Elana Jacobus, Alibaba Cloud Academy Africa

For hyperscalers, opening a regional datacentre and offering cloud services is only the beginning. To achieve any measure of adoption, they will need to build an ecosystem of partners, customers, and, crucially, training.

Alibaba is the latest hyperscaler to enter the South African market, and it has partnered with BCX to drive adoption in this market. It’s a symbiotic relationship. BCX will benefit by being able to offer its customers a true hyperscale computing suite of services, for which they will be billed in their local currency. For its part, as a late entrant, Alibaba should be able to establish a toehold in the crowded market. For its training initiative, it has now opened the Alibaba Cloud Academy Africa.