Amazon Web Services will launch its first physical presence for customers in South Africa, according to a report by Business Times.

The report stated that AWS Direct Connect will be launched in Johannesburg and Cape Town on Tuesday.

Peter Desantis, AWS vice president and global head of infrastructure, told Business Times that this will allow local customers to have “dedicated, reliable, and high-bandwidth connectivity to the Amazon Global Network”.

“Customers can connect to all AWS infrastructure regions around the world – except China – from Johannesburg and Cape Town,” said Desantis.

He said this is the first time the Amazon network has come to Africa, and the report stated the availability of the service is a “precursor to building Amazon data centres in South Africa”.

This follows the news that two data centres will be built in South Africa – in Cape Town and Johannesburg – to host Microsoft Azure servers.

AWS offers clients a range of solutions, including compute power, database storage, and content delivery functionality.

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