Vodacom welcomes launch of AWS data centres in South Africa

May 6, 2020: Johannesburg: The world’s largest enterprise cloud computing hyperscaler, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has launched its next wave of data centres in South Africa. Amazon’s partnership with the largest mobile provider in South Africa - will enable Vodacom Business to grow its offering further and deliver improved business, cloud and other solutions to its clients.

“Vodacom is an AWS Advanced Consulting Partner with operations across the African continent, so naturally we are very pleased that they have made the decision to invest in the South African market, as well as the broader African market, by opening these data centres in Cape Town,” says Shameel Joosub, Vodacom Group CEO. “The most exciting aspect of this is the integration of AWS into the Vodacom Network, which will allow our clients to take advantage of the benefits of both offerings, and use them to transform their businesses into digitally enabled, tech-first companies.”

The AWS and Vodacom partnership has far-reaching benefits for Vodacom Business clients from a service offering perspective. The most notable benefit is the way in which these services can help boost digital transformation and cloud adoption strategies for organisations of all sizes, with ease of access to services such as Big Data, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). This enables businesses to now have a global reach through the AWS global footprint.

Why we chose AWS

As a leading African communications company providing a wide range of services, including mobile, voice, messaging, financial, and converged services to tens of millions of customers across Africa, Vodacom has in recent years taken the decision to expand its focus beyond just telecommunications and become a technology service provider. Part of this process requires that Vodacom’s own internal processes and infrastructure are as modern and digitally capable as possible, so that the company can provide the highest levels of service to clients.

Vodacom selected AWS as its primary cloud provider and is migrating the core of its Information Services landscape, including over 4000 workloads to the AWS Cloud. As a result, Vodacom will be able to increase the automation of services and business processes as well as drive even greater agility and innovation for Vodacom Business clients. 

“The launch of the AWS Africa (Cape Town) Region will enable us to fully leverage AWS’s capabilities to execute an all-in strategy by 2023. In addition, the launch of the AWS Region will allow us to deliver integrated solutions, such as our Internet of Things (IoT) offerings, expanding our customer value propositions and drive new revenue streams. We have also created the Vodacom AWS Cloud Centre of Excellence to help Small and Medium sized businesses, Enterprise, as well as Public Sector clients migrate to the AWS Cloud. This will ensure that Vodacom Business’s clients accelerate adoption and benefit from next generation technologies including 5G, AI, Block chain, Mobile Edge, IoT, Robotics and mobile applications. The Vodacom AWS Cloud Centre of Excellence will also support Vodacom’s own internal migration to the cloud and will enable employee upskilling through the in-house AWS technical training and certification programmes,” adds Shameel.