Launched two years ago, the Africa Cloud eXchange from Teraco Data Centre Environments  www.teraco.co.za now provides access to 54 African countries via local and global carriers. ACX aims to provide a secure data centre environment for cloud providers to colocate and onward distribute their service offerings to the rest of Africa. Through Africa’s largest internet exchange, NAPAfrica, global partners have access to key content from local and international content providers. With the deployment of a single cable within the data centre they can now distribute throughout Africa at low latency and high availability. Cloud services providers can also effectively share and sell cloud services to an extensive client base from a single distribution point within the data centre facility.

“The tremendous growth that Teraco Data Centre Environments has experienced in the last year, makes it a true telecommunications hub and a low risk entry point into Africa,” says Lex van Wyk, CEO of Teraco Data Centre Environments. According to industry analyst reports, the ICT landscape in Africa is growing and there are a myriad of business opportunities for IT services. Key drivers for this growth includes major infrastructure projects, growth in financial services and an increase in governments’ spend on for example transport, infrastructure and citizen centric services. South Africa has also recently been ranked as a leading emerging economy on the African continent with the 15th largest telco market globally and the 2nd fastest growing cloud market in EMEA. “By nature, cloud providers are continuously exploring new markets for IT services and view an increase of their overall performance as a competitive advantage.  For these companies it makes business sense to colocate at Teraco. We have a growing footprint, high network density and an excellent track record,” says Van Wyk.

The philosophy of ACX is to enable colocation clients to share and interconnect with other cloud providers and grow their product suite. It also offers the lowest interconnect fees, enabling clients to minimise infrastructure spend and offer competitive solutions. Partnerships are another possibility given a wide choice of IT and network service providers and the vendor neutral business model also provides for a true focus on security, power and facility uptime.

“The continuous growth in our client base, not only in numbers but also in quality is proof that organisations are starting to believe in the value of doing business in a vendor neutral space. They can focus on their core business and do not have to build data centre infrastructure to cater for the growing demands of their customers.”

“This year promises to remain challenging for the ICT landscape and I believe there will not only be an improvement in the quality of connectivity but more and improved technologies will be added to the telecommunication mix.” He says that cloud customers and content providers will expect more from the changing landscape, especially in terms of service, technology and choice. “Teraco encourages any organisation with an aim to build a business in Africa to colocate in the Africa Cloud eXchange. It will assist them in doing business effectively in Africa and it will be aligned with world-class service,” concludes van Wyk.