GEC NEWS WIRESiemon and Arista Networks have collaborated to share their expert knowledge at the recent ‘Cloud & Infrastructure Development Forum’ in Lagos.
The forum delivered insight into key technologies that can enable pan-African businesses successfully migrate to the cloud and support a growing digital economy. The partners also demonstrated how the collaboration of complimentary manufacturers to deliver a turnkey solution for cloud deployments can add true value to customers.
In Nigeria, where the population stands at close to 200 million, consumption of data and other cloud-based business applications continues to rise now and in the foreseeable future. “For businesses, this means robust infrastructures must be put in place to support this growth. For managed service providers and data centre operators, it is important to understand which solutions will best serve their purpose and give them the competitive edge”, says James Kiriamiti, marketing and partner manager for Europe, Russia and Africa.
The forum was aimed at data centre/colocation carriers, telecommunications, financial and educational institutions, installers as well as public sector and government organisations who especially benefited from understanding how to leverage software-driven, cognitive cloud networking solutions and deploy the right passive infrastructure products for a robust, future-proof deployment.
Dinesh OP, technical manager for Africa at Siemon states, “Nigeria truly has a need for speed. With many business-critical applications consuming vast amounts of data coupled with the rise of connected devices via the Internet of Things (IoT), organisations need to be equipped with the right infrastructure to deliver robust networks.” In his presentation he demonstrated how selecting high-performance copper or fibre optic cabling solutions from day one ensures that networks can be deployed ready to support applications demanding 100G, 400G and beyond.
Arista Networks demonstrated the advantages of using their switches and emphasised their unique approach to designing high-performance products for scalable networks that solve real world problems. By clearly outlining the core differences between legacy networking and cloud networking practices, attendees were able to understand the tangible benefits of migrating to the cloud. This includes moving from manual ‘box-by-box’ to automated network-wide networking, standards-based architectures, deeper control through programming at all infrastructure layers and ability to use virtualisation, scripting, devops and other skill sets.
In coming together with Arista Networks, Siemon underscores its strategy to add value to its customers by working in partnership with complimentary manufacturers. “As cloud driven technologies continue to see vast growth globally, relationships such as that of industry leaders Siemon and Arista work well to deliver proven, high quality solutions that complement each other and provide great benefits to the customer”, adds Kiriamiti.
Taking a look into the future, he concludes “The growth that Nigeria and other sub-Saharan countries are enjoying is fundamentally driven by the appetite for technology seen across various sectors. The right networking solutions can deliver sustained support for Africa’s evolving digital economy and we are keen to continue discussing these critical topics with IT leaders in the future”.
