Vendor-neutral data centre and interconnection services provider Teraco Data Environments has completed the multibillion-rand first phase of Cape Town 2 (CT2), its new hyperscale data centre in Brackenfell, Cape Town – the largest data centre in the Western Cape.
The firm started the construction of CT2, a 30MW data centre facility, in May last year, with a targeted completion date of Q3 2021, the company said at the time.
In a statement today, it says the new facility supports the growing demand from enterprises and cloud providers for data centre capacity.
It notes that CT2 offers highly-resilient and secure colocation facilities in line with Teraco’s long-term vision of enabling digital transformation across Africa.
The completion of CT2 phase one follows the August announcement that Teraco had completed construction of its JB3 data centre facility, located within the Isando Campus in Ekurhuleni, east of Johannesburg.
The opening of the JB3 data centre facility came after Teraco, in November last year, announced it had started construction of a new hyperscale data centre (JB4), with 38MW of critical power load, also located in Ekurhuleni.
JB4 is the latest expansion to Teraco’s growing data centre platform and takes critical power load capacity at Teraco facilities to over 110MW, which includes the Isando Campus JB1/JB3 (39MW), Bredell JB2 (13MW), Rondebosch Cape Town CT1 (3MW), Brackenfell Cape Town CT2 (18MW) and Durban (1MW).
Teraco invested R4 billion over the two phases of construction of JB4, which is expected to be up and running in the first quarter of 2022.
Destination of choice
Cape Town, as one of Africa’s most digitally connected cities, is a logical destination for Teraco’s continued investment into data centre infrastructure on the continent, the company says.
“Home to thriving digitally-connected enterprises − including telecommunications, financial services, e-commerce, logistics, and retail − Cape Town benefits from its enviable location at the southern tip of Africa, and the landing of many major subsea cable systems such as ACE, WACS, SAT-3 and SAFE. The abundance of subsea cable connectivity is set to continue with Google’s Equiano and the 2AFRICA cable system developments,” the data centre company says.
It adds that CT2 represents a strategic addition to Platform Teraco, offering enterprises a scalable platform for IT infrastructure deployment, while sustaining performance, reliability, security and the most comprehensive network choice.
The first phase of CT2 comprises 25 000sqm of building structure, 8 000sqm of data hall space, and 18MW of critical power load.
Teraco has secured adjacent land and power for future expansion and brings the total critical power load to 36MW at end state.
As part of Teraco’s broader Cape Town campus, both the CT1 and CT2 data centres provide enterprises with direct access to Platform Teraco – an ecosystem of over 250 network providers, global cloud on-ramps, subsea cable systems, access to over 50 managed service providers, and direct peering at NAPAfrica, Africa’s largest internet exchange point.
Clients deployed in either of these facilities can connect to AWS Direct Connect and Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute directly, or via Teraco’s Africa Cloud Exchange, the company notes.
This multibillion-rand data centre facility dramatically extends Platform Teraco’s capacity in the Western Cape, according to Jan Hnizdo, CEO of Teraco.
“Forming a vital part of the African IT landscape, Platform Teraco is an essential part of the modern enterprise’s digital transformation strategy, with its diverse industry ecosystems and open interconnection marketplace,” he says.
According to the firm, CT2 is connected to all the other Teraco data centres through the diverse ecosystem of network operators in the facility, making it ideal for the distributed interconnection defined architecture of the modern enterprise.
Hnizdo says the majority of enterprise organisations are accelerating their digital transformation strategies and placing a greater focus on cloud adoption strategies.
“Enterprises are looking for the ability to scale as network strategies evolve, and in a world where fast and secure interconnection with strategic business partners is a priority, this is a source of competitive advantage.”
Since its inception in 2008, Teraco says it has focused on building highly-resilient vendor-neutral data centres.
“Over the last few years, we have taken our ever-expanding ecosystems and network-dense interconnection hubs, and moved beyond simple colocation. Teraco is the enterprise infrastructure platform for growth and innovation,” says Hnizdo.
Data centres galore
SA is witnessing growth in the data centre space, as international companies like Microsoft and Amazon Web Services have also set up their own facilities in the country.
Systems integrator Dimension Data is also building its own data centre that it expects to be fully operational next year. It already operates 11 data centres with up to 10MW of IT load across Africa.
US-based enterprise software company Oracle in September 2019 also announced plans to launch data centres in SA. However, no update has been given on when this will happen, although the company had plans to open the facility last year.
Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei also recently started offering its cloud services in SA. The company is leasing a data centre in Johannesburg from a partner, from where it is deploying localised public cloud services based on local industry policies, customer requirements and partner conditions.
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