Econet Wireless and its subsidiaries, including EcoCash and Econet InfraCo, have moved their operations fully onto Google Cloud, in what the company says is the first migration of its scale by a major Zimbabwean business.
The project took almost a year and is expected to improve network resilience, business continuity and the speed at which Econet can roll out new products and services.
“This is the first major step in a multi-pronged strategy aimed at significantly improving our services for customers,” said Douglas Mboweni, Econet Wireless Zimbabwe’s Group CEO. “We are excited about our partnership with Google Cloud because of their extensive experience supporting businesses around the world.”
Mboweni said customers would start seeing the benefits in the coming months as Econet moves its data and fine-tunes the new platform. Econet also plans to offer cloud services to other large businesses and organisations in Zimbabwe.
“The advantages offered by the cloud are not limited to mobile operators,” Mboweni said. “Large companies and governments around the world are moving their digital operations to the cloud.”
He said Econet could provide the infrastructure for organisations that lack the specialist engineers needed to run their own private cloud. “We have the necessary capabilities, including data centres and access to AI (artificial-intelligence) infrastructure.”
