Carrier-neutral telecommunications specialist Telehouse Europe is setting up shop in SA in partnership with data centre operator Teraco.
“We are opening a full Telehouse facility in Teraco’s data centres in Cape Town and Johannesburg,” says Andrew Fray, business development director at Telehouse Europe, in an exclusive interview with TechCentral. “It will carry our brand and be operated to our global standards.”
Telehouse Europe, established in 1988 and now owned by KDDI of Japan, offers data centre facilities and connectivity and was Europe’s first “purpose-built co-location provider”.
“We are setting up a presence in SA to meet the needs of global multinationals that are showing a strong interest in this market,” Fray says.
Teraco’s Cape Town data centre is in Newlands and was opened in February 2009, says the company’s MD, Lex van Wyk (pictured).
Its Johannesburg facility, which will be opened early next year, will be located in Isando, not far from OR Tambo International airport.
The Cape Town facility has 500sq m of space; Johannesburg will have a similar amount, but can grow to up to 3 500sq m, Van Wyk says.
Fray says Telehouse Europe perceives SA as a market that is “open for business because of all the deregulation that is taking place. The SA telecoms market is just like the UK market was back in 1994.”
Fray says that in London, Telehouse’s Docklands facility became the home of the London Internet Exchange. “Internet and application service providers came in and that is also our expectation in SA, that Teraco will become the same thing, allowing carriers and service providers to cross-connect with one another.”
At the Docklands facility, Telehouse hosts 350 carriers and Internet service and application providers. “On any one day we’re carrying 65% of all the UK’s Internet traffic,” Fray says.
Telehouse says its SA investment is the first significant investment on the African continent by a Japanese-owned telecommunications carrier.
Under the agreement, dedicated data centre space within Teraco Cape Town and Johannesburg will be opened under the Telehouse brand and will be known as Telehouse Johannesburg and Telehouse Cape Town, respectively.
Telehouse says the facilities will be operated, supported and maintained by Teraco to Telehouse’s global operating standards, which include detailed attention to power, cooling, security and customer-focused operations.
To date, Teraco, which was founded by CEO Tim Parsonson and MD Van Wyk, has invested about R100m in operator-neutral data-centre facilities. — Duncan McLeod, TechCentral
