Expansion of Africa’s biggest data centre which began in early 2015 in South Africa is going on well with completion slated for late 2017, CEO Lex van Wyk has said.
The company raised R400m from Barclays Africa in early 2015 with additional funding from a newer investor, Permira, in order for it to increase its capacity at its existing 4,000sqm Johannesburg data centre.
The company also completed the construction of its second data centre in Isando, Johannesburg earlier this year.
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The Johannesburg data centre expansion is set to increase the facility in Isando, Gauteng to 9000sqm of white space and 18 500sqm of utility space.
In addition, to cater for the expansion, Teraco was granted permission by the governing institutions that be to store 210 000 litres of diesel on site which will run the data centre for a minimum period of 40 hours at maximum load in the event of power failure.
“Hyperscale computing has grown enormously, as has demand for colocation facilities,” said van Wyk.
“These trends combined are shaping the way forward for Africa and we anticipate significant uptake as more service providers pinpoint Africa as a growth market.”
“In this expansion of our footprint, we are achieving what few companies could; building Africa’s largest datacenter in accordance with modern international standards,” he adds.
One of Teraco’s largest customers is the Johannesburg Stock Exchange which is already connected to the center by a high bandwidth, high speed broadband link provided by Dark Fibre Africa.