Amazon Web Services Inc. recently announced that it’s setting up shop in the Middle East for the first time — in the country of Bahrain, to be specific. In early 2019, AWS will launch in the region with three Availability Zones, which will give their Middle Eastern customers and partners the ability to run workloads and store data with minimal latency. And the small country of Bahrain has dreams to make data its new oil, in a historic move to embrace  cloud-native solutions for economic development.

“If we think back to the ’30s, this country was the first [Middle Eastern] country to discover oil,” said Khalid Al-Rumaihi (pictured), chief executive of the Bahrain Economic Development Board. “I think … we’re going to see that in the new digital economy with data.”

Al-Rumaihi spoke with John Furrier, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the AWS Summit event in Bahrain. They discussed Bahrain’s unique partnership with AWS, and the methods Bahrain hopes to leverage technological innovations from a cloud-first position. (* Disclosure below.)

Oil 2.0

So how did this small Middle Eastern country capture the attention of AWS? It was the history of innovation that the country has already had in technology, according to Al-Rumaihi.

“We deregulated our telecom sector about 13, 14 years ago,” he said. “We were the first country to do that in the Middle East, which meant that we introduced competition on broadband, on mobile. It dropped prices by about 50 percent on connectivity in the country.”

As Amazon looked at the region, it took note of this choice. “When they looked at the region, they said, ‘Here’s a government that’s allowing true competition.’ And for a data center, obviously, broadband communication and the competitiveness of that price is key,'” Al-Rumaihi said.

As data becomes the new currency, Bahrain has many dreams for the future — including investing further in startups, as well as financial technology. They want to change their economy from one that is oil driven to tech driven.

“I emphasize this is going to be a game changer, not just for the kingdom of Bahrain, but for the entire Middle East,” Al-Rumaihi concluded. “It’s a small country; we can be nimble, agile, startup friendly, and … innovate. And so we’re determined to carve a niche in open banking, in cryptocurrency exchanges — interesting innovation areas that we think we can excel at.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the AWS Summit Bahrain event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for AWS Summit Bahrain 2018. Neither Amazon Web Services Inc. and the Bahrain Economic Development Board, the event sponsors, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE