Amazon sets its sights on new data centre in SA
Local project aims to help bring cloud computing to the rest of the continent
It is a matter of when rather than if Amazon Web Services opens one of its data centres in South Africa. That is the message from Amazon's chief technology officer, Werner Vogels, who said on Wednesday the group was working on understanding not only South African entrepreneurs but those across the continent. "We have a lot of customers here already, especially when it comes to young business ... but also larger companies, before opening up a region here," Vogels told Business Times on the sidelines of the company's summit in Cape Town. AWS makes up 9% of the Seattle-based Amazon's revenue of $135-billion. The company founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos is one of the world's largest tech companies. Amazon originally built AWS to host and organise its own site, Amazon.com. More than 10 years ago the group decided to license the system they had built to other companies. Today it is one of the most profitable segments of Amazon. Vogels said all regions were different but if he looked at I...
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