BCX and Alibaba join forces for South African cloud service

Digital systems integrator BCX has launched an Africa Local Public (ALP) cloud service, with Alibaba Cloud, aimed at delivering innovative technology solutions to businesses across the continent.

The partners say that South African local enterprises can now access secure and resilient infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) offerings like cloud compute, storage, network, and security services with low latency and high efficiency offered by BCX’s ALP cloud.

The initial capacity will be made available to enterprise clients and will be further expanded with additional products and capacity. The ALP cloud service is powered by Alibaba Cloud – the digital technology and intelligence backbone of Chinese multinational technology company Alibaba Group.

BCX has opted to charge for services in the local currency, the South African rand, thus ensuring cost predictability for South African enterprises, allowing them to effectively manage their cloud service expenses.

ALP cloud has been deployed in two data centres in South Africa. BCX intends to launch a third data centre in Cape Town, along with another disaster recovery data centre in one of South Africa’s neighbouring countries, to mitigate the impact of load shedding (a term referring to major interruptions to South Africa's electricity supply).

Headquarted in South Africa, BCX describes itself a digital transformation partner for enterprises and public sector organisations across various industries and sectors in South Africa, Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, and Zambia, as well as the United Kingdom. Service provider Telkom acquired the company in 2015.