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Cool. 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 ch

Cool. 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 ago
A 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 ago
  IBM 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 ago
        My mistake. It's fixed now. username@gmail.com
  - finid 9y ago
    You 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 ago
Africa'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 ago
  That'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 ago
    I might believe Morocco and Egypt but Nigeria doesn't belong on that list.
    - chirau 9y ago
      Can you substantiate your disapproval? Don't just disapprove because you 'think so'. Better you 'know so'.
      - finid 9y ago
        My 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 ago
      The 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.
  - 9y ago
pjmlp 9y ago
Fully 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 ago
Not a lot of datacenters in Antarctica. :(
- JorgeGT 9y ago
  Think about how much you would save in cooling...
  - drchickensalad 9y ago
    Not much really, you'd be surprised
    - johan_larson 9y ago
      Well, 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 ago
      Actually, they need bigger fans there because of the thinner air (high elevation).
matharmin 9y ago
One 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 ago
  Based 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 ago
Yep. 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 ago
  Some 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 ago
  UIh, 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 ago
    My 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 ago
      Thanks. 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.

finid 9y ago

A 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 ago
IBM 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 ago
      My mistake. It's fixed now. username@gmail.com
- finid 9y ago
  You 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 ago

Africa'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 ago
That'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 ago
  I might believe Morocco and Egypt but Nigeria doesn't belong on that list.
  - chirau 9y ago
    Can you substantiate your disapproval? Don't just disapprove because you 'think so'. Better you 'know so'.
    - finid 9y ago
      My 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 ago
    The 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.
- 9y ago

pjmlp 9y ago

Fully 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 ago

Not a lot of datacenters in Antarctica. :(

JorgeGT 9y ago
Think about how much you would save in cooling...
- drchickensalad 9y ago
  Not much really, you'd be surprised
  - johan_larson 9y ago
    Well, 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 ago
    Actually, they need bigger fans there because of the thinner air (high elevation).

matharmin 9y ago

One 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 ago
Based 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 ago

Yep. 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 ago
Some 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 ago
UIh, 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 ago
  My 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 ago
    Thanks. 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.