Sama, a leading US-based provider of data annotation and model validation solutions, has officially launched its multi-cloud integration system in Kenya, marking a significant step towards global activation.
This strategic deployment of the multi-cloud system integration is designed to streamline operations for customers, optimising resource utilisation, and facilitating compliance with both internal and globally recognised security standards.
The multi-cloud strategy involves the combination of two or more private, public, or hybrid clouds, empowering enterprises to distribute their workload across diverse cloud environments. This approach enables enterprises to harness the distinct service characteristics offered by various cloud service providers while mitigating associated risks.
Executives across Sama’s corporate offices, including those in Kenya and Uganda, now have access to customer data stored on three global cloud storage providers: AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure.
Annepeace Alwala, Sama’s Vice President of Global Service Delivery, emphasised that this solution empowers clients to retain their data on any of the major global cloud providers, granting Sama seamless and secure access to the data, consequently reducing data transfer costs.
The local activation in Kenya is supported by Safaricom’s Fiber Optic network links, ensuring the necessary download and upload speeds required for optimal Machine Learning model performance. With this integration, Sama envisions becoming one of Kenya’s significant data bandwidth consumers, offering valuable AI export services within the country.
Alwala highlighted the accelerated customer onboarding process, which can now be completed in a single day, resulting in a sevenfold increase in efficiency. This accelerated onboarding process enhances Kenya’s attractiveness as an investment and export services destination, positioning it as the “Silicon Savannah.”
The efficiency gains extend to the reduction of custom coding solutions for Sama to access customer servers, saving valuable resources and time. Sama’s custom data pipeline integrations enable seamless collaboration with existing data flows, eliminating the need for client engineers to set up annotation and validation workflows, further minimising resource utilisation.
Duncan Curtis, Sama’s Senior Vice President of Product and Technology, emphasized the critical role of significant datasets in addressing edge cases in fields such as AgTech, autonomous driving, and e-commerce. The multi-cloud connectivity with major cloud providers enhances Sama’s ability to access datasets on behalf of clients in a timely, secure, and cost-effective manner, expediting the process of bringing models to market.
Addressing concerns about data security, Sama ensures that its multi-cloud integration does not retain private data copies. Instead, the company securely accesses customer files, makes necessary modifications, and writes the updated files back to the customer’s server. In alignment with Kenya’s efforts to fortify data privacy laws, Sama, with its existing ISO and TISAX certifications, anticipates exceeding all regulatory requirements stipulated by the Kenyan government.