Teraco increases investment in Cape Town infrastructure as key tech hub

Teraco's Cape Town data centre continues to grow on the back of strong demand for vendor neutral data centre colocation services. The facility, situated in Rondebosch, first opened its doors in February 2009 and is now the most connected building in the city of Cape Town.

Corporate clients are only one cable away from a provider of choice, this from a selection of over 30 local and global carriers such as DFA, Telkom, Neotel, MTN, Vodacom, Cell C, British Telecoms, Level 3 Communications and Seacom, to name but a few.

As a result of demand, Teraco has started construction on a third dedicated colocation data centre within Great Westerford, with a targeted completion date of April 2014. The additional data centre results in an increased 1 000sqm of white space, growing the total footprint in Cape Town to over 1 600sqm. Power to the facility will also increase to 3-megaVolt Ampere (MVA).

Van Wyk says Teraco's data centres are the most connected facilities in Africa and currently house the largest peering points on the continent. "It is a true African telecommunications hub and a low risk entry point for African strategies, providing colocation clients access to all 55 African countries.

"Vendor neutral means that Teraco customers can connect to any network operator, service provider or any other Teraco client within the data centre, without restriction. We remain neutral and offer clients the freedom of choice to purchase or sell products and services to whomever they wish," says Van Wyk.

In many respects, the concept of cloud and that of data centre colocation are alike in terms of the long-term cost saving benefits to the organisation. Accessing business applications through the Internet reduces IT expenditure and resource costs in much the same manner as outsourcing your data centre requirements. The cost of designing and building a data centre is one saving, but the additional benefits of vendor neutrality in a data centre and having access to numerous connections out of the environment is in most cases not possible for the majority of in-house data centres.

Today's enterprises are increasingly turning to the cloud as a home for their IT infrastructures, applications and services. However, the cloud needs an environment in which to flourish, and that environment is inside colocation data centres, which enables enterprises and cloud providers to offload the risks of growing capital costs, facility management and obsolescence in order to focus on their core mission," says Van Wyk.

"Expansion of Cape Town's data centre essentially means we will continue to contribute to the improvement of Cape Town's business economy and support the city with its drive to improve connectedness, technology and enhance innovation as a key hub in the South African market."