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MTN, Microsoft a 'power partnership'

By Tracy Burrows, ITWeb contributor.
Johannesburg, 08 Oct 2015

MTN and Microsoft believe their new pan-African business cloud partnership will bring about change for both companies' clients across Africa.

Speaking in Johannesburg at the South African launch of MTN Business's new cloud platform powered by Microsoft Azure and underpinned by MTN's pan-African network, the two ICT giants said the partnership positioned them to lead in the African cloud market.

The partnership is in line with MTN's renewed focus on harnessing a partner ecosystem to help it deliver end-to-end ICT services.

Mteto Nyati, CEO of MTN South Africa, said: "Partnerships will become part of the DNA of this company, because the problems we seek to solve across the continent are so complex that we must reach out to partners who have the necessary capabilities. We may have the vision, but we cannot have all the capabilities."

Partnerships would be increasingly important as MTN strengthened its brand across Africa, he said. "MTN wants to be the ICT partner of choice; it wants to deliver government to citizen enablement and it wants to foster digital inclusion. There is no way we can do these things alone - we need to reach out to partners: leading companies such as Microsoft."

Zoaib Hoosen, MD of Microsoft South Africa, noted that as a leader in the application as a service, infrastructure as a service and storage as a service markets, Microsoft was already positioned to lead in the cloud space.

"The industry is changing and the business environment has been disrupted, and the key enabler for this has been cloud. Our clients are having to deal with technology disruptions and industry disruptions. They are talking about being digital businesses. The deep shift is that the clients are going to have to disrupt themselves and they will need partners to help them do so. This partnership between Microsoft and MTN will go a long way towards helping them disrupt themselves and benefit from the agility, speed and innovation at scale that will be provided by cloud," Hoosen said.

"We have a purpose to empower every person and every company on the planet - but the question is, how do we scale to achieve that? How do we reach every part? The only way to do that is to work together with partners. Microsoft has a very strong partnership with MTN across Africa, and by working together in the cloud space, these two powerful brands together can make a real difference for our clients."

Alpheus Mangale, Chief Enterprise Officer for MTN Business SA, echoed this view: "If you want to be a leader, it's important that you partner with people who are leaders in their own space. Microsoft is the leader in the cloud space. The combination of MTN with Microsoft provides leadership to our clients, our employees and also society overall in the continent. So we are going to be the powerhouse in partnership with Microsoft to enable the experience of Azure across the continent."

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Editorial contacts

Tracy Burrows
MTN Company Zone
(011) 807 3294
tracy@itweb.co.za