Africa has its first premier-grade data centre environment that provides access to a vendor neutral co-location space for sharing and selling cloud services
Launched in South Africa, Teraco Data Environments’ Africa Cloud eXchange (ACX) has the capacity to provide a secure data centre environment from which cloud providers across the continent can co-locate their service offerings.
“With the rapid growth in IT requirements, Africa needs a solution to keep up with the demand,” said Teraco Data Environments managing director Lex van Wyk.
“With the recent growth in fibre capacity along the East and West coasts, Teraco has identified the opportunity to offer the ideal data centre environment to all service providers wanting to provide IT solutions into African markets.”
According to the Teraco, its newly-established cloud space offers a number benefits including free peering, cost effective interconnects, access to all major carriers, resilient power, remote support and high levels of security.
“Our facilities in South Africa already boast connectivity to all the undersea cables offering a combined 28 landing points along the East and West coasts of the continent, as well as all major carriers operating in SA and several active cloud providers,” said van Wyk.
“This in effect means the Africa Cloud EXchange is already in operation.”
Telkom Wholesale Services managing executive Casper Kondo Chihaka said, “With Telkom‘s ability to offer international connectivity via Eassy, WACS/SAT3/SAFE and terrestrial connectivity into South Africa, Telkom can back haul numerous African countries to Teraco’s environments.
“Telkom has deployed infrastructure into JHB, CT and DBN Teraco sites and has been offering services to Telkom clients from these environments since 2009,” he added.
Van Wyk remarked that the Africa Cloud eXchange would allow South African and African cloud providers to host their platform and offer services from a vendor neutral, well-connected and highly-secure data centre environment, which he said would open up South Africa to the rest of the continent.
