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Teraco Data Environments has announced that it has started construction of the largest data center in Africa in terms of energy use in Ekurhuleni, Gauteng.
The R4 billion data center, which is scheduled for completion in the first quarter of 2022, comes after the recent completion of its Isando Campus. It has existing centers in Bredell, Rondebosch, Brackenfell and Durban.
Teraco’s data center is home to a host of cloud-based computing services whose demand has increased since Covid-19 forced people to work remotely earlier this year.
Teraco CEO Jan Hnizdo says the demand for remote services can be seen in the recent performance traffic advance.
It took NAPAfrica, one of the exchange services it hosts, about eight years in March this year to generate traffic of one terabit bits per second. “Now, seven months later, we’ve literally hit another terabit and a half bits per second.”
“It was an incredible moment.”
He says that from what he has seen, it appears that the Covid crisis has accelerated the digital transformation of many companies.
Growing African demand
The addition of the new data center is not only intended to meet the growing demand for broadband services in South Africa, but also to meet the growing demand on the continent.
He says African countries individually may not be a big market, but when you look at them together, the market is quite sizeable.
The way you explain it, there is a kind of dividing line in internet latency stretching from Lagos, Nigeria to Kenya, below which, there is a mild but still irritating wait to connect with cloud providers. in Europe.
“It is fast, but not fast enough for real-time applications.”
By providing data facilities south of this line, Hnizdo sees more cloud providers installed in its data centers as eventual end users don’t want to put up with a spinning ball or spinning hourglass while they wait to connect.
Hnizdo says that given the infrastructure available, South Africa is the most obvious place to establish such centers. Reliable power may be a problem now, but it is nothing like inconsistent power in other African countries.
Artistic interpretation of the new Teraco Ekurhuleni data center. Image: supplied
South Africa is key
“South Africa is strategically located at the tip of the African continent and, as a result, is positioned as a technology and data center for sub-Saharan Africa. This is further underpinned by the growing terrestrial and submarine fiber connectivity with the rest of Africa. ”
In this regard, the South African government, across the board, has been a great help in setting up its latest data center. He says that the Ekurhuleni municipality in particular, from which he will buy power, has been very supportive.
The scale of this data center can be seen in this building that uses as much energy as the three on its Isando Campus, some 15 km away.
“This new site alone will use 38 megawatts. It will be the largest independent data center in Africa by far. ”
This latest investment is backed by its private equity owners Berkshire Partners LLC and Permira, as well as funds from Absa.
Hnizdo says that since it is an infrastructure project, the payback for investors will be more than 10 years.
