INTELLIGENT BRANDS // Cloud
Microsoft’s data centre investment
to boost SA cloud adoption
Many CIOs will also be reassured that
their data is hosted in a local data
centre that complies in full with South
African data protection laws, he adds.
“Knowing that the data centres are in
Cape Town and Johannesburg rather
than Ireland or Germany will give
many organisations the confidence to
migrate more aggressively to the cloud,”
Marston says.
With Microsoft hosting its cloud services
locally, it is only a matter of time before
the other cloud providers also start to set
up data centres in Africa, says Marston.
“The investment from Microsoft is a
signal that the cloud market in South
Africa and the rest of Africa has come of
age. This is a great time for companies
who have not yet made extensive use of
cloud services and applications to jump
in,” he adds.
Robert Marston, Global Head of Product at SEACOM
M
icrosoft’s announcement that
it plans to build hyperscale
data centres in Cape Town
and Johannesburg to deliver a range
of cloud services, is set to give a
massive boost to enterprise adoption
of Infrastructure as a Service, Software
as a Service and other cloud services in
South Africa.
That’s the word from Robert Marston,
Global Head of Product at SEACOM,
who says that Microsoft’s decision
to locally host cloud services such as
Azure, Office 365 and Dynamics 365,
will not only enable it to offer better
performance and lower latencies,
thereby providing a better end user
experience, but will critically lower
the cost barrier for adoption of these
services for enterprise customers.
“This represents a significant step
forward for South Africa’s IT industry
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because it means organisations can
access Microsoft’s rich selection of
cloud services from a local data centre,”
he adds. “This will not only give them
more reliability, faster speeds and
lower latencies than they can get when
accessing cloud services from data
centres in Europe or the US, but will also
cut out international connectivity costs
which have typically been a barrier to
entry for the move to the cloud.”
Up until now, many enterprises have
chosen private clouds or to work with
local public cloud providers that lack
the capabilities of the world’s top
cloud computing providers in an effort
to ensure reliable, fast access to cloud
applications and services, says Marston.
When the Microsoft data centres go
live in 2018, enterprises will be able to
enjoy the full Azure experience with
no performance compromises or hefty
data charges.
“The cloud business model simply makes
sense for Africa, where skills and budgets
are often lower than other developed
markets. Using cloud computing for
solutions such as Infrastructure as
a Service and Software as a Service
promises African organisations massive
cost savings to operate and maintain
their own data centres and on-site IT
infrastructure. It also enables them to
ramp computing capacity up and down
in response to changing business needs
and gives them the flexibility they need
to innovate and grow with little risk.
This is all being made possible by the
growing availability and falling cost of
high-speed fibre Internet access.”
Until the Microsoft African data
centres go live, African businesses can
fast-track the digital transformation
of their organisations by tapping into
affordable, dedicated Ethernet links on
SEACOM’s resilient network between
their own IT environments and the
world’s leading providers of cloud
computing services such as Google,
Microsoft, Amazon and IBM. SEACOM
offers a high-performance, secure
alternative to accessing cloud services
across the public Internet. n
www.intelligentcio.com