Microsoft, in partnership with SEACOM, has launched a cloud service which allows customer to extend their on-premise networks to the cloud, bypassing the public internet.
“We are excited about the added value that this will bring to our customers – particularly over a secured and reliable connection provided through SEACOM”, said Sebuh Haileleul, East Africa Country Manager at Microsoft. “We know that organisations are moving towards a space where they are dealing with a lot of data that requires secure movement. This service addresses these issues by providing a private, secure and high bandwidth connection to the cloud.”
The service called Azure ExpressRoute allows customers to create private connections between data centres and infrastructure on-premise or in a cloud environment.
“SEACOM is giving a low latency connection with guaranteed throughput and uptime. Data movement between the user and the cloud resources of Azure will be seamless, similar to working within your office local network,” said Tonny Tugee, general manager of East North East Africa at SEACOM.
M-KOPA, a pay-as-you-go off-grid solar company based in Nairobi, is a user of the Azure ExpressRoute service and has found great success with the offering. Using it, M-KOPA has been able to deploy its IT technologies in a seamless and reliable manner to bring power to over 600,000 homes across East Africa.
“Partnering with SEACOM made sense – especially where a guaranteed network experience for users going into the cloud was and is concerned. “This partnership is based on the strengths and capabilities of both parties to provide support not only to M-KOPA, but also to further customers. The move to the cloud and the increase in data management needs means that an offering like this could not come at a more perfect time. We are confident that Azure ExpressRoute will bring great benefits to our current and potential customers.” added Haileleul.
