Fast-growing Internet hosting company RSAWeb has acquired a second data centre in Cape Town, doubling its capacity as demand for cloud computing services from business customers accelerates.

RSAWeb MD Rob Gilmour says it has acquired a 200sq m data centre from a large financial services provider. Though he won’t say how much the deal is worth, he says the company will spend millions of rand retrofitting the facility with new servers and uninterruptible power supplies.

The new facility, in Gardens, will supplement RSAWeb’s existing data centre facility in Bree Street in the city centre. The two sites, which are 2,5km apart, will be connected via a 10Gbit/s fibre-optic cable being laid by Dark Fibre Africa.

The new data centre will be refurbished and has space to expand to 300sq m over time.

The plan, says Gilmour, is to offer cloud-computing services — online processing and applications delivered on the Internet — at both data centres. The two facilities, which are on separate communications links and power grids, will offer backup and redundancy.

Gilmour says corporate customers are showing growing interest in moving computing services into the cloud. It has built an enterprise cloud solution for large companies in partnership with Dell, NetApp and VMware. It also offers a cloud solution for small and medium enterprises. — Duncan McLeod, TechCentral