Hot on the heels of it announcing the construction of its own sustainable energy source in the Free State, Teraco, says it is building a new hyperscale data centre with 40 megawatts (MW) of critical power load at its Isando Campus in Ekurhuleni.
The data centre, funded by a new R8-billion syndicated loan, will further solidify Teraco’s presence as a leading provider of data centre services in Africa.
The facility, known as JB7, is currently scheduled for completion in 2026 and will incorporate the latest environmentally sustainable cooling and water management designs. The new data centre supports the growing demand by enterprises and cloud service providers for data centre capacity. JB7 will offer highly resilient and secure colocation facilities in line with Teraco’s long-term vision of enabling digital transformation across Africa. The expansion will increase the Isando Campus’ capacity up to 110MW of critical power load.
Jan Hnizdo, CEO at Teraco, says enterprise and hyperscale deployments continue apace due to growing hybrid cloud deployments and the adoption of cloud services in Africa.
“South Africa is a springboard for cloud provision into Africa and, as a result, has become the technology and data centre hub for sub-Saharan Africa,” Hnizdo says. “Massive global investments into undersea cables like Equiano and 2Africa further strengthen this position. This will enable global cloud providers to service not only the South African market, but also the rest of the sub-Saharan African region.”
The JB7 facility, located in the heart of Ekurhuleni’s Aerotropolis, is Teraco’s ninth data centre development and further expands its Isando Campus. It is here that Teraco’s data centres provide enterprises with direct access to Platform Teraco, a rich ecosystem of over 250 network providers, content delivery networks, global cloud on-ramps, subsea cable systems, access to over 100 managed service providers, and direct peering at regional IXP’s including NAPAfrica – Africa’s largest Internet exchange point.
JB7 has been designed to put sustainability first and minimise its environmental footprint. It will incorporate the latest state-of-the-art cooling designs with a closed-loop chilled water system and direct free-air cooling into the data halls. This design will bring about industry-leading PUEs and WUEs, reducing the energy consumed and limiting water used in the ongoing cooling process to zero. The systems are specifically designed to provide liquid-to-air and liquid-to-liquid cooling to facilitate the deployment of high-density cloud and artificial intelligence deployments.