of AWS architecture solutions for the public sector in Latin America and the Caribbean, told BNamericas.