Data centre providers are increasing their footprints in South Africa and spending billions to expand their services in the country.
Some of South Africa’s biggest data centre providers — according to hall space and critical IT load — include Teraco, Vantage Data Centres, Africa Data Centre, Open Access Data Centres, and NTT.
Teraco kicked off the carrier-neutral data centre revolution in South Africa, making it possible for prominent international cloud computing providers like Huawei and Microsoft, and eventually Amazon and Google, to host locally in South Africa.
Recent developments in the data centre market include providers breaking ground on new facilities, building renewable power stations to supply their facilities, and completing data centre builds.
MyBroadband compared data centre providers’ facilities in South Africa to determine which has the largest local footprint.
The five largest data centre providers in South Africa, according to total hall space and critical IT load, are listed below.
Teraco — 53,500m2 and 223MW
Teraco is South Africa’s largest data centre provider, with over 50,000 square metres of data hall space and 223MW of critical IT load across six data centres.
Its largest facilities are located in Johannesburg, with three data centres that will contribute 41,400m2 and 184MW to its footprint once construction on JHB4 wraps up.
Its other data centre facilities are located in Rondebosch and Brackenfell in Cape Town and Riverhorse Valley in Durban.
The Durban data centre is its smallest, with 1,500m2 of hall space and 4MW of critical IT load.
Most recently, Teraco commenced construction on an expansion project for CT2 in Brackenfell, bringing its total critical IT load to 50MW.
Vantage Data Centres — 69,000m2 and 100MW
Vantage Data Centres’ total of 100MW of critical IT load and 69,000 square metres of hall space make it the second biggest provider in the country. While it offers more hall space than Teraco, its critical IT load is significantly lower.
It has two facilities in the country, both located in Johannesburg — JNB1 in Waterfall City and JNB2 in Ekurhuleni.
JNB1 is its flagship facility, offering 80MW of critical IT load and 36,000 square metres of hall space across three two-story data centres.
However, it should be noted that only one data centre is completed, while the other two are still under construction. The company hasn’t said when it expects construction to complete.
On the other hand, its smaller JNB2 facility is expected to be completed in mid-2024 and will offer 33,000m2 of hall space.
Africa Data Centres — 34,400m2 and 64MW
Africa Data Centres has three facilities in South Africa, contributing 34,400 square metres of hall space and 64MW of critical load to its footprint.
Its largest facility — JHB2 in Samrand — offers 20,400m2 of hall space and 35MW of critical IT load. The JHB1 data centre in Midrand has 9,000 square metres of white space and 20MW of IT load.
Africa Data Centres’ CPT1 is the smallest of the lot, with 5,000m2 of hall space and 9MW of critical IT load. However, it is currently expanding its footprint in the mother city.
On 24 January 2024, Africa Data Centres announced that it had broken ground on a second facility in Cape Town, which it expects to be operational by mid-2024.
When completed, the data centre will have 12,000 square metres of white space and an IT load of 20MW.
Open Access Data Centres — 7,200m and 19MW
Open Access Data Centres is a major data centre provider in South Africa, with a network of edge data centres strewn across the country.
Unfortunately, exact specifications for these edge data centres aren’t readily available, and the figures of 7,200 square metres of hall space and 19MW of critical IT load may be underestimated.
The provider has four core data centre facilities in the country and over 30 edge data centres.
Its largest core data centre is located in Isando, Johannesburg, and features 3,000m2 of hall space and 7MW of critical IT load.
Its Durban facility is the second-largest by hall space with 2,000 square metres. However, it has a lower critical IT load than the CPT2 facility.
CPT2 features 1,500m2 of hall space and 5MW of critical IT load. The smaller CPT1 facility has 700 square metres of hall space and 3MW of critical load.
NTT/Dimension Data — 18,200m2 and over 15MW
NTT launched its Johannesburg 1 data centre within the Centralpoint Innovation District in Midrand in October 2022.
Once fully built out, the facility will offer 6,200 square metres of hall space and 12MW of critical IT load.
“The facility will cater to hyperscalers and enterprises, providing them with an opportunity to use NTT’s full ICT stack of services, including managed hybrid cloud, network management, collaboration, security, and application monitoring,” said NTT.
The Johannesburg 1 facility is the provider’s first in South Africa, and it says the data centre is highly flexible and secure.
It should be noted that Dimension Data, which will soon be rebranded NTT Data, has several other data centres in South Africa.
In 2018, when Internet Solutions was still a brand within Dimension Data, the company said it had over 12,000m2 of hall space.
Unfortunately, up-to-date critical IT load and hall space specifications aren’t publicly available for these facilities.
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