After India Amazon Web Services to Open Data Centres In South Africa

The world’s fastest growing public cloud provider AWS is set to defy Microsoft by also launching data centres in South Africa.

The intention to build its own infrastructure in Africa was unveiled by Amazon CTO Werner Vogels.

The executive said the company is currently working on understanding the region’s demand, not only in South Africa, but across the whole of the continent, not giving for now any dates for when the data centres would open.

He said: “We have a lot of customers here already, especially when it comes to young business, but also larger companies, before opening up a region here.”

As for what AWS expects from opening a region in South Africa, Vogels went back to when the company opened a region in India.

He said that before they opened their Indian data centres in June 2016, as many as 70,000 businesses were using the cloud provider’s services.

After the region was brought online and added to AWS global footprint, that same customer base nearly doubled to 125,000, growing 60% in the first nine months of operation.

Vogels said South Africa is expected to deliver a similar outcome once the data centres are built and put to work.

AWS has today 43 operational availability zones across 16 regions where data centres power its cloud services.

The company has announced plans to open 11 new availability zones in the coming years, as well as four new regions. However, none of the announced regions concern Africa.

AWS’ intention to build infrastructure in the most southern country of the African continent follows on from Microsoft’s announcement back in May when the Azure giant announced it will be opening in 2018 two data centres in Johannesburg and Cape Town.