Yes Microsoft, South Africa can do it!
Teraco and Internet Solutions are ready to meet Microsoft’s service level demands for its Windows Azure cloud platform, spokespeople for the companies have told MyBroadband.
This follows a recent announcement from Electronic Arts (EA) that its highly anticipated game, Titanfall, will not be sold in South Africa.
According to a statement from EA, this was because testing it conducted in South Africa suggested that the performance was not as high as they need to guarantee a great experience.
Since Titanfall uses Windows Azure to host its multiplayer game servers, commentators immediately blamed the poor performance on the lack of Azure nodes in South Africa.
Windows Azure also forms the basis of Xbox Live Compute, one of the new features in the Xbox One that Microsoft has hyped.
MyGaming previously asked Microsoft whether it plans to bring Azure servers to South Africa and received the following statement in response:
Microsoft is currently providing Azure services for South African customers through a vast worldwide network of Microsoft Datacentres. This allows us to provide world class service levels and deliver on financially backed Service Level Agreements (SLAs). This worldwide network of Datacentres currently does not include a South African deployment due to the high Service Levels currently being experienced by our South African customers.
This raises the question, are South African Internet companies really not capable of meeting Microsoft’s service level requirements?
Using the Service Level Agreements on the Windows Azure website as the points of comparison, Internet Solutions and Teraco said that they can meet (and exceed) Microsoft’s demands.
Teraco: Maybe Microsoft doesn’t know what we’re capable of?
Teraco business development manager Michele McCann said that they could definitely meet Microsoft’s uptime demands.
She said that they have multiple undersea cables landing at their datacentres, which means that Microsoft would have access to redundant international routes.
Microsoft would also not have a problem distributing the content on Azure nodes hosted in Teraco datacentres thanks to the peering it offers through NAPAfrica, McCann said.
To replicate their data back to Ireland, Microsoft could just run a cable directly to the undersea operators such as Seacom and WACS, McCann added, as there is no operator in-between.
Internet Solutions: we eat 99.9% uptime SLAs for breakfast
Internet Solutions (IS) said that they too could offer Microsoft the SLA demanded for Windows Azure.
In an e-mail interview a spokesperson provided the following feedback:
Could you offer these kinds of SLAs?
Yes we could, accordingly these SLA’s are engineered through the architectural design and are not too dissimilar from SLA’s that IS offers for certain services. In some instances we are expected to offer 99.98%.
IS also said that they would be willing to run Windows Azure in South Africa for Microsoft:
Would IS (or an IS partner) be willing to run Windows Azure in South Africa for Microsoft?
Yes, partnering with Microsoft to extend their service capability helps enrich the technology footprint and capability for this region. In addition to this, we believe that our core competencies aligned with that of Microsoft’s could work well in this market.
Microsoft responds
Microsoft was asked whether it was aware of the types of services offered by South African companies such as Teraco, and what might be preventing Windows Azure nodes from being rolled out to South Africa.
In a statement sent to MyBroadband, Microsoft first explained that the decision to not officially sell Titanfall in South Africa was made by Electronic Arts, citing the same reasons EA provided in its earlier statement.
“We understand this is a disappointment for local fans and will keep gamers posted on any future plans regarding the local release of Titanfall,” the statement said. “As Microsoft South Africa, we are working with EA and the game’s developer, Respawn, to explore potential solutions.”
In terms of hosting its Windows Azure services, Microsoft provided the following:
Windows Azure provides a broad set of services, with each of these services providing specific capabilities and requiring certain supporting environments. Different applications require different levels of performance – in particular high intensity, real time, graphics aren’t used in most business applications therefore the use of Windows Azure depends on the application and the performance required. This is similar to the criteria evaluation with any platform choice a company makes.
Microsoft went on to say that some of its South African customers are already deriving benefits from Azure without there being physical nodes in the country.
“Private Property has seen load page improvements due to the optimisation and scaling benefits of Windows Azure,” Microsoft said.
This proves that certain applications that leverage Azure’s capabilities for local consumption will realise benefits, Microsoft added.
“The reality is though that Windows Azure may not be able to deliver on all requirements for all customers as in the case of Titanfall,” Microsoft said.
The business case
While Microsoft did not give any additional comment on why it hasn’t set up Azure nodes in South Africa, feedback from infrastructure and hosting service providers suggests that it is a business issue and not a technical one.
However, Teraco said that it believes there is a strong business case for Microsoft to land it infrastructure here.
“A lot of Southern African Development Community countries colocate with us,” McCann said. This means that Microsoft can host their nodes in Teraco and distribute all over Southern Africa, McCann said.
“Two years ago that wasn’t a reality,” McCann said, adding that the likes of Liquid Telecom, CMC Networks, PCCW, and Seacom have resolved the issue of cross-border African connectivity.
McCann said that the cost of bandwidth in South Africa has also reduced dramatically over the last few years; from $100 per Megabit per second (Mbps) to $50/Mbps and even $20/Mbps at large traffic volumes.
The question has become less and less of a cost issue, and more of a business case issue, McCann said.
In other words, the technology is in place and the prohibitively high costs of hosting in South Africa have come down. The only question that remains is: are there enough potential customers that need Azure nodes in Southern Africa to justify a roll-out here?
More hosting, Xbox, and Azure news
Microsoft counts on Titanfall to fire up Xbox One sales
Titanfall multiplayer is going to suck in SA
Internet Solutions lights up WACS bandwidth
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