Amazon Web Services a winner for South Africa

Oh yeah, will be built at some indeterminate time in the future says an Amazon employee who doesn't have sight of those decisions and timeframes.
 
I went to an AWS chit-chat a while ago and I was led to believe there that the reason we won't get an Amazon data center any time soon is because of the requirement for 2x different power providers?

So as well as the usual generator/UPS/etc they actually require 2x different power utility companies and if possible using 2x different power technologies (coal/gas/solar/etc). Of course with the ubiquity of Eskom and coal here that isn't an option, unless they self-provision with solar or something and use that in conjunction with Eskom coal.
 
The headline doesn't quite match up to the article...
 
Bring in stock and drones to deliver. keep the datacentre.
 
I thought Amazon already have infrastructure in SA,

interesting to learn they dont.....

Why did you think that they did?

We are not a big enough market to justify it in any way shape or form...

They do have a dev house in SA though.
 
Why did you think that they did?

We are not a big enough market to justify it in any way shape or form...

They do have a dev house in SA though.

I mean we have a teraco DC, and a few other major tier 4 DC's,
I would think this would be enough for them to build one of their own here in SA.

so that dev house is what I saw, interesting..... its not a DC, as I always thought...
 
The problem with SA is the fact that we sit on the tip of Africa.
This means SA by itself has to generate enough Business to a very large degree to support the DC.

Everyone else in the world is relatively close to a AWS DC and to use a AWS SA based DC would not make sense as there would be existing ones closer to them.

We need e-commerce to grow substantially in Southern African for us to get a DC in the near future

This business model just doesn't make sense for them or any other of the Big Cloud Players
 
We already have some very good service providers in SA, so I don't see a massive benefit. Competition here is very stiff, and pricing isn't too bad imo.
 
The problem with SA is the fact that we sit on the tip of Africa.
This means SA by itself has to generate enough Business to a very large degree to support the DC.

Everyone else in the world is relatively close to a AWS DC and to use a AWS SA based DC would not make sense as there would be existing ones closer to them.

We need e-commerce to grow substantially in Southern African for us to get a DC in the near future

This business model just doesn't make sense for them or any other of the Big Cloud Players


AWS would be perfect for the streaming providers like Netflix, Showmax etc.

AWS does not only have to be consumer facing.

More and more companies are looking at moving their applications to the cloud. No more Data Centres or dedicated servers for them... I remember not so long ago all companies had their own "Computer Room".
Step 2 was to move their servers to rented footprints in Data Centres
Step 3 was to not own the servers but have dedicated servers...
Step 4 - Virtual Machines. Everything configurable and flexible



Sure we may not be at the tipping point yet...
 
AWS would be perfect for the streaming providers like Netflix, Showmax etc.

AWS does not only have to be consumer facing.

More and more companies are looking at moving their applications to the cloud. No more Data Centres or dedicated servers for them... I remember not so long ago all companies had their own "Computer Room".
Step 2 was to move their servers to rented footprints in Data Centres
Step 3 was to not own the servers but have dedicated servers...
Step 4 - Virtual Machines. Everything configurable and flexible



Sure we may not be at the tipping point yet...

With other services such as storage, PBX and email being completely in the cloud, some small companies don't even have the need for VMs or their own dedicated servers. Almost anything these days can be purchased as a service, which eliminates the need to set up such infrastructure.
 
I'm sure they have some sort of call centre in Cape Town?

Sure do, retail side customer support. If you ever have to call Amazon you want to reach the Cape Town team and not the other teams. The CPT team is significantly better from a customer service perspective. I had to call Amazon a few times recently and eventually started hanging up and dialing back in hopes of reaching the team in Cape Town. The CPT team understands the processes and rules inside out while other call centers for Amazon seem to have no idea that they are even working for Amazon.
 
Sure do, retail side customer support. If you ever have to call Amazon you want to reach the Cape Town team and not the other teams. The CPT team is significantly better from a customer service perspective. I had to call Amazon a few times recently and eventually started hanging up and dialing back in hopes of reaching the team in Cape Town. The CPT team understands the processes and rules inside out while other call centers for Amazon seem to have no idea that they are even working for Amazon.

went there for a meeting, didnt see everything just the devs sitting in a nondescript small building....

didnt see any call centre that I could mention....
 
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