Data dams are bursting as cloud masses in Kempton Park

DATA flows in rivers across South Africa, collecting in dams called data centres and dispersing in tributaries until it reaches the businesses and consumers whose thirst seems to be unquenchable.

The metaphor is not lost on Lex van Wyk, CEO of Teraco, one of South Africa’s largest data-centre businesses. Standing at a window in a building in Kempton Park, Gauteng, housing 4 000m² of lettable data-centre space, he looks out over a busy construction site.

“That’s our new data centre,” he says proudly. “It has 12 000m² of floor space and, of that, 5 000 is rentable white space” — the environmentally controlled area for computer servers.

The new building can’t go up fast enough, he says.

“We’re sitting on around 90% utilisation. We’re under pressure to open this new facility by December, otherwise we’ll run out of space. There’s already a sales pipeline: of the 5 000m², we’ll sell about 2 000 in the next year. That means we can’t wait too long to build even more.

“We’re busy discussing another site with the Ekurhuleni municipality, to build another 10 000m², because we don’t see this one lasting long. For now, we are acquiring the land and making sure there’s enough power supply. We’ll break ground in the next two years.”

There are several reasons for the massive demand for data storage and space. Large enterprises and consumers alike are moving into the cloud as they shift their trust from local device storage to online backup and storage.

And some of the world’s largest content movers and facilitators are locating or moving their content to South Africa. The Teraco data centre hosts NAPAfrica, an independent peering point — a co-operative data junction — through which most service and content providers link up to ensure their customers get the most efficient connection.

“More than 100 carriers and several of the top content providers globally — including Google, Akamai, CloudFlare, and Netflix — all peer on NAPAfrica,” says Van Wyk. “Anybody who owns fibre in South Africa is here, including Dark Fibre Africa, the largest fibre wholesaler in South Africa.

“There are 5 000 interconnects inside the data centre. Imagine how much data flows through there. It’s also become very power intensive: in the past a client might have put in two or three cabinets of servers; now they are moving in 20 to 30.”

And then there are the international carriers and network providers, which have started seeing Africa as a growth opportunity, in order to serve their global clients.

“They service their clients here, see the opportunity and expand their own presence. Managed service providers are starting to provide a hybrid cloud model, where they bring their clients’ applications off site, not quite in the cloud, but still on dedicated equipment here.

“And now the big providers of all kinds of cloud services are starting to look around Africa for places to house their equipment. That’s where we see the future growth: the full transition into the cloud.”

The demand is growing nationally. In the past year, Teraco has had to treble the capacity of its 500m² data centre in Cape Town, and it also offers 1 000m² in Durban.

It is clear that, as enterprises are increasingly transformed into digital businesses, cloud usage will grow exponentially. The rivers are about to turn into a sea.

Goldstuck is founder of World Wide Worx and editor-in-chief of Gadget.co.za. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram @art2gee