Cloud computing is the on demand delivery of IT resources via the internet with pay as you go pricing. Instead of buying, owning and maintaining physical data centres and servers, you can access technology services such as computing, power, storage and databases on an ‘as needed’ basis from a cloud provider.
Organisations of every type, size and industry are using the cloud for a wide variety of use cases such as; data backup, disaster recovery, email, virtual desktops, software development and testing, big data analytics and customer facing web applications. For example, healthcare companies are using the cloud to develop more personalised treatments for patients, while financial services companies are using the cloud to power real time fraud detection and prevention, and video game makers are using the cloud to deliver online games to millions of players around the world.
With cloud computing, your business can become more agile, reduce cost, instantly scale, and deploy globally in minutes. Cloud computing gives you instant access to a broad range of technologies, so you can innovate faster and build nearly anything you can imagine; from infrastructure services such as compute, storage and databases, to internet of things, machine learning, data analytics and much more.
According to the Cloud Africa 2018 report, the use of cloud among medium to large organizations in Africa more than doubled between 2013 and 2018 and has grown even more in the last one year due to the benefits of cloud in offering efficiency and scalability. More than 90 percent of surveyed companies in South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria have plans to increase their spending on cloud computing in the next year.
Examples of cloud service providers in Nigeria include; Rack Centre, MainOne, Velvot Nigeria, Galaxy Backbone, Globacom, Amazon, MTN, IPNX, IBM, Microsoft, Whogohost, and many others.
Jumoke Akiyode-Lawanson
