Microsoft and Liquid Cloud launch initiative to support African businesses with hybrid cloud infrastructure

As the demand for cloud-based services grows across Africa due to the adoption of hybrid work, Microsoft has announced a partnership with Liquid Cloud through its Africa Transformation Office (ATO) to provide cloud services to businesses across the continent.

Liquid Cloud and the ATO will collaborate to deliver resilient cloud in Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe to meet regulatory and data residency requirements, address low latency workloads, strengthen resilience, and enable business continuity.

“We witnessed an accelerated adoption of cloud technologies in Africa, and businesses are now reaping the benefits of their investment. Our customers are increasingly moving to hybrid work culture, meaning the demand for cloud-based services will only grow. Our partnership will enable us to build comprehensive and edge-based cloud capabilities that meet customer regulatory requirements and ensure that they deliver value to their customers,” said David Behr, CEO of Liquid Cloud and Cyber Security.

The hybrid cloud environment extends Azure capabilities enabling customers to create cloud-native applications faster with Azure platform and data services such as App Service, Functions, Logic Apps, Azure SQL Managed Instance, PostgreSQL database, and Azure machine learning. As a result, customers will be able to innovate anywhere and use the Azure platform to bring new solutions to life that solves today’s challenges, while creating the future.

On his part, Wael Elkabbany, General Manager Africa Regional Cluster, Microsoft said: “Critical infrastructure enablers are needed to provide access to the cloud to accelerate digital

transformation and the adoption of digital technologies. Working with Liquid Cloud, access to the local cloud will be available to more organizations and highly regulated industries across the continent. In addition, hybrid cloud provides in-country resources that address data-residency, latency, and storage requirements,”

About Liquid Cloud

Liquid Cloud is a business of Cassava Technologies, a pan-African technology group. Liquid Cloud was launched in 2017 to offer customers end-to-end managed cloud services, product solutions, and related professional and advisory services in 22 African countries. A finalist in the Microsoft Partner of the Year 2021 and Partner of the Year in Ethiopia 2022. It boasts of the largest Azure Stack deployment covering four African countries.

About Microsoft

Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) enables digital transformation for the era of an intelligent cloud and an intelligent edge. Its mission is to empower every person and every organisation on the planet to achieve more.

The opportunity in Africa is immense, but there is a pressing need to adopt digital platforms to accelerate Africa’s economic growth and better enable Africans to participate in the global digital economy. Through the Africa Transformation Office, Microsoft focuses on four essential development areas – digital infrastructure, skilling, SMEs and start-ups, supported by strategic partnerships with industry alliances and coalitions, to fuel investment in Africa and further establish the continent’s export of digital services.