Cloud-based services are in demand across the world, including in Africa. This has been accelerated by hybrid work, so cloud service providers are looking into how they can serve their customers who need that facility the most.
To this end, it has been announced that Microsoft will be partnering with Liquid Cloud via its Africa Transformation Office, ATO, to offer cloud services to businesses in the continent.
A statement announcing this development says that the ATO will collaborate with Liquid Cloud to offer the service to businesses in Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
If done right, this partnership will meet regulatory and data residency requirements, as well as enable business continuity.
To note, the hybrid cloud environment extends Azure capabilities enabling customers to create cloud-native applications faster with Azure platform and data services such as App Service, Functions, Logic Apps, machine learning and many others.
Thus, customers will be able to innovate anywhere and use the Azure platform to bring new solutions to life that solves today’s challenges, while creating the future.
The competition, including Google, is already setting shop in South Africa for mostly the same functions. Named Google Cloud Data Centre, it is the first of such a facility to be set up in Africa.
The new Cloud Region will help users, developers, businesses, and educational institutions across Africa to move more information and tools online, improve access options for customers, and in turn, create jobs.
Wael Elkabbany, General Manager Africa Regional Cluster, Microsoft said: “Critical infrastructure enablers are needed to provide access to the cloud to accelerate digital transformation and the adoption of digital technologies. Working with Liquid Cloud, access to the local cloud will be available to more organizations and highly regulated industries across the continent. In addition, hybrid cloud provides in-country resources that address data-residency, latency, and storage requirements,”
