Amazon to crunch data for astronomers in Chile
Cloud computing services to help retail and entertainment giant make inroads in Latin America
SANTIAGO — Amazon Web Services (AWS), a unit of Amazon.com, said it would help astronomers in Chile crunch huge troves of data using its cloud computing services, a symbolically important step for the retail-to-entertainment giant as it looks to expand in Latin America. Amazon will store data and night-sky images gleaned from telescopes in Chile’s nearly cloudless Atacama desert, then offer researchers the tools to access them anywhere, said Jeffrey Kratz, GM for Public Sector Amazon Web Services (AWS) in Latin American, the Caribbean and Canada. “Chile has over 70% of telescopes researching … the night sky, yet 83% of the data they cannot keep because they don’t have the storage capacity at many of these sites,” said Kratz. “They were frustrated because they weren’t able to maximise the amazing research that was going on.” Amazon’s role as a founding member in the public-private research project, called the Chilean Data Observatory, gives it a key entry into a market where it is...
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