In a bid to empower businesses in the fast-paced digital era, Airtel Africa has partnered Cisco to offer a Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) solution.
NaaS represents a shift in usage of network infrastructure as it enables businesses to operate networks efficiently without the need to own, build, or maintain physical infrastructure.
In a statement released on Tuesday, Airtel Africa, which oversees Airtel Malawi and is also available in 13 other countries, said there is an increasing demand for businesses to speed up their operations without the extra burden of constructing or overseeing network infrastructure hence the introduction of NaaS offerings.
Oliver Fortuin, CEO of Airtel Business Africa, said as Africa, businesses should move with the changing times.
“As Africa transitions digitally, businesses will require a fusion of connectivity, mobility, security, and cloud into a service offering for every business irrespective of geographical spread or operational needs,” he said.
Vish Iyer, president of service provider Cisco (Asia Pacific and Japan) said the company believes in simplifying powerful technology for every organization and the collaboration will reduce networking complexities.
“We pledge to deliver the majority of our cutting-edge technology portfolio to businesses across the continent in the most simplified, flexible manner imaginable,” Iyer said.
The innovation by Airtel Africa, according to ICT expert Anthony Ziba, will hrelp overcome the challenges associated with traditional network models such as capital expenses, manual service provisioning, and lengthy issue resolution processes.
He has since tipped Malawi to embrace the innovation citing it will drive Malawi’s digital economy as it is with other African countries.
“We have industry specific cases in health, education, immigration etc. where software-as-a-service would be of beneficial use. In this case, the way a hospital is run in South Africa would be the same way a hospital would be run in Malawi as long as they use the same software as a service platform,” he said.
Airtel Africa’s NaaS offerings, using Cisco’s Catalyst and Meraki cloud-based platforms, mean that businesses don’t have to own, build, or take care of physical network infrastructure. This helps deal with problems that come with old-fashioned network setups, like upfront costs, manual service setup, and long issue resolution processes.
