Telkom Business Connexion (BCX), in partnership with SAP Africa, has launched its SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud (SAP HEC) service out of its carrier-neutral, Tier IV certified data centre.

The service offers enterprises real-time technology capabilities on a cloud-based consumption model, according to a statement from the companies.

Vish Rajpal, Chief of Business Solutions at Telkom BCX: "We have been taking our clients on a journey to, through and beyond the cloud for some time now. Following the integration of Telkom Business and Business Connexion, we are now a truly end-to-end digital provider, which allows us to give clients the best connectivity, access to the best data centres and the best skills for the best cloud solutions."

Time-to-market still crucial

According to Rajpal SAP HEC enables clients to speed up business execution and reduce time-to-value, as well as being able to access business apps and deploy these immediately via the cloud. "This is a big step in driving agility and innovation, as our clients can now build their own business applications or bundle them with cloud applications that the company and their business partners need to collaborate in an open and standards-based cloud environment."

Telkom BCX and SAP quote the International Data Corporation (IDC) as stating that conversations are already moving solely to the cloud, with data centre infrastructure spend being utilised to create, adopt and optimise 3rd platform technologies, such as cloud, mobility, social business and big data analytics.

IDC further states that in the Middle East and Africa, 7.3% of total IT infrastructure investments are going into cloud build outs, with this reaching double-digit growth in the short term and this growth is expected to continue until at least 2020, the companies explain.

Brett Parker, Managing Director of SAP Africa, said the move towards cloud just makes sense for businesses across the board. "Local enterprises are already seeing the inherent benefits of cloud, such as cost-efficiency and flexibility."

Jacques Loubser, Chief of Infrastructure Solutions at Telkom BCX, said the cloud is the only route to go if organisations are to survive this digital era. "In the past lengthy IT deployments were acceptable, but not anymore. The speed of deployment is crucial to the success of organisations today and cloud-enable this. It eliminates the risk associated with outdated technologies as it is much easier and more cost-effective to modernise the organisation's technology," he says.

Unlocking the continent's potential

Telkom BCX believes its cloud value proposition and reach across Africa makes it "the perfect partner to SAP for deploying SAP HEC in Africa."

Tech vendors have suggested that cloud adoption in Africa is growing, fuelled by the demand for speed, value and improved ROI.

Recently, at the Huawei Connect conference, the company's Vice President Nigel Fenwick referenced Forrester research which suggested that more than half of the businesses polled expect cloud services to drive at least 40% of their revenue by 2020.