Safaricom offers a number of business offerings. We have explored a number over the years that tie in with our daily obsessions. For instance, the calls, texts and data bundles that entrepreneurs can purchase for not just their own use but that of their teams as well. Or, Fibre-to-the-Business offerings.
There’s more to Safaricom’s business-centred offerings beyond those. Top on our list are cloud services.
From enabling platforms such as this one to exist and be able to remain accessible to our audiences to powering emails and pretty much everything that we do, the cloud is an important part of our lives today. Watching Netflix? Well, that stream is courtesy of various data centres and content caching arrangements that allow you to watch that particular flick or series almost seamlessly. YouTube? Same thing.
Locally, if you are in the market for cloud services beyond what you can do on your smartphone (Gmail, YouTube and the like – pretty much everything else save for your local files), Safaricom has something for you.
Here are some of the cloud offerings you can reach out to Safaricom for:
1. AWS
AWS, short for Amazon Web Services, is a suite of on-demand cloud computing services offered by Amazon, the renowned e-commerce giant.
In Kenya, starting from early 2020, Safaricom is one of several accredited AWS partner organizations. Most importantly, it is the first Advanced Consulting Partner for the AWS partner network in the region.
For anyone looking to procure AWS services, what this means is that AWS has recognized Safaricom as being an organization that they can go to for end-to-end AWS services provisioning.
2. Cloud backup and recovery (plus server migration)
This is especially useful for those looking to store data like footage from CCTV cameras and the like and extends to complexities like physical/on-premise servers, for those that have them, as well as cloud servers. Product plans start at 500GB and go all the way to 5 terabytes. Check here for more information.
The ASIGRA backup service, which starts at 20GB and goes all the way to 20TB, offers backups to entire devices in an organization. Smartphones, laptops, name them.
3. Google Workspace (formerly G Suite)
For entities of whichever kind, from small businesses to big organizations, our familiarity with some Google services like Google Docs and Gmail often leads us to want to extend their usage to our organizational business. Having the Google Suite means that personalized email or corporate email gets sent, received and accessed from the same interface that we are already used to by using Gmail at a personal level. What makes it better is that that is not all that there is on offer.
One also gets other productivity tools like the calendar, the ability to make voice and video calls as well as collaborate with colleagues using the bundled cloud storage. All these are offered by Google but Safaricom’s business department personnel will handle the setting up for you and support you and your business should you encounter any challenges at any given time. Localized support is one of the biggest draws (after the setting up, especially for small businesses where doing that is an extra cost that can be avoided) to going with a local service provider over doing pretty much the same thing on your own online.
4. Microsoft 365 services
These are pretty much like the Google Workspace services explained above with the difference being that Microsoft, and not Google, is the one that offers them.
For many, Microsoft’s word-processing software, Word, spreadsheet software Excel and presentation software PowerPoint, are the backbone of an organization’s productivity. And it is not hard to see why. With cloud services offering cheap and easy ways of making sure that no work is lost and that people collaborate online, having this productivity software suite accessible online and integrated with Microsoft’s cloud service offerings (OneDrive) is a no-brainer.
Safaricom’s product offering, in this regard (as you can see here), is quite extensive.
5. Domain and web hosting
This one is what probably comes to the minds of many when they hear about Safaricom’s cloud offerings. It is also one of the oldest business services that the company has offered.
For individuals and businesses setting up an online presence, a website and the things that come with it, like email services which are covered in some of the cloud offerings we have dissected above, comes almost naturally. For those in the know, having a website involves not just getting someone to design and deploy it but also buying the identity (for instance, we had to buy androidkenya.com) and also paying to have all the properties and content that goes into it hosted on some servers somewhere.
Safaricom offers all these and, for those that don’t want to or don’t know how, makes it a breeze to get up and running in no time. Heck, they’ll even throw in an SSL certificate there for good measure and to make your work even way easier. You just specify what you want (domain name and all), pay (for the domain and the hosting) and wait for your site to go live (somewhere in between, you’ll have contracted someone to design your website for you). Then make sure that you pay your renewal fees in good time to avoid the inconvenience of having to do this all over again.