Africa Data Centres opens 2 new facilities in South Africa due to increasing demand for cloud-based services

Africa Data Centres, part of Liquid Telecom, has opened newly-expanded data centre facilities in Johannesburg and Cape Town, South Africa.

The carrier-neutral SADC Johannesburg and SADC Cape Town will provide cloud service providers, carriers and enterprises with additional rack space and colocation services to meet the rising demand for cloud-based services in Southern Africa.

Africa Data Centres has more than doubled the size of its existing South Africa-based facilities, which are built to Tier III standards and were acquired as part of Liquid Telecom’s ZAR 6.55 billion deal for Neotel in February 2017.

Following completion of the first phase of expansion, SADC Johannesburg now offers over 3000 square metres of secured space for data servers served through a total power capacity of 7MW, while SADC Cape Town provides 1800 square metres of secured rack space with 5.5MW of power.

Further stages of expansion are planned for SADC Johannesburg and SADC Cape Town as Africa Data Centres aims to increase space at the facilities by five-fold over the next five years.

The newly expanded SADC facilities were opened by the South African Minister for Telecommunications and Postal Services, Dr Siyabonga Cyprian Cwele, at a launch event at SADC Johannesburg.

“As moving to cloud-based solutions becomes more commonplace, businesses across Africa require more carrier-neutral, open-access data centre space for their business-critical data and applications,” said Nic Rudnick, Group CEO, Liquid Telecom. “Through continuous investment in Africa Data Centres, we are providing the foundations for leading enterprises and cloud providers to come and build their digital future in Africa.”

SADC Johannesburg and SADC Cape Town are already home to nearly 100 customers, including global, regional and local telecoms operators, ISPs, cloud service providers and large enterprises.

Connected by the fibre routes of many major carriers, the facilities also host internet exchanges independently operated by INX-ZA. Through a partnership with INX-ZA, the Johannesburg Internet Exchange (JINX) has been expanded to SADC Johannesburg, while the Cape Town Internet Exchange (CINX) has been extended to SADC Cape Town, enabling connected members in any site to peer quickly and cost effectively with members in other data centres.

SADC Johannesburg and SADC Cape Town, along with partner locations East Africa Data Centre (EADC), Nairobi, and Central Africa Data Centre (CADC) are Africa’s largest and most diverse set of carrier grade, highly interconnected purpose-built data centre facilities.

They are interconnected by multiple networks including Liquid Telecom’s award-winning fibre network, which provides regional and international reach for customers. This allows businesses hosting data and cloud in Africa to have control and flexibility of where to host and back-up their data with geographic diversity.

Africa Data Centres is currently expanding its East Africa Data Centre (EADC) in Nairobi, Kenya, which houses 2,000 square metres of secured space for data servers over four floors. EADC is currently the only data centre in East Africa to hold a Tier III certification from the prestigious Uptime Institute.

SADC Johannesburg and SADC Cape Town are ISO 27001 certified, complying with high international information security management standards. The data centre facilities are also both PCI DSS compliant; the global information security standard set by the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council to help control and minimise points of risk to fraud or compromise of sensitive information.

Customers at Africa Data Centres can also access Liquid Telecom’s CloudConnect for Microsoft ExpressRoute service, which enables businesses to create private connections between Azure data centres and infrastructure on-premises or in a colocation environment. In the first half of 2018, Liquid Telecom will be able to offer direct private connections to the South African Azure data centres – marking the first time that businesses in Africa will be able to access Azure on their own continent.

Africa Data Centres offer the perfect hosting location for African and international companies which need to protect their business-critical applications and data in Africa.

Designed, built and operated to the standards demanded by today’s cloud providers, carriers and enterprises, Africa Data Centres provide businesses with peace-of-mind, regardless the scale of requirement.