South African telecommunication company Econet’s SBU Liquid Telecom (LT) has announced data center expansion at their Johannesburg and Cape Town centers. This expansion, which has an investment of USD 110 million, will provide more server space for Liquid Telecom’s international as well as national cloud-native clients, LT explained.
According to Liquid Telecom, the data centers located at Johannesburg and Cape Town have undergone a major overhaul with more than 32,300 sq.feet and 19,300 sq.feet of technical space dedicated to each of them respectively. They further added that this expansion was possible because of their part investor, Royal Bafokeng Holdings decision to scale the data centers after witnessing the demand for data centers in the country.
Liquid Telecom say that the decision to scale data centers was also majorly influenced by both investor and parent company’s aligned vision of developing South Africa’s cloud market. They further added that with this expansion, business will consider South Africa as a destination for hosting cloud services. Explaining this, Nic Rudnick, CEO of Liquid Telecom, commented:
For the first time, a lot of the cloud providers will be hosted here in Africa. Until now, if you wanted to access cloud services, you’ve been accessing a data centre in Ireland or Europe or the US. They’ve never been hosted here in Africa. This means huge improvements in quality and latency for all the cloud services we’re using and the ones we are yet to use.
Industry analysts think that Liquid Telecom’s ambition to develop the cloud industry in South Africa can be supported by their acquisition of Neotel, a telecom operator in South Africa for more than USD 540 million. It will be interesting to watch how this year unfolds for Liquid Telecom with respect to meeting their cloud market development goals.