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Cloud computing capabilities represent a growing opportunity for service providers in Africa, as retail and wholesale data consumers in the continent's emerging economies increasingly need better service and access to voice and data networks.

According to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), Internet penetration in the West African nation stood at 3,568,757 users, representing 14 percent of the population in 2012. Mobile data is viewed as the most logical path to grow Internet adoption in the country and also stimulate economic growth through the emergence of an e-commerce sector in Ghana, as well as in many other African countries.

The Ghana Statistical Service records that the country's mobile telephony penetration rate has grown from 50 percent in 2008 to about 83 percent currently. The sector is one of the largest in the country in terms of cash flow, consumer spending, capital expenditure, taxes and levies accruing to the public treasury and contribution to GDP. 

In July of this year, Surfline announced its entry into Ghana's competitive telecommunications landscape with the commercial deployment of a high speed 4G LTE (Long Term Evolution) network in parts of Western and Central Africa. Now, Surfline is expanding again to tap into the growing mobile data market in the region. Surfline will deploy the IBM cloud platform to drive its critical backend processing and customer service delivery services.

A newly established company with ambitions to significantly improve Ghana's Internet usage and access levels, Surfline's new IT platform will help provide tailored communications solutions and services to corporate and retail customers in Ghana. Issued its license to provide broadband wireless access and related services by Ghana's National Communications Authority (NCA) in February 2013, the company will rely on the IBM platform to efficiently deploy its operations and support its entire IT infrastructure.

"We selected IBM's Tivoli Storage Management and Smart Cloud Monitoring solutions because it offered us the best value in terms of our immediate and long term technology infrastructure requirements," said Osei Badu-Nkansah, chief information officer at Surfline. "IBM has provided a high performance vertical and horizontal scalable technology platform ready to support both the current and projected future computing needs."

The IBM cloud solution will help Surfline optimize its technology costs, improve operational efficiency, achieve better return on investment and ensure excellent service delivery to the emergent and largely unfilled data services needs of Ghana's businesses, government agencies, professional communities, and residential users.

Surfline selected IBM's cloud technology over other local and international vendors after a thorough review of overall capabilities, as the IBM solution offered the scalable system design, cloud-ready architecture, longer life cycle and easy scalability that Surfline needed.

"The telecommunications landscape in Ghana is set to undergo fundamental shifts as a growing number of users take up mobile data. Deploying IBM's trusted and industry-tested capabilities is a significant beginning for Surfline Communications as it begins to offer its services to its customers. We are excited to work with Surfline and become a key contributor to its business objectives," said Joe Mensah, Country General Manager for IBM Ghana.

With a population of 25 million, Ghana is the second largest economy in West Africa, a region which will be the fastest-growing in Africa between 2013 and 2014, as predicted by the African Development Bank.

IBM business partners Courtbridge Ghana and Tri-Continental Distributions helped deliver the solution, which includes IBM Power 770 and BladeCenter HS23 servers, IBM V7000 Storage systems, the PowerVM virtualization suite, Smart Cloud Monitoring, and Tivoli Storage Manager.

The agreement was signed in June 2013.

About IBM Cloud Computing 
IBM is the global leader in cloud with an unmatched portfolio of open cloud solutions that help clients build, rent or tap into cloud capabilities. No other company has the ability to bring together unique industry knowledge and unmatched cloud capabilities, that have already helped more than 20,000 clients around the world. Today, IBM has more than 100 cloud SaaS solutions, 37,000 experts with deep industry knowledge helping clients transform and a network of more than 25 global cloud delivery centers. Since 2007, IBM has invested more than $6 billion in acquisitions to accelerate its cloud initiatives. Most recently IBM acquired SoftLayer with more than 21,000 clients in 140 countries to further build out its IaaS portfolio with an easy and secure on ramp to cloud integrating IBM SmartCloud. For more information about cloud offerings from IBM, visit http://www.ibm.com/smartcloud. Follow us on Twitter at @IBMcloud and on our blog at http://www.thoughtsoncloud.com.  Join the conversation #ibmcloud

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About Surfline Communications Ghana
Surfline Communications Limited is a Ghanaian-owned private company, established in 2011. The company was established to provide wireless broadband and related services to the Ghanaian market. It's Surfline's vision to establish a high-speed network that can be used for multiple data-centric services and applications for the betterment of the country's overall infrastructure. Surfline will launch its revolutionary 4G LTE network in 2014 to meet the emergent and largely unfulfilled data needs of Ghana's businesses, government agencies, professional communities and residential users. Learn more at: http://surflinegh.com.

Media Contacts:

Charles Moyela
IBM Media Relations
+233 2627 18756, +234 808667 5257
charlesm@ng.ibm.com

Osei Badu-Nkansah
Surfline Chief Information Officer (CIO) 
+233 501 300 304 
Obadu@Surflinegh.com

SOURCE IBM