Amazon Web Services (AWS) this morning switched on its new Cape Town data centres this morning, marking the formal opening of its AWS Africa (Cape Town) Region.
Users who administrate their AWS platforms, regardless of where they are in the world, can now leverage the Cape Town region as a place to store data and run applications.
The timing during a global lockdown as a result of the COVID-19 crisis is no coincidence, says Amazon vice president and chief technology officer Werner Vogels, a regular visitor to this country.
“As COVID-19 has disrupted life as we know it, I have been inspired by the stories of organisations around the world using AWS in very important ways to help combat the virus and its impact,” he says. “Whether it is supporting the medical relief effort, advancing scientific research, spinning up remote learning programs, or standing-up remote working platforms, we have seen how providing access to scalable, dependable, and highly secure computing power is vital to keep organisations moving forward. This is why, today, we are announcing the AWS Africa (Cape Town) Region is now open.”
AWS now has data regions in North America, South America, Africa, Europe, Middle East, China, and Asia Pacific, and now spans 73 Availability Zones within 23 geographic regions around the world. It has also announced plans for 12 more Availability Zones across four more AWS Regions in Indonesia, Italy, Japan, and Spain.
The direct benefit of having a data centre on South African soil is a significant speed increase for South Africans who are accessing and processing data from AWS. Previously, AWS customers relied on solutions in Europe, the Middle East, or the United States, which posed a huge problem when undersea connectivity cables were severed repeatedly this year. It also means that developers, startups, enterprises, government, educational institutions, and non-profit organisations can run applications and serve end-users in Africa with lower latency. They can also more effectively leverage advanced AWS technologies to underpin their own innovations.
“An AWS Region in Africa will enable businesses and government organisations, including those focused on fighting the effects of COVID-19, to build cloud applications and store their data locally, while reaching end users across Africa with even lower latency,” says Vogels. “AWS Regions are composed of Availability Zones, each of which comprise one or more data centres and are located in separate and distinct geographic locations with enough distance to significantly reduce the risk of a single event impacting business continuity, yet near enough to provide low latency for high availability applications.
“Each Availability Zone has independent power, cooling, and physical security and is connected via redundant, ultra-low-latency networking. AWS customers focused on high availability can design their applications to run in multiple Availability Zones to achieve even greater fault-tolerance. AWS infrastructure regions meet the highest levels of security, compliance, and data protection. Local customers with data residency requirements, and those looking to comply with the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA), can also now store their content in South Africa with the assurance that they retain complete ownership of their data and it will not move unless they choose to move it.”
Read more on the next page about AWS’s long history in South Africa, and the role of its customers during the COVID-19 crisis.
Peter DeSantis, AWS senior vice president of global infrastructure and customer support, says the organisation has long history in South Africa, working to support the growth of the local technology community for over 15 years.
“In that time, builders, developers, entrepreneurs, and organisations have asked us to bring an AWS Region to Africa and today we are answering these requests by opening the Cape Town Region,” he says. “We look forward to seeing the creativity and innovation that will result from African organisations building in the cloud.”
DeSantis led the establishment of the first Amazon presence in Cape Town, setting up a Development Centre in 2004, focused on networking, next-generation software for customer support, and the technology behind Amazon EC2, the foundation of its cloud services. In 2015, Amazon opened an AWS office in Johannesburg, employing a local team of account managers, business development managers, customer services representatives, partner managers, professional services consultants, solutions architects, and technical account managers.
In 2017, the Amazon Global Network expanded to Africa through AWS Direct Connect points of presence. In 2018, Amazon established its first physical infrastructure on the African continent, launching Amazon CloudFront locations in Johannesburg and Cape Town. The data centres, or Region, represent the culmination of this journey.
Vogels says that many AWS customers “are doing courageous things, at the forefront of the COVID-19 fight”.
“They are helping to provide life-saving information and resources, modelling data and delivering analytics to governments, ensuring millions of students continue to get the education they deserve, and connecting citizens with healthcare providers – demonstrating first-hand the power of cloud computing.”
He gives the example of virtual schooling provider Top Dog Education, which is allowing millions of school children to continue with their education through the CambriLearn and MyTopDog learning platforms, running on AWS.
“Learners have access to e-lessons, study material, accredited tutors, and interactive material – helping them keep learning and engaged during these challenging times.”
One of its largest customers, Accenture, has developed a COVID call center offer for enterprises, offering Amazon Chime, Amazon Connect, Amazon WorkDocs, and Amazon WorkSpaces services to help businesses stay connected from anywhere, on any device, and respond to customer requests.
“This is giving call centres and customer support operations across South Africa the ability to quickly spin up environments so their agents can safely work from home. Speed, and the ability to quickly deploy technology resources, has been essential to help communities operate during the COVID shutdown in South Africa.”
The COVID Connect platform, for example, was deployed on AWS in three days by a volunteer group of local developers. It allows hospitals and clinics with a shortage of food, water, or medical supplies can be quickly connected with people and organisations that have surplus of these materials.
AWS Partner Network partner iOCO was able to launch a website for the Solidarity Fund in two days, to collect donations that will help South Africa’s national health response to COVID-19, contribute to research to detect and understand the magnitude of the disease, and support those whose lives have been disrupted by the pandemic.
“Learning more about how our customers and partners are doing inspirational things at this uncertain time leads us to believe the future for Africa is bright,” says Vogels. “We have been in South Africa for over 15 years and continue to invest in jobs, community support, and technology infrastructure. The AWS Africa (Cape Town) Region will open countless opportunities for organisations of all sizes, and we look forward to seeing the inspiring innovations that will come from our customers.”
- Developers and businesses can access the AWS Africa (Cape Town) Region beginning today. A full list of services and details on pricing is available at https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/global-infrastructure/regional-product-services/