Data centres traditionally lie on the outskirts of cities, where wide-open spaces and cheap land make these sprawling computer-storage facilities more viable. The irony is that the clients of these services have most of their operations located in the heart of the city. This was the impulse for Internet Solutions (IS), SA's oldest internet service provider, to relocate its main data centre from The Campus in suburban Bryanston to a building in bustling Rosebank, one of Johannesburg's main business districts. The building is directly next door to IS's old headquarters at 158 Jan Smuts Avenue, where a large sign once told passing traffic: "The internet starts here." Back then, it was almost true, as the pioneering company was one of the first to build a data centre. Nowadays, the local internet begins at more than 70 South African data centres operated by providers both large and small, offering data storage, computer processing and interconnection between numerous telecoms operators ...
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