DATA centres have for a long time offered large organisations the ability to free themselves from hardware constraints, running applications and storing data in a safe and managed space. They are efficient, flexible and future-proof in the sense that, for the typical customer, there is no investment in infrastructure.And now they have a new appeal for South African business. Because guaranteed “uptime” is one of the key selling features of data centres, they have been given fresh impetus by Eskom’s mismanagement of the power grid. Until recently, South Africa was substantially behind international trends of companies outsourcing their infrastructure to data centres. However, a rapid catch-up has begun, says Lex van Wyk, CEO of Teraco, South Africa’s largest independent data centre operator.“If you look at international trends, in the US, 30% of data centre space is outsourced, and in the UK, up to 40%. In South Africa, we’re only at about 10%. But because of power problems, which th...
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