TechCentral TechCentral (main feed)

Interview: Amazon Web Services, and how it got its start in South Africa

Loading player...
Amazon Web Services already has a team of 7 000 people in South Africa, most of them based in Cape Town, but the US cloud computing giant is not done hiring as it ramps up investment in the country.
That’s according to Clive Charlton, head of solution architecture for AWS in sub-Saharan Africa, who explains in the podcast why South Africa – and Cape Town specifically – were so attractive to the Seattle-headquartered leader in hyperscale cloud services originally and why it remains so.
In the podcast, Charlton talks about how Amazon built the elastic computing cloud, or EC2, in Cape Town and how this platform went on to become the underpinnings of what AWS is today.
He also explains why Amazon is moving into a new campus in Cape Town – the data centres won’t be coming along – and whether it has plans to establish offices and data centre infrastructure elsewhere in the country.
Don’t miss the discussion!
19 May 2021 English South Africa Technology · Business

Other recent episodes

TCS+ | Vodacom Business moves to crack the SME tech gap

Everyone agrees that small and medium enterprises are the backbone of the South African economy. But the reality on the ground tells a different story – too many small businesses are still running on spreadsheets and WhatsApp, locked out of the tools that could help them compete. In this episode…
5 Apr 34 min

TCS | MTN’s Divyesh Joshi on the strategy behind Pi

MTN South Africa has launched Pi, a digital-only mobile operator that runs on MTN’s network but operates as a standalone brand, offering contract-free mobile and home 5G connectivity through a single app, with no call centres, no credit checks and no lock-in. In this episode of the TechCentral Show, TechCentral…
1 Apr 21 min

TCS | Anoosh Rooplal on the Post Office’s last stand

The South African Post Office has been in business rescue – a form of bankruptcy protection – since July 2023. Business rescue practitioners Anoosh Rooplal and Juanito Damons have made it clear to parliament that the entity will not survive liquidation unless a R3.8-billion bailout is received soon. With some…
27 Mar 27 min

Meet the CIO | Healthbridge CTO Anton Fatti on the future of digital health

Anton Fatti, chief technology officer of HealthBridge, says the doctor-patient relationship must remain at the centre of digital transformation in healthcare, even as AI reshapes how medical practices operate. Speaking on TechCentral’s Meet the CIO podcast series, brought to you by NTT DATA, Fatti said AI and cloud computing are…
23 Mar 45 min

TCS+ | Arctic Wolf unpacks the evolving threat landscape for SA businesses

Most security teams can tell you what they've deployed. Far fewer can answer the board's next question: are we actually less exposed than we were three months ago? In many organisations, the gap between security activity and real risk reduction remains stubbornly wide, even as threats become faster, more adaptive…
19 Mar 29 min
All episodes