South Africa has seen a rush of major players entering the country’s cloud computing space in recent years.<\/p>\n
Companies including Amazon, Microsoft, Huawei, and Google have all launched cloud regions in the country.<\/p>\n
The launch of these cloud availability zones in South Africa meant that companies and developers could host their applications and data within the country through prominent providers.<\/p>\n
In addition to providing lower latency, this makes it easier for government-linked entities and companies with strict data protection requirements to use such services.<\/p>\n
While basic shared hosting services may suffice for many, platforms like AWS and Microsoft’s Azure have come to dominate in larger companies due to the business benefits they provide.<\/p>\n
In 2022, the International Data Corporation surveyed 106 South African chief information and technology officers, of which 70% said public cloud applications are essential for their organisation’s technological transformation.<\/p>\n
Amazon Web Services (AWS) launched<\/a><\/strong> its Africa region in Cape Town in April 2020. The region is labelled “af-south-1”, with the name “Africa (Cape Town)”.<\/p>\n AWS told MyBroadband that the arrival of its infrastructure in South Africa would assist a range of organisations. It would also help developers start businesses and build new products and services.<\/p>\n AWS opened a new office<\/a><\/strong> in Johannesburg in September 2022, announcing that it would support growing customer demand in South Africa.<\/p>\n “The new office will support South Africa’s burgeoning cloud market, and provide a range of services to organisations of all sizes, including startups, enterprises, and public sector agencies,” it said in a statement.<\/p>\n “The new office continues Amazon’s growing investment in South Africa.”<\/p>\n Microsoft launched its South African Azure region in March 2019. The company said its data centres would help power the fourth industrial revolution.<\/p>\n The company’s Azure Availability Zones in its South Africa North region went live<\/a><\/strong> in October 2021. Microsft said this would bring higher availability and asynchronous replication across Azure regions for recovery protection.<\/p>\n “Availability Zones in South Africa North are made up of three unique physically separated locations or ‘zones’ within a single region to bring higher availability and asynchronous replication across Azure regions for disaster recovery protection,” Microsoft said.<\/p>\n Oracle launched<\/a><\/strong> its Johannesburg cloud region in January 2022 \u2014 the cloud computing provider’s first region on the continent.<\/p>\n The company first announced its intentions to launch 20 new cloud data centres<\/a><\/strong>, including one in South Africa, by the end of 2020. However, the company’s plans were delayed by the Covid-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n Oracle said the new facilities would make it easier for businesses in the region to improve performance and protect data.<\/p>\n The software, services, and\u2014now\u2014cloud computing provider has had a presence in South Africa for 30 years.<\/p>\n Huawei began offering its commercial cloud services in South Africa with the launch of its Johannesburg data centre in March 2019.<\/p>\n It aims to service African governments, carriers, and organisations across various industries with its cloud products.<\/p>\n The company said South Africa was among the most diverse and promising emerging markets globally.<\/p>\n Huawei announced that it would launch a third cloud availability zone<\/a><\/strong> in South Africa toward the end of 2022, stating that it will halve cloud latency once it goes live.<\/p>\n The company’s Southern Africa president Leo Chen said that, once completed, the availability zone would be ready three years ahead of schedule.<\/p>\n In October 2022, Google announced that it would launch its first Cloud region in Africa<\/a><\/strong>, with South Africa being its base of operations.<\/p>\n “Today, we are deepening our commitment to investing in Africa’s digital transformation,” Google Cloud Leader for Africa, Niral Patel, said.<\/p>\n “I am excited to announce our intent to open a Google Cloud region in South Africa. Our first on the continent.”<\/p>\n Patel explained that estimates from AlphaBeta Economics research suggest that the South African could region could contribute $2.1 billion (R35.6 billion) to South Africa’s GDP and create more than 30,000 jobs by 2030.<\/p>\n Regarding benefits for businesses in the region, Patel said the move would allow for the localisation of applications and services.<\/p>\n South Africa’s cloud computing space has grown significantly in recent years, with major players like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft establishing their services in the country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341076,"featured_media":441342,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[30594,727,167,35,1982,24957,3372],"class_list":["post-475413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cloud-hosting","tag-amazon-web-services","tag-cloud-computing","tag-google","tag-headline","tag-huawei","tag-microsoft-azure","tag-oracle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475413"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341076"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=475413"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475413\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":475423,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475413\/revisions\/475423"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/441342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=475413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=475413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=475413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Microsoft Azure<\/h2>\n
Oracle<\/h2>\n
Huawei<\/h2>\n
Google<\/h2>\n
\nNow read: Vantage begins construction on second Johannesburg data centre campus<\/a><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"