Virtualization is the railway to cloud computing and can be defined as the creation of partitions or zones around software and hardware to separate them. It disjoins the software from the hardware, software from other software or applications from operating systems. By separating all these and coming up with these partitions, one obtains a customized unit that can be easily moved around. Safaricom and other companies and organizations will benefit from efficient use of their hardware; they will be able to cut management costs and they will be assured of business continuity so that they can focus on customer service.
Shaka Kwach, the head of Safaricom Business Technical Department, explains how Safaricom has grown over the years in different locations in Kenya and there is need to move to virtualization to handle the ever growing number of its subscribers. In this huge growth right from the days when Safaricom was a department in Telkom Kenya, it has advanced its services and the number of racks needed to handle the numerous servers has become tremendous. Kwach says virtualization is the solution to this so that the company can be able to cut down operation costs, improve uptime and availability, and have a robust disaster recovery system.

Despite his civil engineering background, Kwach has an understanding of the software utilities needed to handle a virtualized environment, for instance the VMware which can be obtained from the vendors though Safaricom as a company insists on those that are easily upgraded and have a powerful security module. When this kind of technology is acquired there is need to hire skilled personnel and the existing ones are required to learn and adapt to the new operations.

What happens to the existing hardware which becomes obsolete when virtualization is implemented in an organization? According to Kwach, Safaricom has a close relationship with schools, universities, and colleges to which it donates some of this infrastructure. This is also a way of empowering small and medium size enterprises across the country. Virtualization is part of the journey to cloud computing which we haven’t reached but which, according to Kwach,  will wake up to be a cloud Internet Service Provider (ISP).

Kwach spoke to CIO East Africa on the sidelines of the CIO Executive Breakfast held at a Nairobi hotel.