NTT Data, which was rebranded from Dimension Data in April, is identifying opportunities in South Africa and across the globe to expand its data centre network, as more organisations demand cloud-driven services.
As data demand and cloud adoption continue to cause a surge in traffic, data centres are becoming increasingly important, and the company says it is planning to increase its market share in the sector.
The Japanese multinational IT services and consulting company helps clients navigate their digital transformation, offering consulting, industry solutions, IT modernisation and managed services.
Its network of data centres in Europe, Middle East and Africa spans SA, UK, Switzerland and France, among others – where it offers co-location, managed hosting and workflow automation services.
In October 2022, the company opened its Johannesburg 1 Data Centre as part of its expansion on the African continent – which would provide a capacity of 12MW covering 6 000m² of IT space once fully built out.
During an interview with ITWeb, Alan Turnley-Jones, CEO of NTT Data Middle East and Africa, noted the Johannesburg 1 Data Centre forms part of the company’s global data centres division, which operates data centres in more than 20 countries and regions across the globe.
He detailed the company’s plans to help more African organisations to unlock their potential through NTT’s digital ecosystem, which aims to meet the continent’s increasing demand for security, cloud and business continuity management, through data centre services.
African ambitions
“The acceleration we see in Africa is mostly around IT services, both in the infrastructure and application areas, using products and capabilities from our partners, such as SAP and Microsoft. We are looking at growing the pace around those areas,” said Turnley-Jones.
“We are the third-largest data centre provider globally. Within Africa, we have our first data centre, which is Johannesburg 1, and we continue to look at business cases to build out more data centres here [Africa] and globally – it's a continued focus of ours.
“There are plans around expansion, but I can't go into specific details around geographic locations. On an annual basis, we invest a specific amount towards new facilities. So, there is a global plan around where we will be building more data centres. We are looking at business cases in Johannesburg and Cape Town.”
NTT Data has ambitions to be a strong data centre player in SA and the rest of the continent, as it positions to meet the increased demand for data centre capability, he added.
Japanese telecommunications company NTT acquired Dimension Data in 2010, and has since been integrating its global intellectual property to build services and solutions targeting the local market.
During the transition, the company retained Dimension Data’s technology − as well as South African tech talent – and is on a continuous journey to increase its staff complement, he pointed out.
Tech talent
Over the last year, NTT Data South Africa has almost doubled its team of IT consultants, and continues to expand its local teams, Turnley-Jones added.
While he did not disclose the number of hires the company has made, he said the approach is in line with the company’s strategy, as it has over the past few months rolled out new solutions from the global NTT office.
These include consultants for its cloud-based contact centres, teams to focus on its collaboration with Amazon Web Services, which includes Amazon Connect services, as well as teams focusing on its new generative artificial intelligence (AI) strategy, which the company announced in August.
Amazon Connect is a cloud-based contact centre-as-a-service platform that is AI-enabled and configurable across physical and virtual contact centres.
“If you look at our staff complement in South Africa, our conversation is around our IT services staff where we are building our capabilities. We have seen growth in our local teams that support other parts of the world, predominantly in IT services that support North America. We have operations here at The Campus Business Park in Bryanston, Johannesburg, and in Port Elizabeth.
“Over the past year, we have almost doubled the size of those delivery teams and we continue to invest in them.”
NTT is also accelerating its investment in its youth talent programme, which seeks to provide talent to work on its partnership withdata mobilisation firm Snowflake, focusing on areas such as Amazon Connect, as well as new areas the company is venturing into.
To create a continuous pipeline of skills, the company has established collaborations with local universities and higher learning institutions, states Turnley-Jones.
“We are finding talent which we can nurture and develop to bring into the organisation, and then make that become our Centre of Excellence. For example, our Amazon Connect team is probably around 30 people at the moment and that's a team that didn't exist 18 months ago. We bring them on-board straight from varsity or other higher learning institutions.
“We looked at the market and we spotted an opportunity with Amazon Connect and we also appointed a leader to drive that service. We believe the best way to develop talent fast is to go after young talent and look at people who are entering the market and developing that talent,” he concluded.
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