MTN, Amazon in pact to offer cloud service

Stay connected via Google News

MTN Group would be the first African company to offer Amazon Web Services (AWS) Direct Connect to business customers across multiple countries on the continent, the mobile phone giant has announced.

Under the new deal, enterprises across Africa a dedicated link with which they can access the flexible, scalable and reliable AWS cloud.

According to the company, which also owns MTN Nigeria, 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.

“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,”Mteto Nyati, MTN Group Chief Enterprise Officer says.

“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,” Nyati says.

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.”

The company is promising customers good service quality as a result of the service level agreements, which MTN offers on MPLS. In addition, customers will benefit from reduced bandwidth costs, as the dedicated connection to AWS will result in a lower data transfer rate than normal Internet data transfer rates.

AWS Direct Connect is one of the ways in which MTN is addressing the needs of its enterprise customers, the company says while promising to enhance its Cloud offering with new services in the coming months.