Teraco Spearheads 38MW Hyperscale Data Center in South Africa
Teraco Data Environments has reported that construction has commenced on a new hyperscale data center with 38 megawatts (MW) of critical power load in Ekurhuleni, east of Johannesburg, South Africa. The facility, known as JB4, is scheduled for completion in Q1 2022 and as a stand-alone building, will be the largest data center in Africa.
CEO of Teraco, Jan Hnizdo, said that the company is poised for significant growth as hyperscale requirements continue to expand as a result of increased demand for cloud services in Africa. “South Africa is strategically located at the tip of the African continent and as a result, is positioned as a technology and data center hub for sub-Saharan Africa. This is further underpinned by growing undersea and terrestrial fiber connectivity to the rest of Africa. The continued increase of cloud adoption in Africa is also being enabled by investments in critical infrastructure, including hyperscale data center facilities such as JB4. This will enable global cloud clients to service not only the South African market but reach the rest of the sub-Saharan African region as well.”
Hnizdo reaffirms that Teraco is committed to growing its capacity footprint across its core hubs, thereby ensuring that clients have the certainty and flexibility of expansion to take part in the digital transformation that is taking place across sub-Saharan Africa: “Teraco continues to invest significantly into the region’s ICT infrastructure and has built what is now Africa’s largest data centre platform. We take pride in our vendor-neutral offering, enabling open access to interconnection and world-class resilient data centre infrastructure for all our clients”.
The JB4 facility is Teraco’s seventh data centre development and is located in the heart of the Ekurhuleni Aerotropolis. It is here that Teraco’s data centers already provide access to a wide choice of network service providers, peering at NAPAfrica, regional IXP’s, content delivery networks and cloud provider on-ramps. Hnizdo says that this expansion is aimed at further supporting sub-Saharan enterprises with advancing their digital transformation strategies, as well as enabling global cloud providers to expand their footprints —spurring innovation.
