Microsoft Corp. on Thursday announced that they will be opening two data centres in Africa for the first time, beating Amazon and Google to be the first to land on the continent.
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Arriving in 2018, the software maker said that they plan to open two data centres in Johannesburg and Cape Town in which they will operate their range of cloud services such as Azure, Office 365 and Dyanmics 365.
"We are excited by the growing demand for cloud services in Africa and the ability of the cloud to act as a catalyst for new economic opportunities," Scott Guthrie, Microsoft's executive vice president for cloud and enterprise said.
This move by Microsoft brings its expansion to more than 40 regions globally and as such, companies in Africa won't rely on Microsoft European data-centre hubs. Though, countries in North Africa will still use the European data-hub centres due to proximity.
Customers on the African continent would experience a much faster cloud services as the data will have a less distance to travel between the customer and the data centres.
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"This new investment is also a major milestone in our mission to empower every person and every organisation on the planet to achieve more, part of our ongoing effort to create a cloud for global good," Scott Guthrie said.