Microsoft has increased investment by setting up Azure Active Directory Domain Services, a Microsoft Security product in Nairobi.
This is part of the mission of the American tech company to advance tech skills and talent on the African continent through its office in the capital.
Azure is an Sh5.5 billion ($40 million) yearly revenue generator with 300,000 enterprise global customers.
Azure Active Directory Domain Services is a group of features that enable Microsoft customers to create and manage their organizations’ identities on Azure cloud services. These identities enable customers to transfer or operate software applications that are run from their physical servers to Azure cloud services.
An Azure AD DS-managed domain lets organizations run applications that cannot use modern authentication methods in the cloud.
According to Microsoft ADC Managing Director Catherine Muraga, the increased investment in the center demonstrates the company’s faith in the existing talent at ADC. Muraga, who is the engineering director, will lead the teams that will be working on the product.
“This is an opportunity to highlight the ADC’s growth and impact. Not only do we want to grow product ownership within ADC, but we also want to develop more experts in the field,” added Muraga.
Organizations can lift and shift these legacy applications from their on-premises environment into a managed domain without needing to deploy, manage, or patch domain controllers.
This announcement comes shortly after a visit by Igor Sakhnov, Microsoft’s Executive Vice President, Engineering, which included a review of the ADC’s operations and a review of its partnerships aimed at building capacity for tech talent.
The center recently announced the completion of a joint curriculum review process with Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology and is currently providing skills training to university lecturers as part of efforts to improve the tech talent pipeline
