The new Azure cloud data centres in Johannesburg and Cape Town will make it attractive for foreign companies to run infrastructure in South Africa.
As the only country on the African continent to run Azure services, it could see a substantial investment from other African countries who want to leverage this technology, according to Cloudbox CEO Justin Trent.
He says these enterprise-grade data centres will power cloud, artificial intelligence and edge computing innovations across the continent. “By taking the data location barrier out the way, it really does put South Africa in a first world position when it comes to technology choices.
“The decision now comes down to functionality rather than being constrained to choices that were defined by data location. We are now able to offer South African businesses Azure hosted services in South Africa. This expands the local cloud server offering, giving us more choice to better assist our clients in finding a solution that is right for them,” he explains.
The availability of Microsoft’s intelligent cloud services to be delivered from the new data centres in South Africa means local companies can securely and reliably move their businesses to the cloud while meeting compliance requirements.
Trent says there has been a lot of debate around the location of data when it comes to adhering to PoPI regulations. “This made it tricky for businesses to make a decision where local services were limited or just very expensive. South African businesses now have more choice which leads to increased competition and will keep local cloud providers in check.
“When it comes to speed and latency, there is a massive advantage of having local data centres. Latency to Azure Europe West has been between 150 and 200ms, local datacentres will bring this down to sub 20ms which directly translates to improved user experience for applications,” he concludes.