Jonas Bogoshi, CEO of BCX.

Systems integrator BCX will launch Alibaba’s first African public cloud data centre in October, it has said.

This follows an alliance agreement inked between the two firms in September last year, whereby South Africa’s BCX will host China’s Alibaba’s cloud computing products, including databases, networking, security, analytics, and big data.

BCX CEO Jonas Bogoshi told ITWeb Africa on the sidelines of Telkom’s SATNAC conference, this week, that the company is now ready to roll out cloud data centres across Africa, beginning with South Africa.

He said: “We are launching on 5 October; the local public cloud will be up and running. We are also working on rolling them out across the continent. So, the plan is to open one in Mozambique in December, the business case has been approved. We will then have the next one in Cape Town. We are also looking at countries like Botswana, Namibia and Zambia where we have presence.”

Bogoshi said that with the local public cloud offering, clients’ data resides in the country, which solves issues such data sovereignty and latency. He added that the service will be charged in local currency.

“Not only are we introducing infrastructure services, we are introducing all applications on top of that, including marketplace for enterprise,” he said.

Derrick Chikanga, research manager, IT Services, IDC, said: "This will be a major milestone for both Alibaba and BCX as it will enable them to effectively compete with other hyperscalers, such as AWS and Microsoft, that have local cloud data centres."