Microsoft, in partnership with SEACOM, has launched a cloud service that will allow customers to extend their on-premises networks into the cloud without going over the public internet. The service, dubbed Azure ExpressRoute, enables customers to create private connections between datacenters and infrastructure on their premises or in a cloud environment.
“We are excited about the added value that this will bring to our customers – particularly over a secured and reliable connection provided through SEACOM”, says Sebuh Haileleul, East Africa Country Manager at Microsoft. “We know that organisations are moving towards a space where they are dealing with a lot of data that requires secure movement. This service addresses these issues by providing a private, secure and high bandwidth connection to the cloud.”
The ExpressRoute partnership has previously found great success with M-KOPA – the world’s leading pay-as-you-go off-grid solar company, headquartered in Nairobi. With the help of Microsoft’s Azure cloud, M-KOPA is able to deploy its IT technologies in a seamless and reliable manner to bring power to over 600,000 homes across East Africa.
“Partnering with SEACOM made sense – especially where a guaranteed network experience for users going into the cloud was and is concerned,” says Haileleul.
“SEACOM is giving a low latency connection with guaranteed throughput and uptime. Data movement between the user and the cloud resources of Azure will be seamless, similar to working within your office local network,” said Tonny Tugee, SEACOM General Manager, East Africa region.
“ We have sufficient skilled experts with all the tools you will need to to scale your organization data convenient however big or small the size is, we will continuously keep working with Microsoft to make our cloud computing system much better,” said Tugge.
“Because we can control the infrastructure from the last kilometre of the fibre to our many points of presence in the world’s largest Internet traffic exchange points, we can ensure our clients use Azure as naturally as if it was an extension of their own IT infrastructure,” he added
“This partnership is based on the strengths and capabilities of both parties to provide support not only to M-KOPA, but also to further customers. The move to the cloud and the increase in data management needs means that an offering like this could not come at a more perfect time. We are confident that Azure ExpressRoute will bring great benefits to our current and potential customers.” said Haileleul.
“Microsoft is happy to see this come to reality, our target is to provide end to end proposition and chain experience in the most secure, reliable and cost effective way to our clients both in Kenya and Africa,” he added.
Local organisations wanting to use Azure will have to connect to one or more of the company’s data centres in Europe or around the world since Azure, Microsoft’s cloud computing platform does not yet have Azure data centre in Africa.
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Through these latest advancements, Microsoft continues to showcase rapid innovation on the Microsoft Azure cloud platform, while enabling choice and simplicity for a growing list of customers of all sizes and ensuring they are safe.
Early this month, Microsoft corporation launched Africa’s first Software Testing Centre in Nairobi making it the fourth country in the world to host such a centre after China, Poland and India to host such a Centre.
