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South Africa’s data centre market is expanding quickly, with providers investing more to build bigger and more advanced data centres.
Teraco kicked off the carrier-neutral data centre revolution in South Africa and was quickly joined by the likes of Huawei and Microsoft. The list of companies with facilities in the country has continued to grow since.
Recent developments in the country’s data centre industry include firms announcing the beginning of construction on new facilities, the completion of new data centres, and significant investments in the market.
Companies such as Africa Data Centres (ADC), Vantage, Equinix, Open Access Data Centres (OADC), and Teraco have invested billions of rands in their facilities.
Some notable developments and investments in South Africa’s data centre market are listed below.
Africa Data Centres launches free remote peering
In January 2023, Africa Data Centres and INX-ZA launched free remote peering, letting customers use any network service provider’s infrastructure to reach exchange points.
The partnership brings free peering from ADC’s facilities to the Johannesburg and Cape Town Internet Exchanges.
The data centre provider says the offering will make multi-region peering more accessible, efficient, and easier to manage.
Tesh Durvasula, CEO of Africa Data Centres, said remote peering would let customers connect directly to Internet exchange points without needing new infrastructure or equipment.
“Having this ability not only reduces capital expenditure and complexity. Deployments can be achieved in a matter of minutes rather than months,” Durvasula said.
“Using a remote peering provider or organisations in every industry can add scalable bandwidth capacity on flexible terms to access a wide range of IXs.”
Vantage breaks ground second Johannesburg facility
Vantage Data Centres announced that it had started construction on its second campus in Johannesburg (JNB2) in December 2022.
The facility’s first building will provide 20MW of critical IT capacity across 33,000 square meters of hall space.
The site is located in Isando, approximately 17km from its JNB1 campus and less than 2km from the NAPAfrica Internet exchange point.
Vantage Data Centres EMEA president Antoine Boniface said South Africa continues to be the company’s foundation for growth in the region.
“Investing in a second campus is a testament to our commitment to the region and our customers who have business requirements to be in this high-demand market,” he said.
Vantage said the facility will be operational by mid-2024.
Equinix plans to invest R2.8 billion in first SA data centre
In December 2022, US data centre giant Equinix announced its plans to invest $160 million (around R2.8 billion at the time) to build its first facility in South Africa.
The data centre, which will be located in Johannesburg, is expected to be operational by mid-2024.
“South Africa was a big target for Equinix as it is the most developed economy in sub-Saharan Africa,” said Equinix EMEA president Eugene Bergen.
“We are focusing to get into Africa, and we are looking at another five or six countries to enter.”
Bergen said Equinix plans to serve large enterprises such as banks, content and media companies, and hyperscalers operating in Africa.
OADC building three core data centres for SA
Open Access Data Centres, in December 2022, announced that it was busy building two new data centres in Cape Town and nearing completion on its second-phase expansion of its Durban Facility.
It said its two new data centres in Cape Town would be operational shortly. One was scheduled to come online in Rondebosch in December, and the second in Brackenfell in January 2023.
“Both facilities have been configured with an initial 1,000+ square metres of IT white space, can be scaled up to 800+ racks as demand grows and have site loads of up to 5MW and 3MW, respectively,” OADC said.
“Phase 2 of OADC Durban will also be operational by mid-December 2022, adding a further 110 racks at this strategically important facility where the international 2Africa submarine cable is scheduled to land in January 2023.”
Teraco finishes phase one of new hyperscale facility
In November 2022, Teraco — the country’s largest data centre provider — completed the first phase of a new hyperscale facility at its Bredell Campus in Ekurhuleni.
Dubbed JB4, the facility’s first phase includes 8,000m2 of data hall space across eight equally-sized sections and 19MW of critical power load.
It also includes 30,000m2 of building structure space which the company said will be doubled with phase 2.
Once completed, it will be serviced by 80MW of utility power supply and have a critical power load of 50W.
Teraco also said that JB4 was built in line with global hyperscale requirements and international compliance standards.
“JB4 offers highly resilient and secure colocation facilities in line with Teraco’s long-term vision of enabling digital transformation across Africa,” the company stated.
Also in November, the company broke ground on a new data centre facility at its Isando Campus in Ekurhuleni.
Dubbed JB5, the data centre will have 30MW of critical power load and is scheduled to be completed in 2024.
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