Amazon (AMZN.O) Web Services (AWS) said on Wednesday it will launch a sovereign cloud in Europe for governments and customers in highly regulated industries.

The sovereign cloud will store data on servers in the European Union, and only EU-resident AWS employees will have control of the operations and provide support, the cloud-computing division of Amazon said in a statement.

The European Union has been at the forefront of privacy and security legislation. Its privacy watchdog launched a probe last year into the public sector's use of cloud-based services to check if they comply with its privacy safeguards.

Both business and government customers increasingly use the data centers of big tech companies in the form of public clouds rather than building their infrastructure. Microsoft (MSFT.O) and Oracle (ORCL.N) have also launched cloud versions for European government customers.

AWS will launch first in Germany and make its service available to all European customers.