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[Africa Cloud Review] Simon Ngunjiri: Cloud is the most valuable resources African businesses can have at their disposal
Cloud adoption in Africa is accelerating fast, driven by broadband connectivity and more affordable data.
African businesses have been encouraged to adopt cloud-based services to not only respond to change but to thrive in an increasingly digital world. In fact, the Cloud Africa 2018 Report found that 98% of surveyed Kenyan business decision-makers agree on cloud computing's innovation capacity and transformative impact.
Cloud computing offers African businesses many benefits. It allows them to set up what is essentially a virtual office to give you the flexibility of connecting to your business anywhere, any time.
Francis Wainaina, Senior Product Manager at SEACOM East Africa notes that Mass cloud adoption across Africa has the potential to not only improve customer service, business efficiency, operational flexibility, and agility but to also save costs.
‘’The benefits offered by cloud computing will differ within each individual business based on their unique needs. However, the underlying advantages boil down to the same three points: strategic value, flexibility, and efficiency,’’ he says.
Euphoria Telecom CEO John Woollam also agrees with this in a recent report published by Gadgets. John while talking about how cloud-based contact centres drive SA outsourcing notes that taking a cloud-based approach can be advantageous too.
‘’To start with, it allows for a far simpler, and faster deployment of platform integration options. Integrating your on-premises contact centre software with other services is possible, but between licensing and installation, it can rapidly become a nightmare’’ he says
In countries like South Africa, the public sector is looking to move to cloud technology to enhance efficiency, whereas the private sector is seeking cloud computing to facilitate innovation within their space. This is according to a recent study by ITWeb and Amazon Web Services (AWS). Both sectors, the study notes, seek cost savings as their second most important consideration in moving to the cloud.
Remember as we mentioned in our previous cloud column, South Africa is one of the biggest cloud markets in Africa. The country is also Africa’s largest data center market, accounting for ~60% of the continent’s available MTDC power supply.
DGB for example, which is one of South Africa’s largest independent wine and spirit producers and distributors, operating out of the Western Cape recently announced that it is tapping into cloud solutions to bolster sales. SoftwareONE, an end-to-end cloud technology and software solutions company operating in over 90 countries also announced the appointment of Marilyn Moodley as country leader for South Africa.
Her new role comes at an exciting time for SoftwareONE as it rapidly expands its capabilities into areas like SAP migration services, application modernisation and hyperscale cloud services and solutions.
As a unified online platform for communication and collaboration, the cloud is now widely considered to be one of the most valuable resources African businesses can have at their disposal.
Simon Ngunjiri Muraya is Google Cloud Architect at Incentro Africa
