Vodacom Business has unveiled its new R100 million data centre that hosts up to 20 000 client servers and 650 000 virtual machines.
The Vodacom Business data centre is located in Johannesburg and offers Web hosting, server co-location, managed storage and backup systems.
According to Wally Beelders, executive director for Vodacom Business, the 1 000m2 facility will assist in business continuity as it will ensure businesses can run their operations without having to worry if their IT system crashes.
“Vodacom has spent approximately a year-and-a-half developing a full telecommunications strategy in line with what Vodafone is doing elsewhere in the world. The main reasoning behind Vodacom's decision to establish the data centre is to enable customers to rethink their network architecture,” says Beelders.
“Traditionally, businesses either host or keep their business intelligence de-centrally or on-site, because of the exorbitant cost of bandwidth. But if bandwidth becomes cheaper, more businesses will move their servers and business intelligence on premise into a centralised environment.”
Cheaper option
Beelders says it is costly for corporates to set up and maintain their own data centre infrastructure, and implement backup generators, uninterruptible power supplies, air cooling and building management systems.
He notes the new data centre can be used as a primary facility, or a disaster recovery site, and will operate on an around-the-clock basis. The data centre is equipped with biometric security systems, video surveillance, air-conditioning, fire-suppression systems and on-site security officers.
The facility is classified as a tier four data centre, meaning it's designed to host mission-critical computer systems. The management system uses Netbotz and Scada BMS technologies. Bandwidth features 10Gb copper, 10Gb multimode optic fibre and 10Gb single mode fibre.
New kid on the block
“We are a new entrant in the Internet and network solutions market compared to competitors such as Telkom and Vox Telecom. But we believe the data centre will differentiate us from our competitors,” says Beelders.
“We are currently developing a similar facility in Cape Town, which we expect to be up and running by September next year. It will also be 1 000m2 and we believe that, within the next nine to 18 months, bandwidth will be significantly re-shaped. We expect the cost of bandwidth will come down by a factor of 10 and businesses will be redesigning their networks and using virtualisation.”
Beelders notes the telecommunications market is a rapidly growing segment and the outsourcing market accounts for more than 40% of SA's total ICT sector. Vodacom is driving a strategy to increase its total data centre footprint to 5 000m2.
“We are doing acquisitions in Africa and establishing data centres in key points on the continent. At this stage, we are planning to deploy another data centre in Durban, as it will be close to the point of the upcoming undersea cables along the East Coast. We want to deploy facilities in Nigeria and Tanzania. We are going to be playing a leading role in the IP environment on the continent.”
Beelders points out that banks are planning to build their own financial data centres and Vodacom is in sensitive negotiations with some of the players to collaborate to share facilities.
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