Microsoft Nigeria has urged businesses in the country to adopt cloud computing to enable firms reduce operating costs, run infrastructure more efficiently, and streamline scaling as business needs change.

The Country Manager, Microsoft Nigeria, Akin Banuso, gave the charge on Wednesday while speaking with journalists at the company’s office in Lagos.

He said with digital transformation becoming the driving force behind organisational strategies across the continent, organisations in Nigeria need to consider cloud computing as a way of storing and managing servers, databases, networking analytics and software through the internet (cloud).

This, according to him, will enable firms experience faster innovation, flexible resources, and achieve economies of scale, as they will only pay for cloud services used.

“We created our Azure cloud offering recognising that organisations that migrate to the cloud would require an ever-expanding set of cloud services to help them meet business challenges.

“The solution also allows organisations the freedom to build, manage, and deploy applications on a massive, global network using preferred tools and frameworks”, Banuso said.

He added: “And this is where a monumental factor comes into play – with Microsoft recently launching its first cloud data centres in South Africa.

“Going forward the latter will allow for faster, more agile business operations and provide access to next-generation technologies for the rest of the continent, including Nigeria.”

Also speaking at the event aimed at creating awareness on cloud computing and data migration, the Intelligent Cloud (Azure) Business Group Lead at Microsoft Nigeria, Wale Olokodana, noted that when computing and processing demand fluctuates, hybrid cloud computing provides businesses with the ability to seamlessly scale their on-premises infrastructure up to the public cloud to handle any overflow—without giving third-party data centres access to the entirety of their data.

“For organisations in the country not wanting to move to the public cloud completely, leveraging a hybrid model may be better suited. This combines private and public cloud capabilities, allowing data and applications to be shared between them.

“Our aim with this event, is that CTO’s, CIO’s and the like will recognise not only the value that the public cloud has to potentially revolutionise their businesses – but also that it doesn’t stop there.

“Products like Azure stack as well as the just released Azure Stack HCI (Hyper Converged Infrastructure) solutions allow customers adopt models like the hybrid cloud to accelerate their digital transformation journeys.

“For businesses in Nigeria, this will only help to keep them abreast in a dynamic and fasted paced environment,” Olokodana said.

According to him, organisations are afforded the flexibility and computing power of the public cloud for basic and non-sensitive computing tasks, while keeping business-critical applications and data on-premises, safely behind a company firewall.

A recent report by the IDC had revealed that worldwide spending on public cloud services and infrastructure is forecast to reach $210 billion in 2019 – an increase of more than 23 percent over 2018. In Nigeria, a further 78 percent of companies increased their cloud computing budgets last year.