Pan-African internet and connectivity service provider SEACOM will now offer direct connections from its East African network directly to public cloud networks and datacentres located South Africa.
This announcement follows the launch of Microsoft’s new enterprise-grade datacentres in South Africa based in Cape Town and Johannesburg.
SEACOM’s offering, available to business customers, will deliver direct, high-speed, dedicated and secure connectivity to the Microsoft datacentres via resilient network connections from Kenya to South Africa.
Acquisition of Fiberco’s network
SEACOM Managing Director Tonny Tugee said of this offering that the SEACOM subsea cable, which connects Kenya to South Africa, offers a fibre express route that carries Terabytes of capacity with speeds offered to business customers from as low as 50 Mbps up to 10Gbps.
“In addition to this, SEACOM’s recent acquisition of Fiberco’s network allows it to extend this capability across South Africa and into the major datacentres where the cloud providers, such as Microsoft, have a presence,” said Tugee.
Ten years ago, SEACOM brought Africa its first high-speed internet connectivity directly to Africa, opening the continent to the technological advancements enjoyed today.
In 2016, SEACOM scaled up its commitment to Africa, and now directly offers business customers solutions with high-speed, reliable internet connectivity and cloud solutions.
Through years of experience with global cloud providers as Microsoft, SEACOM has been able to provide solutions to businesses considering cloud solutions.
Data centres in South Africa
One such example is the launch of the Azure ExpressRoute offering, together with Microsoft, that allows SEACOM customers to extend their on-premises networks into the cloud without going over the public internet, which until now has only been limited to datacentres which sit outside of the African continent.
Microsoft’s recent launch of data centres in South Africa aims to accelerate the move of African businesses to the cloud and marks the first time businesses have access to datacentres, which sit on African soil.
“The opportunity for Kenya Customers and Microsoft Partners to leverage SEACOM’s ExpressRoute to connect directly and reliably to Microsoft datacentres will enable more Kenyan businesses to embrace the cloud and enhance digitisation. We are excited about this journey that will enable all our customers in the continent by offering them cloud solutions and availing a trusted path to digital transformation,” concluded Microsoft Country Manager Sebuh Haileleul.
Seacom upgrades cable to 1.5TB
In June last year, SEACOM announced that it was raising the capacity of its marine fibre cable to 1.5 TB in an upgrade necessitated by a surge in demand for bandwidth in East Africa.
This further upgrade falls in line with SEACOM’s focus on driving the development of the African internet and opening the broadband tap for African service providers and business users.
SEACOM and Microsoft partnered last year in May to offer cloud services in Kenya.
You can also read about Telkom Kenya targeting Mombasa with faster internet as Liquid expands Microsoft Azure availability in Africa and MTN signing up to Liquid Telecom’s 4G roaming service.
