CMC Networks

CMC Solves African Cross-border connectivity

07 July 2019

Despite this USP, operating in a frequently complex geographic environment, links or connectivity outages are a common reason of concern in the Telecom industry. Outages result in inconsistent network access for wholesale customers and their MNC customer base,” CEO, Marisa Trisolino. “It is because of all this that we are constantly pushing the boundaries and forming new partnerships and developing ground-breaking innovative ways of connecting people.”

To address some of these challenges, CMC Networks has collaborated with 128 Technology to enable CMC’s next generation, session aware vector-based routing platform to provide a Pan African SD-WAN offering.

CMC Networks, a global telecommunications carrier, says Teraco’s Africa Cloud Exchange will play an important role in its recently launched Multi Cloud Connect solution, enabling its customers direct connection to AWS Direct Connect and Microsoft Azure Express Route cloud platforms across multiple countries in Africa.

Marisa Trisolino, CEO, CMC Networks, says that as the largest Pan-African provider of Connectivity , the collaboration with Teraco is crucial to Multi Cloud Connects success: “By providing the essential building blocks, the Africa Cloud Exchange greatly assists us to provide our customers with the most direct and best possible cloud experience across the continent with stringent service levels to suit.”

Multi Cloud Connect will enable much sought after connectivity for African countries trying to connect to cloud regions located in South Africa: “This is a significant offering that enables African ISP's and carriers to connect directly without having to route to Europe and back to Africa. Leveraging CMC’s extensive African footprint Multi Cloud Connect will also drastically reduce latency through the African Cloud Exchange, ” says Trisolino.

Having first engaged with Teraco over ten years ago through its carrier neutral datacenter offering and NAPAfrica, Africa’s largest Internet eXchange point, Trisolino says CMC Networks has offered hosting services and peering diversity to a multitude of its customers.

The acceleration of cloud adoption, she says, spurred the company on to develop a cloud offering utilising its existing relationships: “We believe the nature of the Africa Cloud Exchange will encourage and lead to increased cloud innovation. It is an outstanding platform and will support us to achieve our strategic cloud objective, which centers on solving cross-border cloud connectivity problems throughout Africa.”

Andrew Owens, Teraco peering and interconnection specialist, says that Africa Cloud Exchange improves hybrid and multi-cloud performance through direct interconnection: “We empower our carrier communities to do more in the cloud by providing secure, direct, flexible network connections to a wide range of local and global cloud service providers.” By using an interconnected network architecture approach, Owens says that Africa Cloud Exchange will improve cloud application performance, reduce latency, scale on demand, lower network costs, and visibly deliver a better cloud experience to end users.

Trisolino is excited about the burgeoning cloud prospects across Africa. Having established itself close to 30 years ago, CMC Networks built and manages the most extensive network across Africa with 80+ Points of Presence servicing 51 African countries and in excess of 108 Points of Presence globally across USA, Europe, UAE, India, Asia, and Australia.

“The cloud era is a very exciting one for us. With our significant Africa network, Cloud Connect will undoubtedly play a vital role in the growth and improvement of cloud adoption across the African continent,” says Trisolino.

Countries that can expect sub 100ms RTD include Angola, Benin, Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.