The largest cloud service on the African continent

Safaricom, Kenya's leading telecoms provider, launched cloud computing services today. It is said to be the largest cloud service on the continent, reflecting the growing importance of cloud computing in Kenya and other parts of Africa.

"We call it the largest indigenous cloud in Africa. "The demand is really huge," said George Makori, senior manager of cloud computing and hosting services at the Hunt newsletter in Nairobi. ”

Hunting communications will offer inexpensive computing power to individuals, entrepreneurs and big companies, but Makori says the small and medium-sized enterprises, which account for 80% of Kenya's gross domestic product, may benefit the most. "By using cloud computing to help these small and medium-sized enterprises, we will promote GDP growth." "he said. There are other local cloud service providers, such as MTN commercial, that work with hunting communications.

In Kenya, traditional information technology infrastructure, both absolute and relative, is very expensive. Electricity costs about 20 cents per kilowatt hour, 13.5 cents higher than the American average of about 50%. Server running costs are about USD 5 per day (more than 1800 dollars a year), which does not include cooling and management costs.

Given that the average salary of a Kenyan accountant is $6265 and IT managers are 14588 dollars, these operating costs make it a traditional, proprietary IT infrastructure that only capital-filled start-ups and large companies, such as insurers, banks and large retailers, can afford. And all users, regardless of their size, must endure relatively frequent power outages.

In theory, Kenyans have been able to use the services of large cloud service providers such as Amazon and rack Space (Rackspace). But these users must face hundreds of milliseconds or even longer data latency because the cloud server is too far away. In addition, the two giants require users to pay by credit cards – a threshold for many Kenyans, who use the mobile payment system more Pesa.

Planning of the hole-tie technology center of the sample

Improved Internet connectivity, including the fourth trans-ocean cable, which is expected to be in operation soon, is resolving the Kenyan delay issue. But the demand for credit cards still exists. This provides a breakthrough for running Pesa's hunting communication.

"Small businesses in general in Kenya have credit lines in their hunting communications. So they can use these loans to buy [cloud computing] virtual machines, "said Phares Kariuki, a leading IT vendor in Africa, Westcamps of Africa (Westcon Africa), an engineer at the Kenyan branch," that the cloud of hunting communications will be easier to use-it will be cheaper, And there is no credit card problem. ”

Makori says the service will provide data storage and remote computing services supported by Linux or the Windows operating system. Now, customers need to provide their own software, but hunting communications with Microsoft, Oracle, think SAP (SAP) and other companies on the issue of cloud software to negotiate.

In the long run, hunting communications and other cloud providers are likely to set up data centers in a High-tech city called the Conza technology city. The Tech city is still in the conceptual stage (the Kenyan government is looking for investors to put in the expected $7 billion development cost), which will be built about 37 miles south of Nairobi, which is still a bush-born wasteland, known as the "Silicon Savannah" by the government.

Hunting Communications The data center established here could be the type that allows customers to install their own servers and pay monthly fees for space, cooling services, reliable power supply, and IT support. Makori said that the current hunting communication is in Nairobi and the base su mu (Kisumu) each run a data center.

Big international companies also view cloud services as key to determining their business prospects in Africa. Nairobi is the location of the outposts of Google, Microsoft, IBM and other companies.

And thanks to a 80-dollar smartphone listing, smartphone use is booming in Kenya. To meet these customers, the new cloud service will allow smartphones and computer users to access their websites, download data backup tools, store their own information in the cloud, and pay for them using Pesa.

Eric Hersman that cloud services is still at the critical mass stage in Kenya, one of the co-founder of Ushahidi, a mobile map platform, and a key figure for bringing innovators and investors together to Ihub in Nairobi. He calls the big suppliers ' payment problems a "hard gap". But in the initial stages of growth, startups are generally able to make their PCs share servers in some cases, he added.

Even as cloud solutions emerge, familiarity with the concept remains uneven in a rapidly interconnected country. "We found that most people don't know what cloud computing is," he said in a preliminary market survey six months before the hunt.

"The first challenge is to makori the cloud," he said. We can prove that we are very, very cheap compared to when you are going out to buy your own IT infrastructure. ”

(Responsible editor: Lu Guang)