Cool. From what I know Africa is like the only continent so far without any datacenters from the major players. Correct me if I am wrong.
Glad to see things change and a small step into a more connected and peaceful world.
Glad to see things change and a small step into a more connected and peaceful world.
...because they don't know that the internet is a network of networks. I.e. They should build their own strong internal network.
Instead, their networks are designed only as dumb pipes to deliver the internet.
We're 90% AWS here, but would probably use Azure for those clients if they had a data centre in that region.
My day-job is as a consultant in the financial sector. It's been always burdensome getting a project approved where the data will reside outside of the country. We have smaller players , but their rates are exorbitant in comparison to MS, GOOG and Amazon.
I'm glad and optimistic about this move from MS, because now we can get more work done with less red-tape.
It can be mitigated somewhat by reducing the quality of the video and using CDNs, but even edge nodes are scarce in that are of the world.
I imagine it would be fine for normal applications, aside from being a little slower, but video is a challenge.
But don't blame the industry for not having a major datacenter anywhere on that continent. You need a stable power supply for that to make sense, which very few countries there have. Even Ghana that used to brag about that is now a basket case, last I checked.
You also need a stable and at least substantially non-corrupt political situation, I would think? That rules out a lot of countries in Africa.
That rules out a lot of countries in the world including Russia, USA, and Brazil :/
All facetiousness aside, I am really glad to learn of this development. It goes to show the dynamic potential locked up and waiting to be exploited in Africa. The infrastructure problems are not insurmountable and the high returns accruable to investors will more than compensate any willing entrepreneur.
Africa is not an investment destination for the future. It is an investment destination for today.
(On a related note, a company I am inolved with is starting a training school for the next generation of elite developers from Nigeria and we are searching for international technical and financial partners. I'd love to hear from any interested HN readers.
Email in profile.)
I don't see any email in your profile.
username@gmail.com
Actually that plays in the favor of foreign corporations, who are more likely to pony up bribes in your favorite foreign currency.
It is great that those countries get the infrastructure to enjoy what is already possible in the majority of the world.
Sure there are many roadblocks for that to be an easy goal, but not doing anything is worse I think.
EDIT:Screw the 'groupthink' on HN. Why would you downvote a simple non-offensive comment like this? Africa and its technology are my specific area for research. I know what I am talking about.
From what they tell me, some parts of Nigeria have never had electricity, especially in the oil-rich Niger Delta. Hard to believe, but that's the way it is.
It seems to me that staking out the unclaimed position at the furthest southern economic hub makes sense as a first step, whether that hub has the most customers or not.
Though yes, if Oblio was talking shit about Africa they could use a bit of Three Stooges-esque slapping about.
My phrasing was a bit awkward but my point was exactly what you said.
Every time there's a discussion about major cloud providers (Amazon, Google, etc.) in Africa someone says: "oh, there are DCs in Africa". Then you look them up and they're all in South Africa and the rest of Africa is blank.
"non-offensive"
I'm afraid these two things are incompatible with each other.
If there are any, they're super recent.
There's a reason AfriNIC is better suited to being in Kenya, but is in Mauritius. Even on raw metric terms you wouldn't find Kenya higher on a single metric in terms of cost, or bandwidth. The only one would be latency to Europe and that too due to physical constraints - and even so just on backbone lines.