Orange Middle East & Africa (OMEA) and Amazon Web Services (AWS) have announced the launch of AWS Wavelength Zones in Morocco and Senegal later this year. This marks the first AWS Wavelength Zones in Africa and the first in countries without an existing AWS Region or AWS Local Zone. These zones will support use cases across regulated industries requiring local data residency, such as telecom, finance, public sector, and healthcare, as well as low-latency applications like gaming.
Broad Support for AWS Services
The new Wavelength Zones will support Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances and Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) volume types such as gp2. Users will also have access to Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS), Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS), Amazon EMR, and Application Load Balancer (ALB) to support a wide range of workloads.
With AWS Wavelength, customers can benefit from the cloud’s on-demand scaling and pay-as-you-go pricing model, enabling localized data processing while leveraging AWS’s reliable, secure, and high-performance infrastructure. By extending AWS infrastructure, services, APIs, and tools to localized in-country infrastructure, AWS Wavelength allows customers to store and process their data locally while utilizing the scalability and security of the AWS Cloud.
Local Deployment and Connectivity
These AWS Wavelength Zones will be the first directly accessible through both wireless and wireline connections, allowing customers to deploy and run applications locally on AWS compute and storage located in Orange data centers. As an AWS Advanced Tier Services Partner, Orange has a strong track record of supporting enterprises on their cloud journeys and will leverage the new local infrastructure capabilities, as well as existing AWS Regions, to foster cloud adoption in Africa. Orange will also be an anchor customer for the AWS Wavelength Zones, running some of its IT workloads in-country.
“The announcement of AWS Wavelength Zones for North & West Africa is a major achievement in our strategy to foster the cloud transformation of African businesses,” said Jérôme Hénique, CEO of Orange Middle East and Africa. “We are providing the benefits of AWS to Moroccan and Senegalese organizations, from SMBs to MNCs, while ensuring data residency in secure Orange data centers in combination with our best-in-class connectivity solutions.”
Innovative Design for Emerging Geographies
Historically, AWS Wavelength Zones have existed in countries with AWS Regions. This new and evolved AWS Wavelength Zone design helps meet the needs of customers in emerging geographies, bringing AWS services into countries without an AWS Region or AWS Local Zone. Customers can deploy their applications to AWS compute and storage located within Orange’s data centers in Morocco and Senegal, so application traffic only needs to travel from the device to the local AWS Wavelength Zone via Orange’s network or another service provider. This new design allows for low latency and granular data residency controls, helping customers address stringent data residency requirements for regulatory, contractual, or security reasons.
“The deployment of AWS Wavelength Zones in North and West Africa, in collaboration with Orange, will further empower customers in growing geographies with local AWS services,” said Jan Hofmeyr, VP of EC2 Edge at AWS. “Customers of all sizes and industries in Morocco and Senegal will be able to access local AWS compute and storage for data residency, low latency, and security needs for applications across real-time gaming and regulated industries, helping customers unlock new innovation and accelerate digital transformation.”
Impact on Gaming Community
The partners highlighted the benefits for the gaming community by consulting Swarmio, a local telco-grade gaming technology provider. “There is a dynamic and growing gamer community in Africa, including Morocco and Senegal, and we want to provide them with advanced gaming experiences but run into technical hurdles involving locally available cloud services,” said Swarmio CEO and founder Vijai Karthigesu. “AWS Wavelength will help us transform the worldwide gaming landscape by combining the power of AWS with our Swarmio Edge platform to provide an unmatched, low-latency experience that allows creators to connect and delights global game publishers and developers.”
