Angani is the new pay as you go cloud based service in Kenya, hoping to give competition to the likes of Safaricom Business and other international players.
Aptly named after “The Sky” in Swahili, Angani will be entering into a space majorly left for foreign companies.
Phares Kariuki one of the founders of the platform says, “IT is not a core product offering for most companies. However, IT, like electricity and telephony, is a huge business enabler, which has tremendous benefits. Over time businesses have been spending an increasingly larger share of their revenues on IT.”
Angani wants to solve this problem by buying infrastructure in bulk, virtualizing it and lease it out for a reduced rate.
“No more worrying about hardware procurement, power, cooling, upgrading, scheduled maintenance etc. We have that covered,” he added.
How this business will fair well is anybody’s guess, knowing that the idea of cloud based service is still new to the region.
Safaricom Business has not achieved the traction they desired by launching their cloud based service to businesses, with unconfirmed reports saying it has just over 500 businesses.
Angani is expected to be operational by September. Currently the team is looking for testers to give the platform a ‘ride’ before they open it for the public.