Yesterday at the .NET user group meeting in Kampala Uganda  I gave a talk on cloud computing with Windows Azure  (details will be in my next blog post).

The guys where excited. Without owning they own inftrastucture and at low cost they can build scalable , highly available applications.

Not quite.

Azure accounts are only available to people in particular countries - none from Africa.

I attended PDC in 2008 when Microsoft unleashed Windows Azure.

One of the case studies to show the benefits ofr cloud computing was a project in Africa for an education service in Ethiopia. The point they where making was that the cloud was perfect for scenarios where computing infrastructure is not sophiscated, like Ethiopia.

Perfect , i thought.

So i got my beta account from PDC and started playing around in the cloud. Then Azure goes live , my beta account does not work any more and I cant pay because am from Uganda.

Microsoft , this sucks.

I dont know the reasons for Microsoft doing this, but am sure we can work out something.

We in Africa need the cloud more than anybody else in the world. Setting up data centers that are higly scalable and available for our startups is not an option we have. But we also cant pay for cloud computing with Microsoft. Microsoft, we know we are a tiny insigficant market for a company your size, but your excluding us only continues to widen the digital divide.

Microsoft , how about you have a reseller model for cloud computing. Instead of trying to deal direclty with each client you have local partners who help you sell and bill your cloud services. I think that would lead to Windows Azure being available in Africa. I can help you resell in Uganda.