Signal Alliance have partnered with Microsoft and Cisco to provide Azure Stack to enterprises in Nigeria. With this alliance, the consortium aims to help enterprises deliver various services from their own data centers to reduce costs and improve profitability.
According to Signal Alliance, enterprises in Nigeria still require certain workloads to be supported by on-premise assets. They say that this need has had a positive impact on the demand for hybrid cloud services in the market.
By partnering with Microsoft and Cisco, Signal Alliance believe that they will be able to provide Azure Stack to enable both businesses and govt. agencies with cloud capabilities and still maintain regulatory compliances like Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS). They also say that the solution serves as a platform for edge and disconnected environments that addresses latency and connectivity issues.
Sikiru Abass, Head of Platforms & Applications at Signal Alliance believes that Azure Stack enables enterprises to build modern applications on a large scale across hybrid environments while maintaining the right amount of flexibility and control. He claims that the solution also provides users with simple-to-use-analytics, allowing business owners to take IT specific decisions with ease.
With Azure Stack, Signal Alliance say that developers can accelerate their cloud application components by building on application parts from the Azure Marketplace, including open source tools and advancements. They claim that with this consistent cloud platform, enterprises can make technology decisions dependent on business necessities, instead of business choices dependent on technology intricacies.
Industry analysts believe that the Nigerian market will benefit tremendously since Microsoft and Cisco are well known global brands. They claim that Signal made the right choice by partnering with them in order to leverage their partners’ brand name.
It will be interesting to witness the dynamics of the African cloud market, following the data center consolidation of Cloudflare in Lagos.