Vodacom is planning to drive new revenue streams through the recently launched Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centre.
AWS has opened a cloud region in Cape Town, allowing customers to run applications and store data locally in South Africa.
The new region has three geographically separate data centres or “availability zones” for resilience and brings AWS to 23 regions around the world.
The data centre will help millions of people, businesses and organisations benefit from faster connectivity and viable access to next-generation technology.
“The launch of the AWS Africa (Cape Town) Region will enable us to fully leverage AWS’s capabilities to execute an all-in strategy by 2023,” says Shameel Joosub, Vodacom Group CEO.
In addition, the launch of the AWS Region will allow us to deliver integrated solutions, such as our Internet of Things (IoT) offerings, expand our customer value propositions and drive new revenue streams, he explained.
“We have also created the Vodacom AWS Cloud Centre of Excellence to help Small and Medium-sized businesses, Enterprise, as well as Public Sector clients, migrate to the AWS Cloud. This will ensure that Vodacom Business’s clients accelerate adoption and benefit from next-generation technologies including 5G, AI, Blockchain, Mobile Edge, IoT, Robotics and mobile applications.”
He added that Vodacom’s AWS Cloud Centre of Excellence will also support its own internal migration to the cloud and will enable employee upskilling through the in-house AWS technical training and certification programmes.
Last year, Vodacom became both a customer of AWS and a reseller of AWS services across Africa. The partnership is a “game-changer” because it takes Vodacom beyond being just a big seller of connectivity.
In short, Vodacom leveraging AWS’ highly scalable and available cloud platform will deliver the innovative product-led transition to full Cloud solution offering.
Vodacom is migrating to the core of its information services landscape, including over 4000 workloads to the AWS Cloud. As a result, Vodacom says it will be able to increase automation of services and business processes as well as drive even greater agility and innovation for Vodacom Business clients.
The AWS and Vodacom partnerships have far-reaching benefits for Vodacom Business clients from a service offering perspective.
“The most notable benefit is the way in which these services can help boost digital transformation and cloud adoption strategies for organisations of all sizes, with ease of access to services such as Big Data, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML),” said the company.
“This enables businesses to now have a global reach through the AWS global footprint.”
