Teraco opens Durban data centre as co-location demand continues to rise in SA

Teraco Data Environments today opened the doors of its third vendor neutral co-location facility in Riverhorse Valley.

Dark Fibre Africa, MWeb, Telkom, Neotel, BitCo, Continuity Solutions, Frogfoot, Vox Telecom, Seacom, WBS and Broadband Infraco are current tenants, with several other businesses in negotiation stage.

This facility forms a core part of Teraco's national expansion plans, creating another strategic regional presence for the company to complement its facilities in Isando, Johannesburg (JB1), and in Rondebosch, Cape Town (CT1). Collectively, Teraco's portfolio of three data centres now delivers more than 3 000 square metres (sqm) of floor space across South Africa.

“KwaZulu-Natal has a robust economy with an established industrial base, a strong commercial sector and excellent services, especially in the telecoms space. We are seeing rapid growth in office park developments catering to high-tech companies, and expansions to the ports and airports will be catalysts for a local economic boom,” says Lex van Wyk, managing director of Teraco. “The communications infrastructure growth here with Durban's progressive fibre broadband strategy, and the landing of the Seacom and EASSy cables, makes the city an important new operational hub for Teraco.”

The opening of the 600sqm facility is Phase 1. Future growth potential exceeds 1 000sqm.

Critical power of 1MVA is provided via resilient municipal power feeds into the data centre. The data centre is built according to international best practice. With efficient cooling allowing for 5kVA per cabinet and more, the data centre is designed to a 99.999% uptime resiliency.

Van Wyk explains that DB1 offers local businesses easy access to their 'own' data centre, and lower latency through its regional presence for Internet connectivity.

“In theory, it's possible to have a data centre in any location. In practice, companies want to stay close to their data - both for the occasional need to physically access their servers, as well as to minimise latency to ensure online applications are responsive. Teraco's total neutrality gives companies access to world-class infrastructure for their data centre requirements, as the trend towards outsourcing grows, especially with cloud computing. DB1's location on the fibre rings of major licensed local carriers and our unrestricted choice of providers will reduce interconnection costs for Durban companies,” says Van Wyk.

According to Van Wyk, data centre construction today has become more complex, as accurately forecasting future growth requirements and managing practical restrictions such as access to power, security and land use regulations can be moving targets.

Van Wyk says: “Co-location offers companies best practice facilities with reduced complexity and predictable costs. DB1's high quality, high availability IT infrastructure will support Internet infrastructure expansion in Durban, raising business competitiveness in the region.”