Microsoft Expands Azure Global Footprint with Two New Datacenters Planned for Africa

Today Microsoft looks to beat their cloud competitors Amazon and Google to the South African continent with the announcement of two new Azure datacenters which will come online there in 2018.

The two datacenters, located in Cape Town and Johannesburg, will provide a range of cloud services from Microsoft such as Azure, Office 365, and Dynamics 365. The facilities will also provide enterprise-grade reliability and performance plus the option to have data only reside on these two datacenters in order to to comply with various privacy and data protection laws.

Once these datacenters are up and running in 2018 that will push Microsoft to a total of 40 global datacenters for their cloud based services.

Bringing these datacenters online in South Africa means companies no longer have to go off-continent for their cloud delivered products and services:

"Currently many companies in Africa rely on cloud services delivered from outside of the continent. Microsoft’s new investment will provide highly available, scalable, and secure cloud services across Africa with the option of data residency in South Africa. With the introduction of these new cloud regions, Microsoft has now announced 40 regions around the world – more than any major cloud provider. The combination of Microsoft’s global cloud infrastructure with the new regions in Africa will connect businesses with opportunity across the globe, help accelerate new investments, and improve access to cloud and internet services for people and organizations from Cairo to Cape Town."

You can read more about today's announcement on the Official Microsoft blog or the MEA News Center.

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