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Microsoft to Deliver Microsoft Cloud from Datacenters in Africa
- staticelf 9y agoCool. From what I know Africa is like the only continent so far without any datacenters from the major players. Correct me if I am wrong. Glad to see things change and a small step into a more connected and peaceful world.
- finid 9y agoA few years ago I recall that IBM announced a plan to set up something in Kenya. But don't blame the industry for not having a major datacenter anywhere on that continent. You need a stable power supply for that to make sense, which very few countries there have. Even Ghana that used to brag about that is now a basket case, last I checked.
- mirajshah 9y agoIBM launched their datacenter last year http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/49305.wss http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/49305.wss
- ams6110 9y ago> You need a stable power supply for that to make sense You also need a stable and at least substantially non-corrupt political situation, I would think? That rules out a lot of countries in Africa.
- Lordarminius 9y ago> You also need a stable and at least substantially non-corrupt political situation... That rules out a lot of countries in the world including Russia, USA, and Brazil :/ All facetiousness aside, I am really glad to learn of this development. It goes to show the dynamic potential locked up and waiting to be exploited in Africa. The infrastructure problems are not insurmountable and the high returns accruable to investors will more than compensate any willing entrepreneur. Africa is not an investment destination for the future. It is an investment destination for today. (On a related note, a company I am inolved with is starting a training school for the next generation of elite developers from Nigeria and we are searching for international technical and financial partners. I'd love to hear from any interested HN readers. Email in profile.)
- sah2ed 9y ago> Email in profile. I don't see any email in your profile.
- Lordarminius 9y agoMy mistake. It's fixed now. username@gmail.com
- finid 9y agoYou also need a stable and at least substantially non-corrupt political situation Actually that plays in the favor of foreign corporations, who are more likely to pony up bribes in your favorite foreign currency.
- oblio 9y agoAfrica's a big place, but I think you're right. If you take out South Africa the rest of the continent is completely "out of the loop" concerning cloud services from the major players, it seems.
- chirau 9y agoThat's a lie. Kenya, Nigeria, Morocco, Egypt are just as adept to cloud as South Africa is. EDIT:Screw the 'groupthink' on HN. Why would you downvote a simple non-offensive comment like this? Africa and its technology are my specific area for research. I know what I am talking about.
- vezycash 9y agoI might believe Morocco and Egypt but Nigeria doesn't belong on that list.
- chirau 9y agoCan you substantiate your disapproval? Don't just disapprove because you 'think so'. Better you 'know so'.
- finid 9y agoMy Nigerian friends will read his statement and say, "He's right." From what they tell me, some parts of Nigeria have never had electricity, especially in the oil-rich Niger Delta. Hard to believe, but that's the way it is.
- SideburnsOfDoom 9y agoThe thing is though, North African countries like Morocco and Egypt are much closer to existing EU data centres than Johannesburg is. Even Nigeria seems to be about half as far as Joburg. It seems to me that staking out the unclaimed position at the furthest southern economic hub makes sense as a first step, whether that hub has the most customers or not.
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- pjmlp 9y agoFully agree. It is great that those countries get the infrastructure to enjoy what is already possible in the majority of the world. Sure there are many roadblocks for that to be an easy goal, but not doing anything is worse I think.
- johan_larson 9y agoNot a lot of datacenters in Antarctica. :(
- JorgeGT 9y agoThink about how much you would save in cooling...
- drchickensalad 9y agoNot much really, you'd be surprised
- johan_larson 9y agoWell, you don't need all that much capacity. The penguins are into text-based adventure games running at dial-up speeds and the seals are table-top RPG players. Neither population has discovered online shopping.
- krkoch 9y agoActually, they need bigger fans there because of the thinner air (high elevation).
- matharmin 9y agoOne issue is that neighbouring African countries don't have good connectivity - the connection to the EU is typically better than to their neighbours. So if you want to serve e.g. users in Kenya, it would typically be better to use a datacenter in the EU than one in South Africa.
- phr4ts 9y agoBased on my own experience: ...because they don't know that the internet is a network of networks. I.e. They should build their own strong internal network. Instead, their networks are designed only as dumb pipes to deliver the internet.
- wjoe 9y agoYep. We've had to do some work for clients in Africa in my job. One we did in Morocco was fine from EU data centers on AWS, but South Africa has been very difficult to serve with acceptable latency from any data centre we've tried. We're 90% AWS here, but would probably use Azure for those clients if they had a data centre in that region.
- nevi-me 9y agoSome industries flat-out give you issues with moving SA data out, and others have players that are very risk-averse and aren't moving to the cloud. My day-job is as a consultant in the financial sector. It's been always burdensome getting a project approved where the data will reside outside of the country. We have smaller players , but their rates are exorbitant in comparison to MS, GOOG and Amazon. I'm glad and optimistic about this move from MS, because now we can get more work done with less red-tape.
- cyxxon 9y agoUIh, any specific issues? My company will be rolling out SAP from Germany to ZA soonish, and so far we have not yet had a chance to actually really test the connection. Self-hosted data center here, so probably not that comparable. Just overall crappy connection?
- wjoe 9y agoMy company handles live video streaming, so slow speeds and high latency tends to result in a lot of buffering. You're looking at about 200ms latency minimum from Europe to South Africa, and when you need to download a ~2MB video chunk in 2000ms, it's pretty hard to get a reliable stream, especially when you add in generally slower/less reliable connections along the route. It can be mitigated somewhat by reducing the quality of the video and using CDNs, but even edge nodes are scarce in that are of the world. I imagine it would be fine for normal applications, aside from being a little slower, but video is a challenge.
- cyxxon 9y agoThanks. We do not serve video, so it is indeed not that comparable. But we do have hosted web applications (SAP CRM), and syncing of offline applications for field staff (technicians) (and that can be quite a lot of data). It seems that our use cases mean either low latency and low bandwidth (non-technical users and their web apps, where "stuff is broken" if it is slow, but they might be already used to that from other areas of their online lifes) OR any latency and high bandwidth (sync doesn't really care if the packages come in with ultra low latency, as long as it syncs). Might work out indeed.
- skc 9y agoSouth Africa is pretty much the only country where this was ever going to be possible. Perhaps Rwanda as well. Uninterrupted power is a major challenge here on the continent.
- pizzetta 9y agoMaybe Ghana as well or even Egypt.
- Analemma_ 9y agoI think the parent is too pessimistic. You are right, and Nigeria and Kenya would be acceptable choices too.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- yread 9y agoNamibia is supposedly good as well https://www.indexmundi.com/facts/indicators/IC.ELC.OUTG/rankings https://www.indexmundi.com/facts/indicators/IC.ELC.OUTG/rank...
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- vezycash 9y ago>Uninterrupted power is a major challenge here on the continent. Power is no biggie - network providers have learned to live on power generators. The main issue is that Cable, Fiber penetration is very low.
- phamilton 9y ago> Power is no biggie - network providers have learned to live on power generators. Equinix datacenters in SV are actually cheaper to run on a generator, but it's not sustainable and against regulations (except obviously in a power outage).
- ramshanker 9y agoNo developer goes back to higher latency once you have tasted the smaller one !
- germtone 9y agoAfrica eh? i feel so safe now. (1) https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c3/Worldwide_NSA_signals_intelligence.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c3/Worldwid... (2) https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6a/Xkeyscore-worldmap.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6a/Xkeyscor...
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- John23832 9y agoI was just in a comment thread here where someone describe Africa as "a shithole" (their exact words ) when it came to hosting data centers. Glad to see that the people actual making decisions in tech have some rational ability.
- mozey 9y agoI've never seriously considered using Azure, I'm quite happy with AWS. Problem is the closest zone to South Africa is EU. This might make me consider using Azure. I hope Amazon has similar plans in the works.
- aswanson 9y agoThe thing that Azure has over AWS, imo, is the integration it has with Visual Studio.
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- outside1234 9y agoWhat's hilarious is that Amazon's S3 service is literally developed in Cape Town. Amazing that they weren't first with this.
- matharmin 9y agoAs far as I know it's EC2 that's developed in Cape Town, not S3. Your point is still valid though.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- madiathomas 9y agoI am hosting my SaaS site using Google Cloud. All my clients are based in SA. I chose Google Cloud after experiencing very bad service from Azure. I won't go back to Azure, even if they build the datacenter behind my yard. I love the pricing and simplicity of Google Cloud. Ironically, my site is on Microsoft .NET stack, but I still don't trust Microsoft with hosting my site. I hope Google and AWS will follow suite and build datacenter in SA.
- simooooo 9y agoCare to give some specifics?
- madiathomas 9y agoFirst I was told that I am not eligible for trial. Google offered me $300 credit which lasted for 5 months because the total monthly cost is $59.00. Azure was expensive compared to Google Cloud. Their pricing was also complicated and full of jargons. Microsoft offering was also not appealing. They were offering less memory and less storage space. Up to this day, I still don't understand why Google can offer services using Microsoft software cheaper than Microsoft itself. Maybe I am just not their target market.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- raesene9 9y agoI'd suggest that's easy, Google are running a loss-leader to get you onto their platform. In terms of market share on cloud computing platforms, Google is currently running third to AWS and Azure, so it makes sense for them to take some short term losses to help build their position. Whether they will maintain that kind of pricing in the long term, remains to be seen.
- madiathomas 9y agoI doubt it is a loss leader. That's a fair price to pay for the kind of hosting I require. Local web hosting companies who are profitable charge less than what Google is charging me.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- niftich 9y agoA month ago on the thread about AWS opening up a region in Sweden, a discussion ensued [1] about the lack of major cloud provider datacenters in Africa. I wrote [2] that a good site in Africa would be challenging, because one would have to "pick a spot 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." While South Africa ranks high on stability and ideological compatibility, and reasonably on fiber [3], my understanding was that reliable and redundant utility power supply is a significant issue [4][5]. I'd be curious to see whether co-generation will be used to overcome these limitations. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14031565 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14031565 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14035251 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14035251 [3] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d4/Cable_map18.svg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d4/Cable_ma... [4] http://www.fin24.com/Economy/SA-fears-dark-days-ahead-as-power-cuts-bite-20141210 http://www.fin24.com/Economy/SA-fears-dark-days-ahead-as-pow... [4] http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2015/03/crippling-blackouts-paralyse-south-africa-150312044353795.html http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2015/03/crippling-... [5] http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2015/03/crippling-blackouts-paralyse-south-africa-150312044353795.html http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2015/03/crippling-...
- tertius 9y agoGoogle has already started working on this to a degree. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jasper_Solar_Energy_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jasper_Solar_Energy_Project
- madiathomas 9y agoSA experienced power challenges few years back, but those issues are long gone. I haven't experienced any power cuts in over a year now.
- danw3 9y ago
- jksmith 9y agoMSFT is starting to get it. Many startups are being funded for stupid projects that target the US and are based in SF. The future belongs to markets like Africa and S. America. They currently take about 6% each of world's total software market.
- throwme_1980 9y agobad idea ....
- throwme_1980 9y agobad idea ....
- cmurf 9y agoI'm curious what the median salary is in these data centers.
- rcgorton 9y agoFrom the press release: - It happens in 2018 - They brag about "40 cloud regions" across the world. But do not say anything about their current capabilities in Africa. - 40 "Regions"? where are these 'regions' located? And why so many? Are they incapable of handling large geographical areas? Makes me skeptical about Micro$lop
- TotallyHuman 9y agoThis must increase the cooling demands a lot.
- jorangreef 9y agoAre these cloud services going to be served from newly built 100% Microsoft datacenters or servers colocated with Hetzner South Africa (Cape Town and Joburg)?
- rainbowmverse 9y agoI don't know anything about the technicals, politics, and economics of this kind of thing. What's the difference between the two setups?