South Africa now has its very own Azure datacentres: one in Cape Town, and one in Johannesburg.
Microsoft flipped the switch on both of them yesterday, announcing that the datacentres are live and open for business at a short press conference.
Local is lekker
Corporate Vice President of Azure Networking, Yousef Khalidi, said the launch of Azure in Africa would improve access to cloud and internet services for South African organisations.
“The availability of Microsoft’s cloud services delivered from Africa will mean local companies can securely and reliably move their businesses to the cloud while meeting compliance requirements,” Khalidi said.
No more obstacles
Having South African Azure datacentres effectively addresses the two biggest obstacles to local cloud adoption, namely the high latencies to overseas Azure servers and compliance with local data privacy and sovereignty legislation, POPI.
Now, with both of those issues no longer a concern, local organisations can apply themselves to making use of the flexibility, scalability, and raw power of Microsoft’s many Azure services.
Microsoft’s Tom Keane, Corporate Vice President for Azure Global, said in a statement that “Azure is the first of Microsoft’s intelligent cloud services to be delivered from the new datacentres in South Africa. Office 365, Microsoft’s cloud-based productivity solution, is anticipated to be available by the third quarter of calendar year 2019, and Dynamics 365, the next generation of intelligent business applications, is anticipated for the fourth quarter.”
A huge boost
Tarsus On Demand‘s Vinay Hiralall adds that “These local Azure datacentres will effectively change the way we do business and provide substantial opportunities for businesses looking use technology as a competitive advantage. We look forward to assisting these organisations in unlocking the value cloud technology brings.
“We know from our own experience that cloud is a massive growth-enabler, and we look forward to seeing South Africa and the rest of the African continent grow on the back of locally-delivered cloud services,” he says.
Find out more
To find out more about Microsoft’s Azure cloud services, get in touch with Tarsus On Demand either through their website feedback form, or by giving them a ring on 011 531 1111.
[Image: Microsoft News]
