Intelligent CIO Africa Issue 09 | Page 6

NEWS Teraco announces sponsorship to help boost Africa’s Internet infrastructure SAFNOG hosting sponsor, Teraco, says this year’s event remains highly relevant to the local industry as more opportunities are sought to build and sustain regional Internet communities. In its role as one of the industry’s fundamental foundations, Teraco has announced a vital sponsorship providing quality colocation infrastructure to all 13 global root operators. We believe that sponsoring the needed infrastructure for root operators will further improve the African Internet experience”. Teraco’s Technical Manager for Interconnection & Peering, Andrew Owens, says that the decision to sponsor root operators was another way in which Teraco can continue to support the growth of the African Internet market: “Root operators have been recognised as an important element of the Internet and in sponsoring colocation infrastructure, we hope to increase the number of root operators available within the continent.” Currently, within Teraco, Owen says that root operators can access over 280 unique ASN’s and service multiple African countries through a single deployment in the Johannesburg facility: “We recognise the support our community has given us over the years to grow Teraco and its Internet exchange, NAPAfrica. We feel it’s now time to do more than just fund NAPAfrica to help improve a user’s Internet experience in Africa. Andrew Owens, Technical Manager for Interconnection and Peering, Teraco Huawei cloud and Microsoft apps embark on new strategic cooperation to help enterprises implement digital transformation. Huawei and Microsoft already enjoy a time- honoured and deepening cooperation in the field of cloud computing as the Huawei cloud has provided Windows Server and RDS for SQL Server. In this new strategic cooperation, Huawei and Microsoft will bring more Microsoft enterprise-level products online. At HUAWEI CONNECT 2017, Huawei and Microsoft signed a strategic memorandum of understanding (MoU) on cloud service, under which Microsoft applications will be released on Huawei cloud. The two companies will initiate in- depth cooperation on the public cloud 6 INTELLIGENTCIO Zheng Yelai, President of Huawei’s Cloud BU and IT Product Line, said in the MoU signing ceremony, “As a world-leading provider of software, services, and solutions, Microsoft has played an important part in the enterprise market all along. Huawei cloud looks forward to cooperating with Microsoft to build an open and win-win ecosystem. The signing of this MoU marks the start of strategic cooperation between the two companies.” Alain Crozier, CEO of Microsoft China said, “The fourth Industrial Revolution, driven by technology innovation, is creating opportunities for customers to achieve more across nearly every industry. As a global leader in enterprise IT, Huawei is a strategic partner for Microsoft in the mission to empower organisations as they transform. Our increased collaboration will drive innovation as we build a seamless platform to benefit customers through industry-leading technology. Together, we are confident that we will lead, and win, in the era of digital transformation by focusing on what our customers need.” www.intelligentcio.com