On Wednesday, April 22, 2020, Amazon Web Services (AWS)- the world’s largest enterprise cloud computing hyper-scale launched its data center operations at three locations in Cape Town, South Africa.
As its first data center on the African continent, the “AWS Africa region” has expanded Amazons’ global footprint enabling customers to run applications and store their content in data centers across South Africa. The cloud computing platform of Amazon.com Inc helps its clients store data and run applications, provide faster response, and have content back-up.
“Starting today, developers, startups, and enterprises, as well as government, education, and non-profit organizations can run their applications and serve end-users in Africa,” Amazon said in a statement.
At the unveiling, Peter DeSantis, Senior Vice President at Amazon Web Services said “we have a long history in South Africa and have been working to support the growth of the local technology community for over 15 years.” DeSantis went on to state “in that time, builders, developers, entrepreneurs, and organizations have asked us to bring an AWS Region to Africa and today we are answering these requests by opening the Cape Town Region.”
“We look forward to seeing the creativity and innovation that will result from African organizations building in the cloud,” the Senior VP at Amazon Web Services explained, while affirming that the cloud will positively transform lives and businesses across Africa.
For 14 years, Amazon Web Services has been the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform offering over 175 fully-featured services ranging for computing, storage, databases, networking, analytics, robotics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence (AI). By gaining entrance into the African region through Cape town, the cloud platform will encourage fast-growing startups, largest enterprises, and leading governments to become more agile and save costs.
In addition to developing clients’ cloud experience in South Africa, the opening of an AWS office in Cape town will see the employment of locals for various positions including solutions architects, technical account managers, business development managers, and customer service representatives, partner managers among others.
The latest launch steps up Amazon’s efforts to be ahead of rivals like Microsoft Corp’s Azure cloud platform and Chinese hardware major Huawei who have already been building data centers in South Africa. Microsoft’s Azure, Amazon’s closest rival in cloud computing, was the first major company to set up data centers in South Africa – one in Cape Town and the second in Johannesburg – in 2019. Subsequently, Huawei revealed last year that it would set up two data centers in South Africa and is in discussion with local partners.
Nevertheless, with three Availability Zones in AWS Africa (Cape Town) Regions, organizations with data residency requirements will be able to serve customers in South Africa and across the continent while retaining “complete ownership of their data,” AWS said in a statement.
