evoila Africa has hired Keevan Chun to sell VMware private cloud across the continent, and his résumé tells part of the story. Chun spent 12 years at Microsoft, most recently as a cloud solutions sales specialist for Azure. Now he is pitching the alternative to public cloud.
Chun brings more than 20 years of experience, including stints at Oracle and Avaya. He says the customer conversations he held about public cloud kept returning to two themes: cost and where data lives. Private cloud, in his view, has matured enough that many workloads now run there at a price customers can plan around.
Survey data backs the shift. Broadcom’s Private Cloud Outlook 2026 found that 83% of 1,800 senior IT leaders were weighing a move from public to private cloud, and half had already shifted some workloads. Cost has also overtaken security as their top worry about public cloud. Of course, Broadcom owns VMware, so it has an interest in private cloud demand.
In Africa, data sovereignty rules add another layer, because they influence where organizations may store information. evoila Africa says higher-than-expected public cloud bills and those residency requirements push companies to review their strategies.
The company’s structure explains its pitch. German IT firm evoila acquired Routed, which became its main African subsidiary. Customers therefore get evoila’s international consulting framework while their data operations stay local. Meanwhile, Broadcom’s restructuring cut VMware’s authorized partners from roughly 6,000 to about 100, and evoila remains one of them. It says that status lets it sell VMware licensing and services across Africa, including VMware Cloud Foundation based designs.
Chun will work with enterprise customers, partners and the wider market, helping them compare private cloud with public cloud, on-premises setups or a hybrid mix. Andrew Cruise, managing director of evoila Africa, called the hire part of a broader investment and said Chun knows the market well.
Hiring a veteran of the public cloud to sell its rival makes a neat symbol. Still, whether it reflects a real change in African buying habits will depend on how many of those considering a move actually follow through.
