Kenyan public cloud computing firm Angani has appointed iHub board member Riyaz Bachani as chief operating officer (COO), to help the company scale its operations across East Africa.

Bachani, who also serves on the board of Africa’s Talking Limited and the Technical Committee of the Kenya Internet Exchange Point, has previously headed up Wazi Wifi and served as chief technology officer (CTO) at Wananchi Group and Kenya Data Networks (KDN).

“Riyaz is a brilliant manager and great technologist who will help Angani scale throughout the region,” said Phares Kariuki, Angani co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO). “These qualities, combined with his vision for the internet in Africa and experience with rolling out networks regionally, make Riyaz a great addition to the team.”

Phares said since going live with services at the end of 2013 Angani has seen high demand as a number of firms migrate from hosting business applications on their premises to the cloud.

“From email, to client relationship management solutions, voice over internet solutions and file backup are some of the applications that businesses are taking up. Others include virtual servers from which they run their applications. Affordable pricing and relative ease of set up are among the reasons businesses are migrating to the cloud. We have also gained trust from a number of firms due to the vast skill-set and experience of our team with experts like Riyaz,” he said.