Seacom subsidiary Pamoja is set to build a cloud computing market for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) within the Southern and Eastern African regions, with initial infrastructure to be developed in South Africa and Kenya.

The cloud services unit, which was incorporated into Seacom in 2011 and officially launched on Monday, was developing affordable cloud and enterprise services for Eastern and Southern Africa-based SMEs, said Seacom and Pamoja CEO Mark Simpson.

It aimed to establish a market to enable its “channel partners” and service providers to on-sell under their own brand to their customer base, enabling the smaller firms to compete effectively on a global scale, added Pamoja GM Albie Bester.

He noted that the new company’s wholesale approach and model would reduce capital investment requirements for the smaller firms, while reducing start-up risks for organisations entering the cloud computing markets.

The South Africa-based infrastructure would service the Southern African markets, with a strong focus on South Africa, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Zambia. The Kenya-based infrastructure would deliver the services to Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda and South Sudan.

Pamoja had three channel partners each in South Africa and Kenya, and was currently in discussions with other potential channel partners in Tanzania, Rwanda and Zambia.

The infrastructure was expected to improve access to the cloud services and deal with issues surrounding the location of confidential and sensitive data and would incorporate the development, in two phases each, of software-as-a-service (SaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS).

SaaS and PaaS would encompass the majority of all information technology services required by a small or medium-sized organisation.

Pamoja’s cloud services would be provided through parent company Seacom’s network of data centres, located directly on the submarine infrastructure, with the first cloud platform already operating within the Mtunzini cable landing station, near Richards Bay.

Pamoja outlined that its wholesale cloud services business model was built on the growing SME demand for information-technology-as-a-service, as well as the need for service providers to increase the value of their existing offerings and grow broadband revenue.

The group noted that cloud computing had become one of the fastest-growing technologies on the back of the ease-of-use and scalability of access to large amounts of secure Web-based services, software and infrastructure.

Further, globally, cloud computing had been recognised as a source of new revenue, with worldwide investments into cloud services expected to more than double from an estimated $55-billion a year in 2011, to almost $130-billion a year by 2015.