Reports surfaced last month that Amazon.com planned to spend $1.1 billion on a new data center in Dublin, Ohio — just outside of Columbus.
Now, it sounds like Amazon is definitely moving forward with plans to set up shop in the Buckeye State, with Ohio governor John Kasich saying in a campaign stop this week that officials with the Seattle company had committed to the facility.
“I just met with one of the top officials at Amazon. … They’re making a billion-dollar investment in cloud computing,” said Kasich, according to a report from The Columbus Dispatch. “So, what is coming is very exciting jobs to Ohio.”
In August, government agencies in Ohio approved $81 million in tax incentives for Amazon.
In his campaign remarks, Kasich said that Amazon has committed to the state of Ohio.
Amazon.com operates 11 main data centers across the globe, four of which are located in the U.S. The company told GigaOm that it is constantly evaluating new locations, though he declined to confirm the Ohio location.
Amazon Web Services is growing quickly, and the company will need additional cloud computing horsepower as it brings more digital services to the forefront. Itcurrently operates data centers in Oregon, Northern Virginia, and Northern California, with large customers such as Airbnb, Flipboard, Netflix and others utilizing AWS.
Data centers typically don’t employ that many people, so the economic benefits of securing Amazon’s new data center are uncertain.
