Google Cloud has announced its Johannesburg cloud region in South Africa is ready for customer use.
Google Cloud director for Africa, Niral Patel, said the region in Johannesburg would accelerate the African tech ecosystem, providing organisations with the resources they needed to scale, innovate, and compete in the global marketplace.
“Businesses of all sizes across the continent now have access to high-performance, secure and low-latency cloud services,” Patel said.
The Johannesburg region is Google’s first in South Africa and Africa.
Patel said the continent’s Internet economy was estimated to reach $180 billion (R3.36 trillion) by 2025, accounting for 5.2% of its total gross domestic product.
“Google alone has committed $1 billion (R18.67 billion) to boost Africa’s digital transformation, recognising that key drivers of the continent’s growth will include investing in infrastructure, nurturing the growing tech talent pool, and enabling a vibrant startup ecosystem,” Patel said.
The addition of the Johannesburg region takes Google’s overall network to 40 cloud regions and 121 zones, developing Google Cloud services to over 200 countries and territories worldwide.
Patel explained that the Johannesburg region was connected to Google’s secure network, comprising a system of high-capacity fibre optic cables under land and sea around the world.
“This includes the recently-completed Equiano subsea cable system that connects Portugal with Togo, Nigeria, Namibia, South Africa, and St. Helena,” he said.
“We are excited to partner with organisations across the continent and help them discover the advantages of digital transformation.”
Among the companies in Africa that Google Cloud has partnered with or has as existing customers are Deloitte Africa, FNB, Liquid, MTN Group, and retail giant Pepkor.
Last major cloud player to roll out local region
The Google Cloud Johannesburg region launch follows other major cloud services providers rolling out their first regions in South Africa and the continent in the past few years.
Huawei was the first “hyperscaler” to officially launch cloud computing services in South Africa, beating Microsoft by a day. Huawei, now offers three cloud availability zones in South Africa.
Microsoft delayed the launch of Azure in South Africa several times but finally launched in March 2019 in Johannesburg and Cape Town. According to Data Center Dynamics, the latter was closed in 2021.
The Azure Regions website also shows the region’s availability zone as “Not supported” and that it has “Restricted Access” rather than being enabled by default.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) opened its first region on the continent in Cape Town in April 2020.
The company has been active in South Africa for roughly two decades, with key technology behind AWS developed locally.
It is also getting a big new headquarters at the River Club Development in Observatory in Cape Town.
The last major US cloud company to launch a local region before Google was Oracle, which took its Johannesburg region live in January 2022.
In 2023, Telkom’s BCX also launched a cloud region in Johannesburg for Chinese tech giant Alibaba.
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