Cloud computing plays a major role in empowering African IT start-ups that cannot afford significant financial investments in IT infrastructure to enable them to roll-out products that solve African problems.
This was the key message from Simone Brunozzi, Amazon Web Services' technology evangelist for Asia Pacific, who spoke at this week's Tech4Africa conference, at The Forum, in Bryanston.
“Cloud computing and mobile technology is enabling African companies to leapfrog their competitors and older technologies,” said Brunozzi.
He gave examples of start-ups such as 99designs, Discovr Apps and Vserv.mobi that did not know how much infrastructure they would need to serve customers, and could not afford big capital investments.
Brunozzi explained that through cloud computing and by hosting servers offsite, the companies could scale up quickly and focus on their core business competencies, instead of worrying about servers and storage.
“There's a big African wave of start-ups and innovators emerging. However, while a lot of companies are optimistic to set up shop, there is still a lot of friction. The biggest challenge [relates] to access to capital, limited broadband connectivity, and access to services,” said Brunozzi.
Derek Wilcocks, MD of Internet Solutions, pointed out that there are huge business opportunities in Africa, and cloud computing will address some of those limitations that start-ups initially face. He noted that cloud computing is reshaping entire industries, similar to the affect of the Internet.
“Cloud computing is a key driver for business to take advantage of the 60% compound annual growth rate of data. There's an explosion in the need for storage and the need for new networks.”
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