Kenya and the East Africa region has recently experienced connectivity issues to South Africa and to the USA as a result of an issue with a submarine fiber cable in the Indian Ocean.
Individuals and businesses that rely on this connectivity for their day to day operations have been adversely affected. This includes Businesses and individuals who have hosted their systems in South Africa or in the USA (on AWS, Google cloud or Azure).
If the system or systems used by an individual or an organization are hosted within East Africa, this fiber issue does not impact business continuity. This is a major benefit of having your systems close.
Regional Cloud providers in East Africa exist to help organisations to have their systems close to their users. This has major benefits including:
1. Better user experience – latency is reduced when a system is hosted close to it’s users
2. Reduced connectivity risk – connectivity risks which are beyond the control of the system users and system owner are reduced
3. Faster recovery in the event of a disaster – in a case where a systems fails with Terabytes of data thousands of miles away, it is impossible to recover that data in a timely manner. Recovery of systems hosted close to the system owner allows faster recovery.
4. Compliance – depending on the kind of data stored on a system, data residency laws apply. Hosting a system close to the users helps in ensuring compliance with local data laws.
Do you need help optimising your systems performance and user experience? Reach out to Baobab Systems via support@boababsystems.com, they will be happy to help.