INTELLIGENT BRANDS // Data Centres
Key considerations for data
centre growth in Africa
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A
frica is an exciting market for IT
services right now. Thanks to the
massive increase in rich-media
content consumed by Africans and the global
population, compounded by corporates
continuing to migrate to the cloud, the
continent is ripe with opportunity to establish
new revenue streams through smart data
offerings, with IT leaders drawing attention to
their data centre system spending.
South African firm Internet Solutions
(IS) says the data centre market in the
continent should not be considered
continentally competitive, but a strong
global competitor. Thanks to its world-
class offering, Africa has established itself
as a hotspot for international companies
looking for new territories to base their
data centre infrastructure.
South Africa, Kenya, Mauritius and Nigeria
are rapidly emerging as epicentres for
public and private cloud hosting, attracting
both multinationals and the largest
African enterprises.
Speaking at the 2018 MyBroadband Cloud
Conference, Michael Needham, Senior
Manager for Solutions Architecture in Sub-
Saharan Africa at Amazon Web Services,
said: “Amazon continuously evaluates
markets around the world. South Africa is
certainly on our radar.”
Meanwhile, Microsoft is preparing to launch
two Azure data centres in South Africa,
which are expected to go live later this year.
This is expected to see an increase in cloud
adoption rates across Africa, which would
benefit intra-Africa corporates like the big
banks and other financial service suppliers.
Because infrastructure and power in Southern
Africa is seen as relatively more stable than
other parts of the continent, the opportunity
exists to establish an African hub to support
rapidly growing global connectivity needs,
through colocation data centres. In-country
data centres will dramatically improve
latency issues for Africans, while these
premises can be managed within the
country’s local laws.
But IS says telcos can’t rush in without
a plan of action. They add that Africa is
an increasingly competitive space loaded
with cultural and governmental nuances,
so Internet Service Providers (ISPs) should
carefully consider their every move when
expanding there. Challenges can vary –
navigating the regulatory environment,
compliance with labour laws and agreeing to
basic timelines can be fraught with difficulty
for foreign operations.
But thanks in part to the various BRICS
(Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa)
agreements in place, Africa continues to be
a big investment market for Chinese cloud
providers and could see great potential for
the ISP sector.
Building sustainably for a green
data future
IS adds that it intends to continue growing
its share of the South African colocation
market as demand increases among
government agencies and content service
providers. A new addition to the Parklands
centre in Johannesburg will soon double
its current capacity, bringing it to a total of
572 racks and 2.2 megawatts of IT power.
The Parklands centre is near Africa’s
premier business districts, which ensures
minimal latency. It is also an African
benchmark in terms of global best practice
in data centre design, built with energy
efficiency in mind. n
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