Africa’s digital transformation is being accelerated by transformational, pan-African, carrier-neutral data centre operator Open Access Data Centres (OADC), whose flagship data centre in Lekki, Lagos is now operational. The company’s rapid data centre rollout continues, with three new core facilities in South Africa and expansion of the existing OADC Durban facility. Together with OADC’s unique core-to-edge deployment in South Africa, this is enabling telcos, ISPs, cloud operators, the wholesale community and major enterprises to benefit from greater choice, a truly client focussed service experience and an extended African cloud ecosystem.
West Africa’s largest data centre campus is operational
The first phase of OADC’s flagship facility, OADC Lagos, is now operational delivering customised colocation services to initial anchor tenants. Built on the largest (four hectares) single data centre (DC) campus in West Africa, OADC Lagos is a carrier neutral, Tier III, hyperscale DC designed with expansion capacity up to 20MW of site load across more than 7,200m2 of white space – sufficient for 3,200 racks. High-capacity international connectivity will be available directly from the facility as soon as the Equiano subsea cable goes live at the end of this year, and the data centre is fully interconnected to all cable landing stations and key data centres, enabling a wide range of organisations to extend their operations in Nigeria and into the broader West Africa region.
OADC CEO Dr Ayotunde Coker explains: “OADC Lagos is our flagship data centre, offering tailored hosting/colocation solutions and high-availability interconnection to existing internet exchange points in Lagos. It also hosts the landing of Google’s 144 Terabit per second Equiano cable, delivering an open-access gateway to hyperscale international connectivity, and as such playing a crucial role in meeting Nigeria’s future international connectivity needs.
“OADC Lagos is integral to our unique, core-to-edge, open-access DC ecosystem. Key clients from the cloud and telco community have committed their expansion to OADC Lagos, while we also continue to progress our plans for nationwide deployment of core and edge DCs during 2023.”
Three new core data centres for South Africa
OADC has also deployed a new core DC to serve the cloud ecosystem in Isando, Johannesburg. Configured with an initial 1,600 square metres of IT white space and up to 7MW of site load, OADC JNB1 has significant expansion capacity, enabling growth in line with client demand to 3,000 square metres and 15MW. Two new OADC DCs in Cape Town will be operational shortly, one coming online in Rondebosch in December, the second at Brackenfell in January 2023. Both facilities have been configured with an initial 1,000+ square metres of IT white space, can be scaled up to 800+ racks as demand grows and have site loads of up to 5MW and 3MW respectively.
To meet growing demand for world-class, carrier-neutral data centre services in Durban and across the wider KwaZulu Natal region, Phase 2 of OADC Durban will also be operational by mid-December 2022, adding a further 110 racks at this strategically important facility where the international 2Africa submarine cable is scheduled to land in January 2023.
Driving Africa‘s digitisation
Lagos is at the forefront of the growth in demand for capacity and data storage in Nigeria, which has the largest population in Africa, the largest economy and is the continent’s largest telecommunications market.
Because OADC is part of the WIOCC Group and a sister company of carriers’ carrier WIOCC, the resulting converged open digital infrastructure enables OADC clients to establish interconnectivity across Nigeria and to other key locations in Africa by taking advantage of WIOCC’s pan-African open hyperscale network infrastructure.
As well as OADC Lagos, OADC’s unique, core-to-edge, open-access DC ecosystem includes the expanded OADC Durban, two core DCs in Cape Town, one in Jo’burg and more than 30 50+ rack-capable OADC EDGE DCs across South Africa. These OADC EDGE DCs are the first phase of OADC’s African edge DC deployment, offering colocation (starting from ¼ racks), rooftop access and high-speed network interconnectivity between facilities on multiple routes and multiple 100Gbps. By mid-2023, there will also be 10+ OADC EDGE DCs in Nigeria.
Unique core-to-edge ecosystem
By consolidating edge computing, edge DCs and hyperscale connectivity within a single ecosystem and integrating this with core DC deployment, OADC is creating an environment that enables 5G operators, ISPs and fibre providers to take advantage of business growth opportunities by rapidly and cost-effectively extending network reach into new markets.
OADC EDGE
As well as enabling operators to expand network coverage, OADC EDGE also delivers latency improvements from enabling content to be served locally, optimising end-client experience and underpinning successful rollout of new, time-sensitive applications. OADC EDGE facilities are secure and power-assured, offering enterprise clients an excellent option for off-site data storage, processing and disaster recovery. The ability to pre-process large volumes of critical data at the edge, before forwarding to larger, regional facilities, also improves efficiency and minimises network costs by optimising backhaul network expenditure.
Staff writer
Tagged: Mobile and Telecoms, Southern Africa, West Africa