IBM has announced that it is opening a new IBM Cloud Data Center. The facility is a result of close collaboration with between IBM, ICT service company Gijima and mobile operator Vodacom.

Based in Johannesburg, the cloud centre is designed to support cloud adoption and customer demand across Africa.

IBM says it will also provide clients with a complete portfolio of cloud services for running enterprise and as a service workloads in the new centre.

"The new IBM Cloud Data Center has the ability to run and manage SAP applications and workloads in the cloud and underscores IBM's growing cloud footprint, which now includes 46 cloud data centers across six continents," the company announced.

Hamilton Ratshefola, IBM Country General Manager in South Africa says the company is working to drive cloud adoption that best leverages a customer's existing IT investments. "Our new Cloud Data Center gives customers a local onramp to IBM Cloud services including moving mission critical SAP workloads to the cloud with ease. It also gives customers the added flexibility of keeping data within country which is a key differentiator for IBM."says Ratshefola.

The IBM Cloud Data Center will also provide SAP enterprise customers in South Africa and Africa with access to IBM's global network of Cloud Data Centers and services expertise.

IBM says this will enable businesses to run critical applications on the cloud, providing access to a broad array of services for building in-country cloud solutions, while offering faster network speeds to improve performance and reach end users even faster.

Vuyani Jarana, Chief Officer of Vodacom Business says the increase of enterprise cloud computing on the continent is being driven by large enterprise and multinational organisations expanding their presence and IT requirements across Africa.

"CIO's are looking to gain efficiencies and cut cost by moving more of their IT infrastructure, applications and processes into the Cloud. Vodacom's extensive Fixed and Mobile network infrastructure, Pan African and global footprint and its investment in data center infrastructure provides the ideal platform and environment to deliver cloud services to large and multinational enterprises."advised Jarana.

The cloud centre brings together Vodacom's network and Africa footprint, Gijima's SAP enterprise expertise and IBM's cloud platforms into cloud services which will resolve data latency and in-country regulatory issues through the protection of data in-country and potentially also offset data networking costs according to the partners.

Gijima and Vodacom both intend to resell IBM Cloud Managed Services to the SAP enterprise customer base in the region.

Eileen Wilton, CEO of Gijima said, "The partnership with IBM and Vodacom is an extension of Gijima's hybrid cloud strategy and is the culmination of two years of hard work as part of our turnaround strategy. Gijima is the ideal partner for this service as we already have the system and SAP integration skills as part of our existing solutions offering."