Amazon (AMZN) and its public cloud competitors offer masses of computer servers, storage, and networking equipment to companies that want to augment or even replace their internal data centers. These companies are pushing data center expansion worldwide so that data storage and computer operations can be placed closer to customers’ physical locations. The longer that distance, the longer the latency or delay between issuing a command and getting a result.

The new Swedish AWS Region, slated to open in 2018, will put Amazon’s computing power and storage closer to business customers throughout the Nordic region, an important hotbed for startups.

This will be Amazon’s fifth cloud services location in Europe. Amazon’s flagship European data center is near Dublin, but the company has also put data center farms in London and Frankfurt, with another to come soon in France, according to a blog post announcing the news about Sweden.

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AWS and its public cloud competitors Microsoft (MSFT), Google, and IBM (IBM), have been expanding their data center operations at a steady clip over the past few years. Last month, for example, Google (GOOG) said it was adding new data center facilities in California, Canada, and the Netherlands. It already has other new data centers under way in Northern Virginia, Sao Paulo, Brazil, London, Finland, Frankfurt, Mumbai, Singapore, and Sydney.

Another reason for this data center proliferation across many countries is that many nations have data sovereignty laws requiring citizen data to be kept in the country of origin. The old days when AWS Dublin data center could serve all of Europe are over.

Last month, Google said it was adding new data center facilities in California, Canada, and the Netherlands. It already has other new data centers under construction in Northern Virginia, Sao Paulo, Brazil, London, Finland, Frankfurt, Mumbai, Singapore, and Sydney.