Intelligent CIO Africa Issue 11 | Page 40

COUNTRY FOCUS: KENYA intervene and prevent system outages, Muthoria says, “We utilise GSM solutions for communication between our systems and our devices. Our devices are designed so that they are resilient to connectivity challenges that can occur in remote locations around the continent. Microsoft supports various flavours of Linux and other open-source technology, so we run both Microsoft and open-source solutions for workloads, including proactive monitoring of hardware and software systems.” of deployment, geographical proximity, scale, security, connectivity and total cost of the service. “We needed to scale horizontally during peak periods and vertically (both up and down by increasing RAM and compute) when there is a brief and urgent spike in demand. We needed a platform that would deliver services to our employees and customers within East Africa.” Microsoft’s announcement earlier in 2017 of plans to offer its services from local data centres in Johannesburg and Cape Town made them an appealing partner for M-KOPA Solar, “Microsoft demonstrated a commitment and presence in our core markets, and the scheduled launch of the first Africa data centres in 2018 will be key in us building resilience into our systems,” says Muthiora. “Given M-KOPA’s investment in the underlying Microsoft technology and in the partnership between both businesses, Microsoft was the logical partner to host our customer- and employee-facing services.” The technology life cycle Muthiora continues, “We have implemented Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS) technology across the business. Microsoft solutions are deployed through the entire technology life cycle from project planning through development, testing, operational readiness, and actual deployment.” The chosen solution leverages the hybrid cloud capabilities of Microsoft Azure to maintain a consistent experience between Azure and M-KOPA’s data centre infrastructure. This model enables a cost-efficient solution to reduce storage and increase manageability across all sites. M-KOPA’s home solar system, with the power of Microsoft’s Cortana Intelligence Suite, can receive predictive information about battery failures and payment assessments. This system provides a reliable and affordable energy solution for residents across Africa. 40 INTELLIGENTCIO Upgrading the lives of customers John Muthiora, Head of IT Systems, M-KOPA Solar “By leveraging mobile technology, IoT-enabled devices, and Azure Machine Learning, M-KOPA is able to understand consumer behaviour and provide continuous improvement to its product range.” By leveraging mobile technology, IoT- enabled devices, and Azure Machine Learning, M-KOPA is able to understand consumer behaviour and provide continuous improvement to its product range. M-KOPA remotely controls the equipment, monitors its performance, troubleshoots issues and proactively intervenes to prevent system outages. Expanding further on the technology that enables the company to remotely Connectivity and power in rural areas of Africa are not reliable. By leveraging Microsoft Azure and the sun, M-KOPA’s energy solution is providing reliable energy and expanding services to many in Eastern Africa. This system enables residents to access a cleaner and safer power option while expanding the potential services in their homes. “The Microsoft cloud solution gives M-KOPA a single technology platform and solution partner whose technology can overcome some of the unique connectivity challenges faced by off-grid homes,” says Muthiora. “Through different capabilities built into the platform we are able to determine which cloud resources are available, when they are available and how long they are available for. We are also able to run analytics on usage and platform data. We are able to leverage some open-source solutions within the cloud to lower our total cost of technology services.” “M-KOPA was born in the cloud and we are now the largest user of Microsoft’s cloud in Africa,” Muthiora continues, “We have enjoyed significant speed of deployment of new solutions and now we utilise the latest technology such as IoT, big data, machine learning in the cognitive intelligence suite and power BI to upgrade the lives of our customers. We are able to process more than 1.5 billion data points a month. “The result? Almost $200 saved per household annually, with around $375 million www.intelligentcio.com