Microsoft Expands Cloud Services in South Africa’s Azure Data Centres
To promote cloud adoption and support company growth, Microsoft South Africa has expanded the range of cloud services available from its Azure data centres in Johannesburg and Cape Town. In an effort to boost cloud capacity and capabilities, the US multinational technology giant has now made the Dynamics 365 and Power Platform available in its data centers, allowing African organizations in the public and commercial sectors to accelerate their digital plans.
The business claims that, since the data center region’s introduction, sales of its Azure products have increased significantly over the past year and have doubled annually for the first two years.
The latest expansion, according to Microsoft, which inaugurated its South African cloud region in 2019, is supported by continuous investments in Microsoft Business Applications across the continent, notably in South Africa. The most recent expansion, according to the company, will allow the hyperscale data center locations in South Africa to now offer Azure, Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, and Power Platform online services, supporting businesses as they reimagine ways of doing business to adapt to the fast-paced change in today’s digital economy.
Karin Jones, Director Business Applications GTM at Microsoft South Africa said: “Leaders in organisations across industries and sectors are focused on finding ways to improve the flow of innovation and knowledge across the business in order to respond to market changes, customer needs and specific business and industry challenges at speed. They need digital solutions that break existing silos between data sources, people, processes, and insights.”
What the Azure Data centres Expansion Offers
Local firms may shift their operations securely and reliably to the cloud while keeping data residency and sovereignty and adhering to legal and regulatory requirements by having these cloud services offered from South Africa.
The local Microsoft Cloud can generate value at scale, quickly, and securely because it offers a flexible platform, productivity, business apps, and the ability to quickly store, analyze, and take action on data with intelligent software. Additionally, it enables people to connect with one another and the business resources they require, including data, documents, databases, networks, and systems, whenever and wherever they need them. Greater levels of sharing, collaboration, productivity, and learning are tapped as a result.
“Ongoing investment to increase capacity and meet customer demand for dedicated disaster recovery necessitated the expansion of our Cape Town data centre region earlier this year,” says Johannes Kanis, director of the Azure Core Business at Microsoft South Africa.
“Microsoft’s ongoing investment in local infrastructure and the expansion of cloud services in South Africa is helping build the capability and improve operational efficiencies of organisations of all sizes across sectors. This will accelerate digital innovation in the country by enabling businesses to become more agile, resilient, and competitive. This in turn will help unlock broader economic growth for South Africa,” says Jones.
Combined with the opening of Azure Availability Zones in 2021, the services are further supported by the low latency, resiliency and high availability of business-critical applications and data that comes with in-region data centres, notes Microsoft.