Liquid subsidiary unveils data centres

Leading pan-African telecommunication group Liquid Telecom subsidiary, Africa Data Centres, has launched newly-expanded data centres facilities in Johannesburg and Cape Town, South Africa.

The state-of-the-art, carrier-neutral SADC Johannesburg and SADC Cape Town will provide leading cloud service providers, carriers and enterprises with additional rack space and colocation services to meet the rising demand for cloud-based services in southern Africa.

Africa Data Centres has more than doubled the size of its existing South Africa-based facilities, which are built to Tier III standards and were acquired as part of Liquid Telecom’s R6,55 billion deal for Neotel in February 2017.

Following completion of the first phase of expansion, SADC Johannesburg now offers over 3 000 square metres of secured space for data servers served through a total power capacity of 7MW, while SADC Cape Town provides 1 800 square metres of secured rack space with 5,5MW of power.

Further stages of expansion are planned for SADC Johannesburg and SADC Cape Town as Africa Data Centres aims to increase space at the facilities by five-fold over the next five years.

“As moving to cloud-based solutions becomes more commonplace, businesses across Africa require more carrier-neutral, open-access data centre space for their business-critical data and applications,” said Nic Rudnick, Group CEO, Liquid Telecom.

“Through continuous investment in Africa Data Centres, we are providing the foundations for leading enterprises and cloud providers to come and build their digital future in Africa.”

SADC Johannesburg and SADC Cape Town are already home to nearly 100 customers, including global, regional and local telecoms operators, ISPs, cloud service providers and large enterprises.

“This is a proud moment for Liquid Telecom that will help us better meet the needs of our carrier, enterprise and retail customers in Southern Africa, and continue on our journey to build Africa’s digital future,” said Wellington Makamure, Liquid Telecom Zimbabwe managing director and group executive Southern Africa.

Connected by the fibre routes of many major carriers, the facilities also host internet exchanges independently operated by INX-ZA.

Through a partnership with INX-ZA, the Johannesburg Internet Exchange (JINX) has been expanded to SADC Johannesburg, while the Cape Town Internet Exchange (CINX) has been extended to SADC Cape Town, enabling connected members in any site to peer quickly and cost-effectively with members in other data centres.

SADC Johannesburg and SADC Cape Town, along with partner locations East Africa Data Centre (EADC), Nairobi, and Central Africa Data Centre (CADC) are Africa’s largest and most diverse set of carrier grade, highly interconnected purpose-built data centre facilities.

They are interconnected by multiple networks including Liquid Telecom’s award-winning fibre network, which provides regional and international reach for customers.

This allows businesses hosting data and cloud in Africa to have control and flexibility of where to host and back-up their data with geographic diversity. DailyNews