6 ms·

When will Africa get a region? Seriously, we have companies willing to pay big money to use a region closer to us.

gtsteve 10y ago
Where would you propose hosting it in Africa? I understand that the consumer internet situation is not very good over there, are there datacenters and strong fiber links to USA and Europe? This is essentially why my company doesn't target African markets, because our software requires a persistent internet connection.
- nemesisj 10y ago
  Dubai. Yes, not actually in Africa, but much closer to the area and relatively stable. Also, there's plenty of activity going on in the Middle East that would justify this (I think).
  - metricodus 10y ago
    That's a nonstarter because of UAE's requirements on censorship and backdoored surveillance ("lawful intercept"). They're at least on the level of China in this regard, maybe even worse.
    - stephenr 10y ago
      Aws Beijing exists
      - John23832 10y ago
        And is used only by the Chinese and Chinese serving companies... The interests of the continent of Africa are not the same as those in the UAE... nor should they be.
    - nemesisj 10y ago
      Data centres aren't the same thing as "the available consumer internet" but yes, I take your point. That said, if there's any country that could find a practical compromise on that front, it would be the UAE, and they're in a very natural location close to many undersea cables, etc.
    - discodave 10y ago
      There are other options in the middle east, like Bahrain.
      - metricodus 10y ago
        It's similarly bad: https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/2016/bahrain https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/2016/bahrain https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/2016/united-arab-emirates https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/2016/united-arab...
  - bogomipz 10y ago
    Dubai and the Arab Emirates censor and filter the internet, I don't think that would work.
- bogomipz 10y ago
  There is good fiber in East Africa, its been there for a few years now: http://www.eassy.org/network_overview.html http://www.eassy.org/network_overview.html There's DC facilities there as well: http://telecoms.com/180712/east-africa-opens-monster-datacentre/ http://telecoms.com/180712/east-africa-opens-monster-datacen...
- sgt 10y ago
  South Africa has good and stable fiber links. It would be the natural choice.
  - officelineback 10y ago
    That's where EC2 was invented and developed, too!
- budu3 10y ago
  East Africa, maybe Kenya.
- isotop 10y ago
  Why not Israel? * We have multiple fiber links * A lot of AWS heavy workloads comes from Israeli companies * Easy connection to other location through Egypt and Jordan
  - wavefunction 10y ago
    Why not Africa for Africa. Infrastructure for Africans. Jobs for Africans, network effects as technology use and extension takes off and salaries rise and hopefully lift up those who can't take direct part in the digital economy yet. No offense to you or Israel, but it would be nice to see African interests managed somewhat "locally" whenever possible, with the benefits accrued and distributed locally as well. I think that's a future many people hope for, and it's nice to see an effort towards that direction where possible.
  - solatic 10y ago
    As much as I'd personally love for an AWS region to be built in Israel, the fact of the matter is, Israel is a poor development target for AWS. * Biggest problem is that Israel is an Internet cul-de-sac - there aren't any overland Internet links to Arab countries because of politics. Which means that the only people who are going to get great pings are Israelis. * Sure, there are a ton of Israeli tech companies, but if they're going to spin up instances in an Israeli region, they're going to be low-traffic/requirement dev instances. Production instances are going to be located close to customers, and almost no Israeli tech companies sell to the tiny local market. * Israeli customs infrastructure has a long way to go before it's probably reliable enough for Amazon to risk investment. Imagine a vital shipment of server hardware getting held up at Ashdod because Histadrut went on strike.... shudder I refuse to believe that the bean counters at Amazon are ignorant - they've more probably come to the conclusion that it's just not profitable.
  - discodave 10y ago
    Israels economy is too small to justify an AWS region (yet). To find out where the next AWS regions are going, go to wikipedia and sort countries by GDP, any large country without a region is a target. Obviously there is some massaging happening, like AWS is considering all the nordic countries near Sweden. Another thing would be if AWS started building smaller regions with only 1 DC. Right now a region requires at least 3 DCs with the AZ model... so that's a lot of capacity to fill.
- John23832 10y ago
  Kenya... It's not the backwoods that the west thinks it is...
  - jnky 10y ago
    I find that hard to believe. Wikipedia says its HDI is 0.555, placing it at 146 of 188. Wikipedia also says that 6.3% of the adult population have HIV, while female genital mutilation has a prevalence of 27%. Also some women are seemingly attacked and sometimes killed for witchcraft. I understand there are worse places in Afrika, but for me that makes Kenya a proper shithole.
    - John23832 10y ago
      You obviously have never been to Kenya... But as a retort, in America, gay and trans people get denied rights and are killed everyday because they are "an abomination to god". Women are denied medican support by old white men who know what's best for them. Black people get killed by the police with no recourse. There is human trafficking that goes unaddressed because our economy is basically built on it. There is a horribly stratified economy, and a horrible opioid (and in my opinion, alchohol) epidemic... But keep living in your shell man.
      - jnky 10y ago
        Of course I haven't. But I was quite sure that you would say something along those lines. I think that if I went to Kenya, I would have a great time, see friendly people and come to the conclusion that the country has potential and is on the right track. That may all well be true, but it doesn't change the fact that Kenya - as it is now - is not a country I would build a datacenter in. I don't have to go to Kenya myself to know if it is a backwards country or not. The facts are the facts.
        John23832 10y ago
        > I don't have to go to Kenya myself to know if it is a backwards country or not. The facts are the facts. I don't have to experience something to know anything about it. I'll make my opinion from a far from statistics that have no correlation to whether a datacenter could actually thrive in Kenya.
- niftich 10y ago
  Pick a spot [1] touched by more than one thick pipe, in jurisdiction known for political and civic stability and a regime with rough compatibility to the ideology and national security apparatus of western allies -- their home base and primary source of customers; receptive and promoting of foreign investment, and having access to multiple reliable, redundant power sources from which to draw energy. As of time of writing it's a tough proposition. [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d4/Cable_map18.svg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d4/Cable_ma...
- bdcravens 10y ago
  Tunisia may be an option
- EtienneK 10y ago
  South Africa is the most obvious spot. There's even an AWS dev centre in Cape Town: http://www.adccpt.com/ http://www.adccpt.com/
oblio 10y ago
At this point it seems that big US companies are too afraid to invest in Africa. Which is kind of strange, since they weren't afraid to invest in China or Iraq. On top of this, funnily enough, the Chinese aren't afraid and by the time the US companies get going...
- snackai 10y ago
  What? Comparing the situation in Africa to China? FFS, Hacker News...
- bogomipz 10y ago
  >"At this point it seems that big US companies are too afraid to invest in Africa" That statement is just plain wrong and uninformed. Google, FB, IBM and Microsoft are all making significant investments in Africa. See the following: http://fortune.com/2016/05/26/u-s-tech-giants-flock-to-africa-to-compete-for-digitals-final-frontier/ http://fortune.com/2016/05/26/u-s-tech-giants-flock-to-afric... The world's largest young populations are all in Africa and these companies know this: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/05/the-world-s-10-youngest-countries-are-all-in-africa/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/05/the-world-s-10-younge...
metricodus 10y ago
No idea if any of this is true today, but here's what a quick google search found: https://www.quora.com/Is-Amazon-planning-to-open-a-data-center-EC2-in-South-Africa-any-time-soon https://www.quora.com/Is-Amazon-planning-to-open-a-data-cent... "Franco Austin, former Technical Account Manager at Amazon Web Services: 'Whilst South Africa only have a single energy provider, no. So the answer would be probably not soon, unless AWS plan to build their own energy provider, the requirements for a DC for AWS is that it has got 2 independent electricity providers on different grids. Thus I doubt if South Africa will see an AWS data center and I love to be proven wrong, at this stage I believe the best we can hope for in South Africa is a pop or edge location.'"
- sgt 10y ago
  I think Eskom will remain the single energy provider in South Africa for some time, but I think this concern can be mitigated by simply generating the power yourself or via a partner company that offers local electricity directly from e.g. a solar panel farm. South Africa has sufficient solar potential.
  - netzone 10y ago
    But that would likely be expensive enough to make the risk not worth it.

Where would you propose hosting it in Africa? I understand that the consumer internet situation is not very good over there, are there datacenters and strong fiber links to USA and Europe? This is essentially why my company doesn't target African markets, because our software requires a persistent internet connection.

nemesisj 10y ago
Dubai. Yes, not actually in Africa, but much closer to the area and relatively stable. Also, there's plenty of activity going on in the Middle East that would justify this (I think).
- metricodus 10y ago
  That's a nonstarter because of UAE's requirements on censorship and backdoored surveillance ("lawful intercept"). They're at least on the level of China in this regard, maybe even worse.
  - stephenr 10y ago
    Aws Beijing exists
    - John23832 10y ago
      And is used only by the Chinese and Chinese serving companies... The interests of the continent of Africa are not the same as those in the UAE... nor should they be.
  - nemesisj 10y ago
    Data centres aren't the same thing as "the available consumer internet" but yes, I take your point. That said, if there's any country that could find a practical compromise on that front, it would be the UAE, and they're in a very natural location close to many undersea cables, etc.
  - discodave 10y ago
    There are other options in the middle east, like Bahrain.
    - metricodus 10y ago
      It's similarly bad: https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/2016/bahrain https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/2016/bahrain https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/2016/united-arab-emirates https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/2016/united-arab...
- bogomipz 10y ago
  Dubai and the Arab Emirates censor and filter the internet, I don't think that would work.
bogomipz 10y ago
There is good fiber in East Africa, its been there for a few years now: http://www.eassy.org/network_overview.html http://www.eassy.org/network_overview.html There's DC facilities there as well: http://telecoms.com/180712/east-africa-opens-monster-datacentre/ http://telecoms.com/180712/east-africa-opens-monster-datacen...
sgt 10y ago
South Africa has good and stable fiber links. It would be the natural choice.
- officelineback 10y ago
  That's where EC2 was invented and developed, too!
budu3 10y ago
East Africa, maybe Kenya.
isotop 10y ago
Why not Israel? * We have multiple fiber links * A lot of AWS heavy workloads comes from Israeli companies * Easy connection to other location through Egypt and Jordan
- wavefunction 10y ago
  Why not Africa for Africa. Infrastructure for Africans. Jobs for Africans, network effects as technology use and extension takes off and salaries rise and hopefully lift up those who can't take direct part in the digital economy yet. No offense to you or Israel, but it would be nice to see African interests managed somewhat "locally" whenever possible, with the benefits accrued and distributed locally as well. I think that's a future many people hope for, and it's nice to see an effort towards that direction where possible.
- solatic 10y ago
  As much as I'd personally love for an AWS region to be built in Israel, the fact of the matter is, Israel is a poor development target for AWS. * Biggest problem is that Israel is an Internet cul-de-sac - there aren't any overland Internet links to Arab countries because of politics. Which means that the only people who are going to get great pings are Israelis. * Sure, there are a ton of Israeli tech companies, but if they're going to spin up instances in an Israeli region, they're going to be low-traffic/requirement dev instances. Production instances are going to be located close to customers, and almost no Israeli tech companies sell to the tiny local market. * Israeli customs infrastructure has a long way to go before it's probably reliable enough for Amazon to risk investment. Imagine a vital shipment of server hardware getting held up at Ashdod because Histadrut went on strike.... shudder I refuse to believe that the bean counters at Amazon are ignorant - they've more probably come to the conclusion that it's just not profitable.
- discodave 10y ago
  Israels economy is too small to justify an AWS region (yet). To find out where the next AWS regions are going, go to wikipedia and sort countries by GDP, any large country without a region is a target. Obviously there is some massaging happening, like AWS is considering all the nordic countries near Sweden. Another thing would be if AWS started building smaller regions with only 1 DC. Right now a region requires at least 3 DCs with the AZ model... so that's a lot of capacity to fill.
John23832 10y ago
Kenya... It's not the backwoods that the west thinks it is...
- jnky 10y ago
  I find that hard to believe. Wikipedia says its HDI is 0.555, placing it at 146 of 188. Wikipedia also says that 6.3% of the adult population have HIV, while female genital mutilation has a prevalence of 27%. Also some women are seemingly attacked and sometimes killed for witchcraft. I understand there are worse places in Afrika, but for me that makes Kenya a proper shithole.
  - John23832 10y ago
    You obviously have never been to Kenya... But as a retort, in America, gay and trans people get denied rights and are killed everyday because they are "an abomination to god". Women are denied medican support by old white men who know what's best for them. Black people get killed by the police with no recourse. There is human trafficking that goes unaddressed because our economy is basically built on it. There is a horribly stratified economy, and a horrible opioid (and in my opinion, alchohol) epidemic... But keep living in your shell man.
    - jnky 10y ago
      Of course I haven't. But I was quite sure that you would say something along those lines. I think that if I went to Kenya, I would have a great time, see friendly people and come to the conclusion that the country has potential and is on the right track. That may all well be true, but it doesn't change the fact that Kenya - as it is now - is not a country I would build a datacenter in. I don't have to go to Kenya myself to know if it is a backwards country or not. The facts are the facts.
      - John23832 10y ago
        > I don't have to go to Kenya myself to know if it is a backwards country or not. The facts are the facts. I don't have to experience something to know anything about it. I'll make my opinion from a far from statistics that have no correlation to whether a datacenter could actually thrive in Kenya.
niftich 10y ago
Pick a spot [1] touched by more than one thick pipe, in jurisdiction known for political and civic stability and a regime with rough compatibility to the ideology and national security apparatus of western allies -- their home base and primary source of customers; receptive and promoting of foreign investment, and having access to multiple reliable, redundant power sources from which to draw energy. As of time of writing it's a tough proposition. [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d4/Cable_map18.svg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d4/Cable_ma...
bdcravens 10y ago
Tunisia may be an option
EtienneK 10y ago
South Africa is the most obvious spot. There's even an AWS dev centre in Cape Town: http://www.adccpt.com/ http://www.adccpt.com/

oblio 10y ago

At this point it seems that big US companies are too afraid to invest in Africa. Which is kind of strange, since they weren't afraid to invest in China or Iraq. On top of this, funnily enough, the Chinese aren't afraid and by the time the US companies get going...

snackai 10y ago
What? Comparing the situation in Africa to China? FFS, Hacker News...
bogomipz 10y ago
>"At this point it seems that big US companies are too afraid to invest in Africa" That statement is just plain wrong and uninformed. Google, FB, IBM and Microsoft are all making significant investments in Africa. See the following: http://fortune.com/2016/05/26/u-s-tech-giants-flock-to-africa-to-compete-for-digitals-final-frontier/ http://fortune.com/2016/05/26/u-s-tech-giants-flock-to-afric... The world's largest young populations are all in Africa and these companies know this: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/05/the-world-s-10-youngest-countries-are-all-in-africa/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/05/the-world-s-10-younge...

metricodus 10y ago

No idea if any of this is true today, but here's what a quick google search found: https://www.quora.com/Is-Amazon-planning-to-open-a-data-center-EC2-in-South-Africa-any-time-soon https://www.quora.com/Is-Amazon-planning-to-open-a-data-cent... "Franco Austin, former Technical Account Manager at Amazon Web Services: 'Whilst South Africa only have a single energy provider, no. So the answer would be probably not soon, unless AWS plan to build their own energy provider, the requirements for a DC for AWS is that it has got 2 independent electricity providers on different grids. Thus I doubt if South Africa will see an AWS data center and I love to be proven wrong, at this stage I believe the best we can hope for in South Africa is a pop or edge location.'"

sgt 10y ago
I think Eskom will remain the single energy provider in South Africa for some time, but I think this concern can be mitigated by simply generating the power yourself or via a partner company that offers local electricity directly from e.g. a solar panel farm. South Africa has sufficient solar potential.
- netzone 10y ago
  But that would likely be expensive enough to make the risk not worth it.