Companies Amazon expands in Cape Town, competing with Microsoft — and they’re hiring The city played a key role in developing Amazon Web Services, and the company’s expansion shows how fierce rivalry is in the cloud business BL PREMIUM

Amazon is expanding its presence in the emerging tech hub of Cape Town, upping the ante in its regional battle with cloud-computing rival Microsoft. Amazon will be the sole tenant in a new eight-storey office building that’s nearing completion, multiple sources familiar with the project told Reuters. The company is advertising dozens of jobs in Cape Town, which played a key role in the early development of its Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud-computing business. The adverts include one for a software development engineer that says Amazon is assembling a team for a "green-field project" dealing with machine learning, Big Data analysis, and cloud computing, which are among the fastest-growing areas in the technology industry. The company’s expansion shows how fierce competition in the cloud business and rising demand for computing power are driving activity even in relatively undeveloped corners of the technology universe. AWS is the global leader in cloud computing with 32% of the mar...