Technology giant Google today announced the launch of a cloud region in South Africa, it’s first on the continent, thus beginning to catch up with other top providers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure, which entered the continent a few years ago. Google said it is also in Nairobi (Kenya), Lagos (Nigeria) and Cape Town and Johannesburg (South Africa) building dedicated cloud interconnection services to connect customers’ on-premise networks to Google’s network in a quest to provide full cloud capabilities to its customers and partners in Africa.
Google plans to support these sites with communications using Equiano, its private submarine cable linking Africa and Europe, which has been under expansion since 2019, with four landings to date in Togo, Namibia, Nigeria and South Africa.
South Africa now joins Google’s global network of 35 Cloud Regions and 106 regions, the announcement follows the recent regional launches in Malaysia, Thailand and New Zealand.Google Cloud Regions allow users to deploy cloud resources from specific geographic locations and access a number of services including cloud storage, compute engines and key management systems.
“We are pleased to announce the first Google Cloud Region in Africa. This new region will allow for the localisation of applications and services. It will make it really easier for our customers and partners to rapidly deploy solutions for their businesses whereby they can leverage our computer artificial intelligence or machine learning capabilities, as well as data analytics, to make more informed business decisions as they move forward,” said Niral Patel, Director of Google Cloud Africa. The new regional and interconnected sites will bring its cloud services closer to its customers, enabling them to choose where to consume products from.
“What we’re doing here is giving customers and partners the choice of where to store their data and where to consume cloud services, especially when it comes to data sovereignty.” Patel says: “This allows customers to store their data in the country if they choose …… I think the most important factor for me is that it gives the customer an element of choice.”
The ability for users to choose where their data is stored is becoming increasingly important as privacy and data laws are implemented in countries such as Kenya, which require companies to store data within their borders and process it through locally hosted servers.
The decision to establish a region in South Africa was based on the demand for cloud services and the potential of the market. However, the company is still looking to launch in more markets across the continent as demand for its offering soars. Its early adopters include large enterprise companies, as well as e-commerce companies such as TakeAlot in South Africa and Twiga in Kenya.
“We continue to assess market demand as we work with our customers and see their transformation and growth in these markets. We continue to make these assessments and it is on this basis that we choose to continue to invest,” said Patel.
According to research commissioned by Google Cloud and conducted by AlphaBeta Economics, the South African cloud computing region will contribute more than US$2.1 billion to the country’s GDP and support the creation of more than 40,000 jobs by 2030.
According to Gartner, Google Cloud, Microsoft’s Azure and AWS are the three largest public cloud storage players in the world, but it is not clear why Google has not been present in Africa until now.
Microsoft has launched two cloud regions in South Africa. Cape Town and Johannesburg (only the latter cloud region remains active) in 2019, the same year that Google announced it had “no plans to establish cloud regions or data centres in Africa”, according to this report. However, it has not ruled out this happening in the foreseeable future.
Amazon is following suit in 2020, expanding its AWS data centre to South Africa via Cape Town. The other major player, Oracle, also built its data centre in Johannesburg this year. In response to a question about whether Google is playing catch-up with other cloud services players, both executives painted a picture of each major player focusing on expanding Africa’s internet ecosystem through their data centres rather than competing for a more significant market share.
In terms of the current state of the internet on our continent, the work we have to do is to think about how to get more people and businesses online, how to help more entrepreneurs get access to capital and so on,” says Gajria. In business terms, it’s not a zero-sum game of market share, but how we can work collectively between the private sector, the public sector, and civil society to build a large, vibrant internet ecosystem that will help expand economies and businesses and create jobs.”
With the launch of Google, South Africa now houses almost all of the large cloud service providers.
