The biggest competitor against Microsoft’s Azure icn cloud computing is AWS (Amazon Web Services). Meanwhile, in the cut-throat competition between both the tech giants, Amazon is planning to open cloud data centers in South Africa in the first half of 2020. AWS provides on-demand cloud computing platform to individuals, companies, and government on a paid subscription basis in the all over the world.

The new AWS (Cape Town) Region will consist of the availability zones. In the current time, the company is providing 55 availability zones across 19 infrastructure regions worldwide, with another Availability Zones across four AWS region in Bahrain, Hong Kong, Sweden, and the US.

With the expansion, the Amazon will be able to offer their customers in Sub-Saharan Africa lower latency when using the cloud services. This should make it possible to do better assistance in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and the Internet of Things. These new data centers will offer a secure infrastructure that meets the most rigorous international standards. It will also mean that the customer of AWS in South Africa can store their data locally by following South Africa Protection of Personal Information Act. According to this act, individual data cannot be moved elsewhere without the consent of the user.

Amazon Web Services

Amazon Web services have been the world’s most comprehensive and broadly accepted cloud platform from last 12 years. The working domain and list of services offered by AWS for computing, storage, networking, databases, machine learning, and artificial intelligence, mobile, security and application development. The services of AWS are trusted by millions of active customers all over the world including the fast-growing startups, largest enterprises, and leading government agencies to power their infrastructure and offer them optimized resources which helps them to grow their business.

Future Ambition of this project 

We can say this is the latest series of AWS investment in South Africa in terms of Cloud Computing technology. Earlier in 2004, Amazon built a development center in Cape Town that mainly focuses on building networking technologies and next-generation software application development for customer support. In 2015, AWS opened an office in Johannesburg and two years later, they brought the Amazon Global Network to Africa through AWS Direct Connect technology. This year in May month, AWS continued its investment in South Africa in various parts of the country bringing some of the latest technologies like Amazon Cloud Front, AmazonRote 53 and many more to the country.

Most of the African Organization already moving to AWS

AWS is getting popular in South Africa and due to this reason, many top-notch African companies are moving their applications to AWS. If we talk about companies like Absa, Investec, MedScheme and Travelstart and many more are already using AWS services to drive cost savings, accelerate innovation, and speed up time-to-market. Many African startups are choosing AWS as the main foundation for their small businesses including Aerobotics, Apex Innovation, Custos Media, Zapper, and Simfy Africa. The public sector of South Africa, like the museums and health research organizations are also preferring the services of AWS. All these big companies are using the services of Amazon for so long time. Amazon is known for delivering the best available services in cloud computing as well as other product based services in the world tech market.

One of the largest retailer company in South Africa Pick n Pay, with over 80,000 staff across 1,560 stores, is now moving their e-commerce and data analytics system to AWS. According to the general manager of Pick n Pay “By moving out e-commerce and mobile customer application to AWS, we estimate we have saved out the total cost of ownership over the past year.”

AWS is also investing in South African technology community, supporting many charity activities and NGO like AfricanTeenGeeks that teaches children to code and other NGO like Code4CT, it also helps to learn young girls latest technical skills which helps them in accelerating their career ahead.