Google announced the creation of the cloud region located in South Africa to compete with other cloud storage providers, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure, which already have a presence on the continent.
South Africa has become the latest addition to Google's global network of cloud computing zones and regions that already cover over 35 nations and 106 regions across the globe. The announcement comes on after Google's latest previews of areas located in Malaysia, Thailand, and New Zealand.
A recent AlphaBeta Economics report that was commissioned from Google Cloud predicts that by 2030 the nation's expanding digital economy will contribute more than USD2.1 billion to the gross domestic product and generate more than 40,000 new jobs due principally to productivity gains due to cloud-based solutions.
Google Cloud regions permit users to use resources that are located in specific geographical areas. They also allow users to connect to cloud storage computing engines, computing, and important management systems.
"We are thrilled to announce our first Google Cloud region in Africa. This new area will enable the localization of both applications and services. It will make it easy for our customers and partners to swiftly implement solutions for their business which will allow them to benefit from our computer machine learning or artificial intelligence capabilities and data analytics capabilities to make better business choices in the future," said Google Cloud Africa director, Niral Patel.
Google is developing Dedicated Cloud Interconnect sites in Nairobi (Kenya), Lagos (Nigeria) as well as South Africa (Capetown and Johannesburg). These services let Google's partners link their network to the Google cloud platform.