AMERICAN technology giant, Microsoft, seeks to spread its cloud-based systems in Zimbabwe capitalising on the abundant opportunities in sub-Saharan Africa.
In the 2015 annual report, Microsoft’s revenue was $93, 6 billion and net income of $12,2 billion.
Speaking recently in Harare, Microsoft’s windows business division for West, East, Central and Indian Ocean islands director Rotimi Olumide said Zimbabwe was an important market which offers a number of opportunities.
“The sub Saharan region, the west and central African region, for Microsoft for which Zimbabwe is involved, is a very important market for us. It is an emerging market, an area for which there are loads of opportunities for growth with meaningful impact,” Olumide said.
“We talked to, for example, public sector organisations who are looking to provide better services for Zimbabwe from a conservation standpoint, document sharing, business processes improvement standpoint, and for providing better costs for the citizens of Zimbabwe.
“What we provide is a platform to enable the partner, here in Zimbabwe, to build solutions on those platforms that serve the needs of your customer base.”
Microsoft is building a cloud platform that enables the world’s applications to become intelligent using the next-generation infrastructure, data and developer services.
Of its cloud services, the Azure cloud platform which is its biggest is now available in 140 countries with over 20 data centre regions, more than any other public cloud.
Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing platform and infrastructure created by Microsoft for building, deploying, and managing applications and services through a global network of Microsoft-managed data centres.
Last year, Microsoft chief executive officer Satya Nadella said Azure cloud platform revenue and computer usage increased by over 100% in the fourth quarter year over year.
“We fundamentally believe that individuals and organisations from across the world will increasingly use mobile devices and cloud based solutions. So this speaks to the investments we are making to enable that to happen globally,” Olumide said.
“Our job is to make sure that Microsoft is investing to provide the best possible personalised devices for our customers, productivity applications that help them to get more work done, best cloud service infrastructure that will enable them to get the best results when using cloud services, and a platform on which you all can innovate.”
