MTN Group yesterday, in Johannesburg,
South Africa, announced it would be the
first African company to offer Amazon Web
Services (AWS) Direct Connect to business
customers across multiple countries on the
continent.
The new service will leverage the extensive
footprint of MTN’s Global MPLS network, to
provide customers with connectivity
between their data centres or businesses
and the AWS EU Ireland region. This will
give enterprises across Africa a dedicated
link with which they can access the
flexible, scalable and reliable AWS cloud.
“The relationship with Amazon Web
Services is an important step in our plans to
address the needs of enterprise customers in
emerging markets, particularly Africa,” says
MTN Group Chief Enterprise Officer, Mteto
Nyati.
“As MTN Business, our purpose is to enable
and inspire growth on the continent. We
believe that by working with a global
technology leader such as Amazon Web
Services, MTN will be better placed to
enable customers to grow their businesses
by providing them with reliable
connectivity and access to world-class
digital solutions,” says Nyati.
MTN’s Global MPLS network connectivity
offers improved manageability, reliability
and performance. As a result, AWS Direct
Connect is expected to bring significant
benefits to multinational and large
enterprise customers by providing a more
consistent network performance when they
access AWS.
”We are excited to be working with MTN to
bring the security and reliability of AWS
Direct Connect to customers across Africa,”
said Steve Midgley, Head of EMEA, Amazon
Web Services Luxembourg Sarl. “By utilising
AWS Direct Connect customers are able to
reduce network costs, increase bandwidth
throughput and provide a more consistent
network experience helping African
businesses of all sizes to rapidly expand
their organisations.”
AWS Direct Connect is not the first time
MTN will dabble into data and cloud
services. The company’s head has in fact
been firmly stuck in the cloud for years.
The telco has been acting l ess and less like
one for years, partnering with Google in
Nigeria to get businesses online before
veering off and trying to sell them web
hosting by itself, and investing in data
centers to power a cloud business product it
dubbed “anything as a service” . If its
short-lived liaison with Google in Nigeria is
any indicator, MTN’s current relationship
with Amazon might last only as long as the
company feels it needs the handholding of a
leading cloud player.
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