Azure availability zones now available in South Africa

Azure availability zones now available in South Africa

Microsoft is announcing the addition of Availability Zones to the South Africa North cloud region. Expanding the region to have three unique physically separated locations within the region. To bring higher availability and asynchronous replication of applications and data for disaster recovery protection.

Microsoft says the Availability Zones give users additional options for high availability for their most demanding applications and services. As well as confidence and protection from potential hardware and software failures. By providing three or more unique physical locations within an Azure region.

These zones located in Johannesburg will each have their own power, cooling and high-speed low latency connections. Let’s say you are deploying a web tier consisting of 3 virtual machines, you can place one in each zone. So that if zone A fails your customers will still be able to access the other virtual machines in the other availability zones in the same Azure region. This is really ideal where data residency laws and regulatory requirements are important.

South Africa North is the only Azure cloud region in the Middle East and Africa to get availability zones presence. Microsoft will bring availability zones to the UAE North region and establish a new datacenter region in Israel this year.

Microsoft launched two cloud regions in Africa, South Africa North and West located in Johannesburg and Cape Town respectively. And two in the United Arab Emirates, Abu Dhabi and Dubai. Interestingly, when you check the Azure global infrastructure map it appears Microsoft is hiding certain regions. Regions it classifies as reserved access regions and this includes South Africa West and Abu Dhabi. Although these regions are available to customers, they will require you to go through a request process in order to gain access. The process to request access is straightforward and you can initiate it directly within the Azure portal.

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Check out other stories making the news in the technology ecosystem in Africa and the Middle East.

Johannesburg, Dubai, Tel Aviv; Microsoft will host Ignite The Tour in these MEA cities

Johannesburg, Dubai, Tel Aviv; Microsoft will host Ignite The Tour in these MEA cities

Microsoft Ignite The Tour will take place in Johannesburg, Tel Aviv and Dubai in 2020.

Ignite The Tour

Microsoft’s annual technical training for developers and IT professionals conference, Ignite, will be hitting the roads again. Microsoft Ignite is going global and will be in a city near you next year. This will be after the main Ignite conference takes place November 4th to 8th 2019 in Orlando, Florida.

Like last year Microsoft promises to bring the same vibe to you during a two day event on this tour. Get to learn ways to build solutions as well as migrate and manage your infrastructure. Meet people in software development, security, architecture and IT. Get hands-on and deep dive experiences in areas such as security, cloud and hybrid infrastructure and development.

In the Microsoft Middle East and Africa region the events will take place in Johannesburg, Dubai and Tel Aviv.
The Johannesburg, South Africa event is scheduled to take place January 30-31, 2020. Dubai, United Arab Emirates, February 10-11, 2020 and April 22-23, 2020 in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Promising over 100 sessions the event will help you grow your skills, explore new technology and connect with Microsoft engineers. If you are planning to attend there will be so many topics and sessions you’ll need to tailor the experience to what you want to leave with.

Again I echo, dear Microsoft can we have some of these events across West, North and East Africa? Thank You. I think I have spoken the mind of a lot of developers and IT Pros in the region. Also with the launch of the Africa Development Center this should be a thing.

Head over to the Microsoft Ignite The Tour event pages of each city.

Registration links aren’t live yet for Dubai and Tel Aviv. We will update this post once this happens. Update: Links for Johannesburg and Dubai are live, click to register.

Johannesburg, South Africa 

Dubai, United Arab Emirates 

Tel Aviv, Israel

Have you had an experience at any Microsoft developer or IT Pro event? Share your experience with us. Looking forward to attending? Share your thoughts with us. 

Microsoft Ignite The Tour is coming to Johannesburg, Tel Aviv and Dubai

Microsoft Ignite The Tour is coming to Johannesburg, Tel Aviv and Dubai

Microsoft Ignite The Tour will take place in Johannesburg, Tel Aviv and Dubai in 2019

 
Microsoft Ignite The Tour  

Microsoft’s annual developers and IT professionals conference, Ignite, is hitting the roads. Microsoft Ignite is going global and will be in a city near you. Microsoft promises to bring the same vibe to you on this tour during a two day event. This announcement came at the end of the conference which took place in Orlando, Florida just some days ago. Next years will also be in Orlando and you can pre-register for Microsoft Ignite 2019 now. 

Announcing #MSIgniteTheTour, a free technical training event for developers & tech professionals. 100+ deep-dive sessions, expert connections, and community building.

From all indications Microsoft Ignite The Tour seems to be a replacement for Microsoft TechSummit which has the same goal. So TechSummit fans this will be the go to event next year. 

Promising over 100 sessions the event will help you grow your skills, explore new technology and connect with Microsoft engineers. If you are planning to attend there will be so many topics and sessions you’ll need to tailor the experience to what you want to leave with. 

In the Microsoft Middle East and Africa region the conferences will take place in Johannesburg, Tel Aviv and Dubai. The Johannesburg, South Africa event is scheduled to take place January 28-29, 2019January 22-23, 2019 in Tel Aviv, Israel and Dubai, United Arab Emirates, March 27-28, 2019.

Dear Microsoft can we have some of these events across West, North and East Africa? Thank You. I think I spoke the mind of a lot of developers and IT Pros in the region. 

Head over to the Microsoft Ignite The Tour event pages of each city for more details and register.  

Tel Aviv, Israel

 

Johannesburg, South Africa 

 

Dubai, United Arab Emirates 

 

Missed out on the Microsoft Ignite 2018 Keynote? No worries watch it right here ? 

 

Have you had an experience at any Microsoft developer or IT Pro event? Share your experience with us. Looking forward to attending? Share your thoughts with us. 

 

 

Featured Image ?: Dario Gambino 

Software Developer Internship at Microsoft AppFactory, Johannesburg

Software Developer Internship at Microsoft AppFactory, Johannesburg

Microsoft 4Afrika AppFactory Software Developer Internship Opportunity in Johannesburg, South Africa 

Software Developer Internship

Microsoft’s AppFactory is looking for software developer interns in Johannesburg. The 4Afrika AppFactory initiative tries to bridge the gap of Africans who understand and use modern technologies and platforms. Thus making them highly employable with modern developer and digital skills in this era of digital transformation.

The internship offer will be a learning and development curve that’ll most probably also end with a placement. The offer says;

“The AppFactory is an internship programme that recruits young developers. Helps them gain vital work experience while building fun and clever apps. Young up-and-coming developers will gain real-world experience to prepare them for the workplace. Making it easier for them to find jobs and giving them more to offer their prospective employers.

The Microsoft AppFactory internship programme offers Africa’s technology enthusiasts and graduates the initial hands-on experience they need to succeed as professional software developers – able to design, develop, implement, and manage successful software solutions for a Cloud First, Mobile First world.”

“We’re looking for an intern who is passionate about modern coding practices, Object-Oriented coding & writing clean code and already have a good understanding of full-stack development to join our team. By that, we mean a person who is interested in working in both front-end technologies (such as Angular) as well as backend frameworks (such as ASP.NET) and mobile frameworks (such as Cordova or Xamarin).”

Find out more about the Software Developer Internship opportunity and click apply now if you qualify to participate. 

Microsoft expands Cloud Services with two new Datacenters in Africa, Cape Town and Johannesburg

Microsoft expands Cloud Services with two new Datacenters in Africa, Cape Town and Johannesburg

Microsoft has shared on it’s plans to deliver the Microsoft Cloud from datacenters in Africa. This is BIG right? Increasing it’s Cloud Regions, Africa will have it’s first Microsoft Cloud datacenters situated in South Africa.

datacenters

Microsoft’s investments in Africa is quickly growing. It’s like Microsoft can see something happening on the continent and is getting ready for it. Technological innovations growing around African cities are on the rise. The increase in Hubs in Nairobi, Accra, Lagos, Cape Town, Kigali to mention a few can attest to this. We saw Microsoft Launch a major event earlier this year on the continent with NexTech Africa. This is only the beginning, we’ve also seen Microsoft pilot it’s Windows Insiders 4 Good initiative in Lagos and soon the East Africa Fellowships.

“With cloud services ranging from intelligent collaboration to predictive analytics, the Microsoft Cloud delivered from Africa will enable developers to build new and innovative apps, customers to transform their businesses, and governments to better serve the needs of their citizens.” – Scott Guthrie

Microsoft’s cloud regions will in addition to new data centers to be located in Cape Town and Johannesburg increase to 40 globally. These datacenters will deliver same Microsoft cloud services including Office 365, Microsoft Dynamics and Azure. The datacenters are said to be available sometime in 2018.

Watch Microsoft’s Managing Director for South Africa, Zoaib Hoosen talk about the announcement.

Microsoft’s Executive Vice President Cloud and Enterprise Group, Scott Guthrie, talking about this said;

We’re excited by the growing demand for cloud services in Africa and their ability to be a catalyst for new economic opportunities.
Customers across Africa, including local startups and NGOs, will be able to use the cloud services delivered from these new regions to power innovation and opportunity for Africa and the world.
Few places in the world are as dynamic and diverse as Africa today. In this landscape, we see enormous opportunity for the cloud to accelerate innovation, support people across the continent who are working to transform their businesses, explore new entrepreneurship opportunities and help solve some of the world’s hardest problems. For these reasons, I’m very excited to share our plans to deliver the Microsoft Cloud from datacenters in Africa.
What do you think about this announcement? Hopefully we’ll be there to inform you when the datacenters are up and running.

 

More Info:  Microsoft | Microsoft