When it comes to growing a global connectivity footprint, it seems that all eyes are on Africa these days. According to cloud services company Agilitude, Africa will see rapid growth in its cloud service adoption over the next five years, with a forecast of 42% growth year-on-year. It comes as no surprise, then, that key role players in the industry have their sights set on creating cloud regions in Africa – starting with establishing data centres in South Africa.
Microsoft have recently launched their data centres in South Africa and will operate its range of cloud services – including Azure, Office 365, and Dynamics 365 – from data centres located in Cape Town and Johannesburg. Amazon Web Services, the world’s biggest cloud provider, has said it will also open data centre facilities in South Africa with a new infrastructure region planned for the first half of 2020.
Huawei also recently announced a data centre in Johannesburg to create a cloud region in Mzansi that will be available commercially before the end of the year. Industry giant Teraco also plans to invest about R1 billion rand as it expands infrastructure to meet rising demand. By the end of 2019, the company expects to have invested R4.5 billion on building data centres in South Africa. That is a lot of connectivity and a lot of infrastructure South African enterprises can leverage to propel their businesses forward on their digital journey. And what better way to achieve this than tapping into the power of SD-WAN.