AWS Frankfurt (eu-central-1) — ERP cloud hosting in Germany
Amazon Web Services operates several public-cloud regions in Europe; eu-central-1 in Frankfurt am Main is the longest-established of the German regions and the default location for AWS-hosted workloads with German data-residency requirements. The region was launched in 2014 and has been continuously expanded with new availability zones and services. For ERP buyers, AWS Frankfurt is relevant in two scenarios: as the host of an SAP S/4HANA Private Cloud or Rise with SAP deployment, where AWS is one of the certified hyperscalers SAP recommends to its customers; and as the host of third-party ERP products that the customer or its partner deploys directly on AWS infrastructure. Roughly half of all SAP HANA workloads running on hyperscalers globally are placed on AWS, and Frankfurt is the dominant region for DACH customers within that share.
About
Amazon Web Services is the cloud-infrastructure arm of Amazon.com and the largest public-cloud provider globally by revenue. Headquarters are in Seattle; the European operating entity Amazon Web Services EMEA SARL is based in Luxembourg. The eu-central-1 region operates from data centres in the Frankfurt metropolitan area across three availability zones, each containing one or more data-centre facilities. The region carries the standard portfolio of more than 200 AWS services, with full SAP certification on EC2 instance families dedicated to SAP HANA workloads. Data residency is contractually guaranteed for customers who keep their workloads inside the region. AWS holds the relevant European compliance certifications including ISO 27001, ISO 27017, ISO 27018, SOC 1, SOC 2, SOC 3, C5 (BSI) and the EU Cloud Code of Conduct. The standard service-level agreement for multi-AZ deployments is 99.99 per cent.
Service offering
Within Frankfurt, the relevant capabilities for ERP customers include the EC2 High Memory and X1e/X2 instance families certified for SAP HANA up to multiple terabytes of in-memory database size, Elastic Block Store with provisioned IOPS for ERP database storage, S3 object storage for backups and archival, and AWS Backup for orchestrated snapshot management. SAP-on-AWS reference architectures describe production and non-production landscapes across availability zones with automated failover. AWS Partner Network includes SAP-certified consulting partners who run the migration and operations layer on top of the platform. Cost models follow standard AWS pricing (on-demand, savings plans, reserved instances) and are generally consumption-based; SAP licences are not bundled and must be procured separately from SAP or through a Rise with SAP commercial agreement. Adjacent services such as AWS Outposts and Local Zones extend the region for low-latency or sovereignty-sensitive scenarios.
DACH positioning
For German-speaking customers, eu-central-1 is the default hyperscaler region for any ERP deployment that requires data residency inside Germany. The region is preferred over alternative AWS European regions (Ireland, Stockholm, Paris) for workloads with explicit data-protection or contractual residency obligations. The BSI C5 attestation is the relevant German baseline for public-cloud workloads handling regulated data. For GoBD-relevant data — tax-relevant business records that German tax authorities can audit — the customer remains the responsible party regardless of where the data sits; AWS provides the infrastructure that supports audit trails, immutable storage and retention policies. German-speaking enterprise sales and solutions-architecture teams are based in Munich, Berlin and Frankfurt. Premium-support packages are available in German. Comparable options for customers seeking German-sovereign infrastructure include Microsoft Azure Germany regions, Google Cloud Frankfurt, Open Telekom Cloud and IONOS Cloud.
Strengths and selection considerations
Strengths to consider: largest service catalogue of any hyperscaler, mature SAP-on-AWS practice, deep partner ecosystem of certified integrators, transparent pricing, and well-documented reference architectures. The region has been operating long enough to demonstrate stable performance and operational maturity. Limitations to consider: AWS is a U.S.-headquartered provider, which creates a residual sovereignty concern under the U.S. CLOUD Act for customers in highly regulated sectors; egress pricing for moving data out of the region is non-trivial and should be modelled when evaluating multi-cloud or repatriation scenarios. Cost optimisation requires active management — reserved instances, savings plans and instance right-sizing are essential to keep an SAP HANA landscape competitive against on-premises alternatives. For organisations seeking a contractually sovereign provider, Open Telekom Cloud or IONOS Cloud may be more compatible, at the cost of a smaller service catalogue.
Related Topics
Vendor homepage of AWS Region Frankfurt
Current view of the website https://aws.amazon.com/de/
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Frequently Asked Questions
Is AWS Frankfurt certified for SAP HANA and SAP S/4HANA?
Yes. AWS is one of the SAP-certified hyperscalers and offers EC2 instance families dedicated to SAP HANA workloads up to multi-terabyte memory sizes. Reference architectures for production and non-production SAP S/4HANA landscapes across availability zones are published by both AWS and SAP. Rise with SAP commercial bundles can be procured with AWS as the underlying infrastructure provider.
Does data stay in Germany when I deploy in eu-central-1?
Yes, for the workloads you keep inside the region. Customer data placed in eu-central-1 services is stored in the Frankfurt-area data centres and not replicated outside the region unless the customer explicitly configures cross-region replication. Operational metadata may be processed in other regions; AWS publishes detailed documentation on data residency and data-flow boundaries.
Is AWS Frankfurt compliant with German data-protection rules and GoBD?
AWS holds the BSI C5 attestation, which is the relevant German cloud-security baseline, plus ISO 27001 and other European certifications. The provider supports GDPR-compliant deployments through standard contractual clauses and a published data-processing addendum. For GoBD-relevant tax data the customer remains the controller, but AWS storage services support the audit-trail, retention and immutability features GoBD requires.