OADC was formed last year with plans for a carrier-neutral, pan-Africa network of core-to-edge facilities. It intends to develop a portfolio of more than 20 tier III certified facilities and when news of OADC broke construction and fit-out work was already underway in Lagos and Durban. Another facility in Mogadishu was also under development.
The facility confirmed today plays into the edge end of the spectrum and is number 17 in a plan for more than 100, 0.5 MW edge data centres in "major cities, initially across South Africa".
OADC said it is "the largest deployment of open-access data centres on the continent".
CTO Bob Wright said: “In recent years, Africa has seen massive investment in hyperscale data centres focused on the continent’s largest metropolitan areas. However, a presence in a single data centre is no longer sufficient to address a country or region. 5G operators, ISPs and fibre operators are seeking cost-efficient ways to extend network reach into new markets, requiring network equipment to be securely housed in remote locations."
On the rest of the portfolio, OADC said new 2-3MW, Tier-III regional OADC facilities will come online in Q3 and more than 100 OADC Edge data centres are expected to be live by year-end.
Write added: “At the same time, the growing desire to make content available and process ever-greater volumes of data closer to the customer is increasingly demanding implementation of a core-to-edge architecture, with meshed local and regional data centres fully connected into Africa’s network infrastructure across multiple countries and cities. OADC is building Africa’s edge data centre infrastructure to support clients seeking cost-effective network extension, and those who are changing their infrastructure deployment strategies to fulfil demand for content closer to the network edge - for improved availability and premium performance - or to optimise networking and storage costs by pre-processing data locally.”
