Amazon plans to build new data centers in Cape Town, South Africa to speed up cloud services and reducing costs for Amazon’s local corporate clients.
U.S. e-commerce giant Amazon has announced plans to construct new data centers in South Africa, establishing the company’s first infrastructure region in Africa.
The data centers will be launched in the country at the start of 2020, speeding up cloud services and reducing costs for Amazon’s local corporate clients, according to BusinessInsider.
The data centers, which are essentially large, highly-secure server and data-hardware warehouses, will be used to store large amounts of data while enabling African businesses to leverage advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, internet of things and mobile services to empower their own innovation.
Set to be constructed in Cape Town, the data centers will consist of three “availability zones”, according to Businesstech. Amazon have come under fire in the U.S. for replacing many jobs with automated solutions, such as in their 3,000 AmazonGo locations that will be cashier-less.
While much of infrastructure in the centers will be automated, in line with Amazon’s typical data center strategy, jobs will likely be created for those running the complex operation and maintaining important elements such as security.
Amazon Web Services, the cloud division of Amazon, already built data servers in Cape Town and Johannesburg earlier this year, following the launch of its AWS Direct Connect service in the two major cities at the end of 2017, according to Techcentral.
This latest development will make South Africa Amazon’s first infrastructure region in Africa.
Cloud computing technology allows for storing and accessing of data and software over the internet rather than a particular computer hard drive, with applications for Africans spanning across entrepreneurship, education, government and various other fields.
South African companies will be able to benefit from the Direct Connect service by establishing a dedicated network connection to Amazon Web Services. The infrastructure points of presence in Cape Town and Johannesburg, enable the Amazon CloudFront, Amazon Route 53, AWS Shield, and AWS WAF services throughout the continent.
