Infrastructure expansion accelerates digital transformation and facilitates a connected African continent
As the demand for cloud-based services grows across Africa due to the adoption of hybrid work, Microsoft has announced a partnership with Liquid Cloud through its Africa Transformation Office (ATO) to provide cloud services for businesses across the continent.
Liquid Cloud and the ATO will collaborate to deliver resilient cloud services in Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe to meet regulatory and data residency requirements, address low latency workloads, strengthen resilience and enable business continuity.
“We witnessed an accelerated adoption of cloud technologies in Africa, and businesses are now reaping the benefits of their investment. Our customers are increasingly moving to hybrid work cultures, meaning the demand for cloud-based services will only grow. Our partnership will enable us to build comprehensive and edge-based cloud capabilities that meet customer regulatory requirements and ensure they deliver value to their customers,” said David Behr, CEO-Liquid Cloud and Cyber Security.
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, Azure SQL Managed Instance, PostgreSQL database, and Azure machine learning. As a result, customers will be able to innovate anywhere and use the Azure platform in bringing to life new solutions which solve today’s challenges while creating the future.
On his part, Wael Elkabbany, General Manager Africa Regional Cluster-Microsoft said: “Critical infrastructure enablers are needed to provide cloud access to accelerate digital transformation and the adoption of digital technologies. Working with Liquid Cloud, access to the local cloud will be available to more organisations and highly regulated industries across the continent. In addition, hybrid cloud provides in-country resources which address data-residency, latency and storage requirements”.
The opportunity in Africa is immense, but there is a pressing need to adopt digital platforms to accelerate Africa’s economic growth and better-enable Africans to participate in the global digital economy. Through the Africa Transformation Office, Microsoft focuses on four essential development areas – digital infrastructure, skilling, SMEs and start-ups – supported by strategic partnerships with industry alliances and coalitions to fuel investment in Africa, and further establish the continent’s export of digital services.
