Expereo, a global provider of managed Internet network solutions, is planning to expand its data centres across Africa.
The company recently opened a Johannesburg facility, and will add locations in East, West and North Africa during 2018.
Irwin Fouwels, CEO of Expereo, comments: “Across Africa, we see enormous opportunity for the cloud to accelerate innovation, allow governments to provide better services, and drive economic growth for both African-based businesses and global corporates operating on the continent.
“To succeed, they need guaranteed performance and reliability from their Internet. That’s why we are expanding our reach with these strategically located African hubs, providing our customers with the best options for cloud connectivity on a truly global scale.”
Previously, African Internet traffic was dominated by “northbound” traffic, with data routed primarily via Europe due to the structure of the global cable systems, before arriving at its destination. Expereo expects to see a reversal of this trend, with “southbound” traffic increasing as the economies of African countries continue to grow, creating more cloud demand and software as a service (SaaS) adoption.
Major SaaS providers such as Microsoft and AWS are already opening cloud data centers in South Africa to meet this demand. Domestic Internet requirements within African countries are rising and corporates continue to expand their business into the area, all of which will drive this ongoing change.