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Microsoft lets South Africa down with cloud storage

On May 2017, Microsoft made some pretty big promises to the South African market, and as you might have guessed, they have failed to deliver!

The Microsoft promise (the one they broke!)

Microsoft promised that two Azure cloud data centres would be launched in South Africa at Cape Town and Johannesburg locations in 2018. The data centres, the very first Azure centres in Africa would ensure that local customers have access to Azure, Dynamics 365, and Office 365 services. The most surprising thing is that the company imposed the 2018 deadline themselves and doesn’t seem to be showing much remorse at missing it!

Rumour has it that the delay was linked to a third-party supplier’s inability to deliver exactly what was required for the project. This problem seems to have been sorted out as Microsoft has confirmed that the data centres will launch in 2019. Some might say that it’s better late than never.

According to Julia White, vice president of Azure and Security, Microsoft chose to develop the proposed data centres as the African continent was showing incredible innovation and growth. She also said that it’s important for African businesses to have access to local data residency and cloud services that are high-performing and of course, reliable too.

No solid commitment from Microsoft

Now that the deadline has been missed, Microsoft has gone silent on any mentions of new deadlines. The South African representative for Microsoft, Ashleigh Fenwick, has mentioned to industry professionals that while work is underway on the data centres, no definitive answer can be given about the official commercial launch date. She did, however, state that the company is working on creating a local infrastructure that’s of an unprecedented level/quality.

“We’re focused on building the right solutions for our customers and are working towards availability of our new enterprise-grade cloud data centres in South Africa in 2019.”Ashleigh Fenwick

Can you trust Microsoft’s wishy-washy promises?

Business owners should use the lengthy waiting period to consider just how reliable Microsoft is (or isn’t, in this case). If the company cannot be trusted to deliver on promised deadlines, how can they be trusted with something as sensitive as data? And if there happens to be some a breach or data security problems, will they have the same elusive response/approach as they have regarding the new launch date?

Support local

Businesses should be concerned about the reliability and trustworthiness of the cloud service providers they entrust their sensitive data to.

By putting your data in the hands of a local, reputable service provider, you can eliminate a lot of the potential risk involved. At Soteria Cloud, we provide encrypted cloud storage services, around the clock. And on top of that, our launch date has long since passed, and we continue to deliver on our promises to our client base, every day. To learn more about our data backup services, click here.