JOHANNESBURG - Mobile communications company Vodacom said it welcomes Amazon Web Services (AWS), a subsiary of American conglomerate Amazon, in launching new data centres in South Africa which will enable it to deliver improved business, cloud and other solutions.
Vodacom has in recent years taken the decision to expand its focus beyond just telecommunications and become a technology service provider.
In a statement on Wednesday, it said part of this process requires that its own internal processes and infrastructure were as modern and digitally capable as possible, so that the company could provide the highest levels of service to clients.
It said it had selected AWS as its primary cloud provider and was migrating the core of its information services landscape, including over 4,000 workloads to the AWS Cloud.
Vodacom is already an AWS advanced consulting partner with operations across the African continent.
"Naturally we are very pleased that they have made the decision to invest in the South African market, as well as the broader African market, by opening these data centres in Cape Town," Vodacom chief executive officer Shameel Joosub said.
"The most exciting aspect of this is the integration of AWS into the Vodacom network, which will allow our clients to take advantage of the benefits of both offerings, and use them to transform their businesses into digitally enabled, tech-first companies."
Joosub said the most notable benefit for Vodacom business clients was that these services could help boost digital transformation and cloud adoption strategies for organisations of all sizes, with ease of access to big data, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning.
This enabled businesses to now have a global reach through the AWS global footprint.
"The launch of the AWS Africa will enable us to fully leverage AWS’s capabilities to execute an all-in strategy by 2023. It will also allow us to deliver integrated solutions, such as our Internet of Things (IoT) offerings, expanding our customer value propositions and drive new revenue streams," the Vodacom boss said.
He said the company had also created the Vodacom AWS cloud centre of excellence to help small and medium sized businesses, enterprise and public sector clients migrate to the AWS Cloud.
This would ensure that Vodacom Business’s clients accelerated adoption and benefit from next generation technologies including the 5th generation mobile network (5G), as well as AI, block chain, mobile edge, IoT, robotics and mobile applications.
"The Vodacom AWS Cloud Centre of Excellence will also support Vodacom’s own internal migration to the cloud and will enable employee upskilling through the in-house AWS technical training and certification programmes," Joosub added.