The need to provide access to scalable, dependable and highly secure computing power has never been more important than during the challenging era of the Covid-19 pandemic.

This is the comment of Amazon CTO and VP Werner Vogels following the launch of an Amazon Web Services (AWS) Africa region in Cape Town, in April, amid the crisis, which has, in effect, halted South Africa’s economic activity.

“As Covid-19 has disrupted life as we know it, I have been inspired by the stories of organisations around the world using AWS in very important ways to help combat the virus and its impact,” he says.

The new AWS Africa region will enable customers to run applications and store their content in data centres in South Africa.

Scalable, dependable and highly secure computing power is vital to keep organisations moving forward and supports the medical relief effort, advances scientific research, enables remote learning programmes and unlocks remote working platforms, he continues.

In light of this, AWS Africa aims to assist businesses and government organisations – including those focused on fighting the effects of Covid-19 – in building cloud applications and storing their data locally, while serving end-users across Africa with lower latency and leveraging advanced AWS technologies to drive innovation.

“We have been in South Africa for over 15 years and continue to invest in jobs, community support and technology infrastructure, and the [Cape Town-based] AWS Africa region will open countless opportunities for organisations of all sizes,” Vogels says.

AWS regions have availability zones, each of which comprises one or more data centres and is located in separate and distinct geographic locations, with enough distance to significantly reduce the risk of a single event impacting on business continuity.

With the local launch, AWS now spans 73 availability zones in 23 geographic regions around the world, and the company has announced plans for 12 more availability zones across four more AWS regions in Indonesia, Italy, Japan and Spain.

Each availability zone has independent power, cooling systems and physical security and is connected through redundant, ultra-low-latency networking.

The infrastructure also meets the highest levels of security, compliance and data protection.

“With this new AWS infrastructure region, developers, enterprises, startups, nogovernmental organisations, educational institutions and governments can leverage the benefits of AWS to start their own businesses, drive innovation, build new products and services and help citizens across Africa,” he says.

“We look forward to seeing the inspiring innovations that will come from our customers in Africa over the coming weeks, months and years.”

Vogels highlights the “courageous things” being done by a number of Amazon’s Africa-based customers at the forefront of the Covid-19 battle.

“They are helping to provide life-saving information and resources, modelling data and delivering analytics to governments, ensuring millions of students continue to get the education they deserve and connecting citizens with healthcare providers – demonstrating first-hand the power of cloud computing,” he points out.

Among these companies is virtual schooling provider Top Dog Education, which is running its CambriLearn and MyTopDog learning platforms over AWS to facilitate remote learning and enable millions of school children to continue with their education.

Accenture has developed a Covid-19 call centre offering, comprising Amazon Chime, Amazon Connect, Amazon WorkDocs and Amazon WorkSpaces services, helping businesses to stay connected from anywhere on any device and to respond to customer requests.

Using AWS, a volunteer group of local developers, Covid Connect, deployed a website on AWS within three days to connect hospitals and clinics that are reporting a shortage of food, water or medical supplies with people and organisations that have surplus supplies.

In addition, AWS Partner Network (APN) partner iOCO launched a website for the Solidarity Fund in just two days.

A2D24, another APN partner, developed and deployed an automated digital communications platform – in three days – for a private hospital group to inform anyone who has been in one of the group’s hospitals of possible exposure to a confirmed Covid-19 patient.

“Organisations have been using cloud technologies to speed up research into Covid-19 and help educate people across Africa,” Vogels highlights.

Using AWS, Hyrax Biosciences developed the Exatype SARS-CoV-2 platform tool to detect mutations in the genome of SARS-CoV-2 – the coronavirus responsible for Covid-19 – track the evolution of the virus as it spreads and reduce the time spent analysing datasets from days and weeks to hours and minutes.

“GovChat launched a Covid-19 application in less than two weeks on AWS to educate citizens on measures to take in order to stop the spread of Covid-19 or quickly find medical help when they fall ill,” he adds.

Further, in less than five days, Digitata Networks, also using AWS, developed a mobile-based Covid-19 information portal and game in Malawi that tests and enhances people’s knowledge of the virus. It now serves more than 2.8-million requests a day.

“Learning more about how our customers and partners are doing inspirational things at this uncertain time leads us to believe the future for Africa is bright,” he concludes. EN