PODCAST | Economics of SA’s digital infrastructure according to Teraco

The economics of digital infrastructure, specifically data centres, is the focus in this edition of the Business Day Spotlight. 

Host Mudiwa Gavaza is joined by Jan Hnizdo, CEO of Teraco Data Environments. 

Hnizdo outlines the investment case for digital infrastructure, the company’s business model and investor interest in the space.

Teraco, Africa’s largest data centre provider, is building a R2bn power plant to secure stable, reliable backup energy for its systems that can ill afford Eskom’s continued load-shedding.

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The company is 55% owned by Digital Realty, a large global data centre company. It also has three long-term private equity investors including Primera and Berkshire Partners supporting its operations. 

Hnizdo highlights that in a modern economy driven by cloud computing technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), data centres have become critical infrastructure. 

“Our big focus is on security and access to sites and then it’s about space, power and cooling,” he says. “The power and the cooling are the two critical aspects. Our service-level agreement with our clients is actually 99.99% uptime. We just can’t go down because if we do we’re going to land up taking our cloud clients’ infrastructure down.”

The discussion includes: Teraco’s business model; the investment case for digital infrastructure; technologies driving data centre development; investor interest in the space; and Teraco’s investment in energy security. 

Business Day Spotlight is a MultimediaLIVE Production. 

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