Teraco expands Cape Town hyperscale data centre campus
Africa’s largest data centre and interconnection services provider, Teraco, has announced it has completed Phase 1 of the expansion of its new hyperscale data centre in Cape Town. Called CT2, the facility is located in Brackenfell and is the largest data centre in the Western Cape.
The company says CT2 will support the growing demand by enterprises and cloud providers for data centre capacity. It offers highly resilient and secure colocation facilities in line with Teraco’s long-term vision of enabling digital transformation across Africa, Teraco claims.
Teraco’s CT2 data centre
CT2 represents a strategic addition to Platform Teraco, offering enterprises a scalable platform for IT infrastructure deployment while sustaining performance, reliability, security, and the most comprehensive network choice. The first phase of CT2 comprises 25000sqm of building structure, 8000sqm of data hall space, and 18MW of critical power load. Teraco has secured adjacent land and power for future expansion and brings the total critical power load to 36MW at end state.
This multi-billion-rand data centre facility dramatically extends Platform Teraco’s capacity in the Western Cape, according to Jan Hnizdo, CEO, Teraco: “Forming a vital part of the African IT landscape, Platform Teraco is an essential part of the modern enterprise’s digital transformation strategy with its diverse industry ecosystems and open interconnection marketplace.” CT2 is connected to all the other Teraco data centres through the diverse ecosystem of network operators in the facility, making it ideal for the distributed interconnection defined architecture of the modern enterprise.
As part of Teraco’s broader Cape Town campus, both the CT1 and CT2 data centres provide enterprises with direct access to Platform Teraco; a rich ecosystem of over 250 network providers, global cloud on-ramps, subsea cable systems, access to over 50 managed service providers, and direct peering at NAPAfrica, Africa’s largest Internet exchange point. Clients deployed in either of these facilities can connect to AWS Direct Connect and Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute directly or via Teraco’s Africa Cloud Exchange.
Hnizdo says that the majority of enterprise organisations are accelerating their digital transformation strategies and placing a greater focus on cloud adoption strategies: “Enterprises are looking for the ability to scale as network strategies evolve, and in a world where fast and secure interconnection with strategic business partners is a priority, this is a source of competitive advantage.”
One of Africa’s most digitally connected cities
Cape Town, as one of Africa’s most digitally connected cities, is a logical destination for Teraco’s continued investment into data centre infrastructure on the continent. Home to thriving digitally connected enterprises including telecommunications, financial services, e-commerce, logistics, and retail; Cape Town benefits from its enviable location at the southern tip of Africa, and the landing of many major subsea cable systems such as ACE, WACS, SAT-3, and SAFE. The abundance of subsea cable connectivity is set to continue with Google’s Equiano and the 2AFRICA cable system developments.
Platform Teraco provides the lowest latency interconnection points to both cloud and content. With a direct private connection to all leading cloud providers, enterprises can deploy in the most latency efficient, secure and resilient manner possible. Enterprises use Teraco to scale their IT infrastructure, adopt hybrid and multi-cloud architectures and interconnect with strategic business partners within the Teraco ecosystem.
Since its inception in 2008, Teraco has focused on building highly resilient vendor-neutral data centres. “Over the last few years, we have taken our ever-expanding ecosystems and network-dense interconnection hubs and moved beyond simple colocation. Teraco is the enterprise infrastructure platform for growth and innovation,” concludes Hnizdo.