Inside look into Teraco
In April 2009, Web Africa became the first Internet service provider to move over to South Africa’s first vendor neutral Data Centre, Teraco.
Teraco saw a need to provide an expert organization solely focused on Data Centre technology with the deregulation of the local telecommunications market. They became the country’s first vendor neutral data centre environment, bringing lower costs and improved resilience of a data centre built to the highest global standards, but also gives one the freedom to set up and run their data centre as they choose.
A vendor neutral data centre means that any provider can get direct connection to the servers, faster speeds, and better connections from any type of connection in South Africa.
Matthew Tagg, MD of Web Africa, said, “Vendor-neutrality means that redundancy and reliability are greatly enhanced. Because Teraco hosts a number of carriers, we are not limited to a single provider should their network fail. This means guaranteed uptime and better performance for our customers. ”
For Web Africa this also means significant reductions in its support load and, in addition, enables Web Africa to select the type of services it needs from different providers.
Teraco offers protection at every level. Access to the premises requires pre-authorization and is limited to accompanied access. The building is under constant camera surveillance. Teraco ensures that power supply is uninterrupted as every cabinet has 2 independent power circuits with a bank of UPS supplies, backed with two generators. The area is covered by advanced cooling systems to maintain low temperature and humidity levels.
Teraco also expects to grow. Even with two data centres [one in Newlands, Cape Town and one in Isando, Johannesburg], they have 3000m2 of new space planned already.
Matthew Tagg states, “Teraco offers the ISP improved facilities including security, power redundancy, cooling systems, as well as the space to scale its operations effectively.”
Customers benefit from the cost savings and improved resilience of securely housing their information systems and networking equipment in a facility built and operated to best practice global standards by an expert organization with absolute focus on data centre technology.
