The Cabinet Secretary for the
Ministry of ICT, Innovation, and Youth Affairs, Joseph Mucheru has applauded
Amazon’s decision to establish one of its new Web Service Local Zones in
Kenya.
He is optimistic that the
presence of Amazon Web Service Local Zone in the country will not only boost
the adoption of advanced cloud-based technologies such as Artificial
Intelligence, Machine Learning, and the Internet of Things but also help to ensure
secure use across the Kenyan technology sector.
“We are pleased to launch AWS
Local Zone in Kenya. This announcement reaffirms our country’s position as an
attractive place to invest, powered by a high volume of local talented
developers”, he said.
The new AWS Local Zone(s) in
Kenya will join 16 existing AWS Local Zones across the United States and an
additional 32 AWS Local Zones planned to launch in 26 countries around the
world starting in 2022.
AWS Local Zones deliver
single-digit millisecond latency performance at the edge of the cloud to
hundreds of millions of people worldwide.
Amazon Web Services Regional Lead, East, West,
and Central Africa, Robin Njiru noted in a statement that, the new AWS Local
Zone in Kenya is a continuation of Amazon’s investment to support customers of
all kinds and its commitment to accelerate innovation by bringing cloud
infrastructure to more location in the country.
"We know that delivering ultra-low latency
applications for a seamless user experience matters in every business and
industry, so we are excited to bring the edge of the cloud to more customers in
Kenya to help meet their requirements. AWS Local Zones will empower more public
and private organizations, innovative startups, and AWS partners to deliver a
new generation of leading-edge, low-latency applications to end-users.
Customers can take advantage of the cost savings, scalability, and high
availability that AWS provides,” he stated.
Safaricom CEO, Peter Ndegwa whose outfit also
serves as a local partner of Amazon Web Services in Kenya, believes AWS Local
Zone will enable Safaricom to further enhance its cloud offerings, especially
to its Enterprise and SME customers, and migrate more of its own services to
the Cloud.
“Customer obsession remains a key focus for
Safaricom and with this local presence driven by our partnership with Amazon,
we will now achieve increased speed, stability, reliability, and storage to
support innovation and development of future-fit solutions,” he noted.
AWS Local Zones are a type of infrastructure
deployment that places AWS compute, storage, database, and other services at
the edge of the cloud near large population, industry, and information
technology (IT) centers enabling customers to deploy applications that require
single-digit millisecond latency closer to end-users or on-premises data
centers.
By: Kanto Okanta
