Data Centres & Networks

Less than a year after we reported that Brazilian data centre firm Odata had opened its first Mexican data centre to add to its operations in Brazil, Colombia and Chile, it has been sold.

In the recently announced Knight Frank SEA-5 Data Centre Opportunity Index Malaysia was identified as a top destination for data centre investment. As if to support this argument, two major data centre announcements relating to the country have been made in the past week.

Africa Data Centres, Africa's largest network of interconnected, carrier and cloud-neutral data centre facilities, has announced a strategic partnership with The London Internet Exchange (LINX), the UK’s leading peering community, to explore growth and opportunities in current and new markets across Africa.

ST Telemedia Global Data Centres (STT GDC) Philippines, a Globe Teleco joint venture, announced the expansion of its footprint in Asia by constructing a data centre campus in the Philippines. 

Ghanaian broadband wireless access (BWA) provider Surfline Communications has shuttered its data centre and radio access network (RAN), citing financial problems.

The Middle East data centre market has been in the news recently, with plans announced for a massive new data centre in Cairo and the arrival of a new report suggesting impressive growth expected for Oman’s data centre sector.

South Africa’s Eastern Cape is getting its own internet exchange point (IXP). INX-ZA, an autonomous division of the Internet Service Providers’ Association (ISPA) of South Africa, has launched the Nelson Mandela Bay IXP, or NMBINX in Gqeberha, about 770 km east of Cape Town, providing what is described as a boost for business and for the growth and development of the Eastern Cape internet ecosystem.

Carrier-neutral data centre services provider GPX Global Systems, in collaboration with Redcon Group, a major name in construction, has announced a new data centre investment in Egypt.

India’s RMZ Corp, one of one of Asia's largest privately-owned real estate owners, investors and developers, is reported to be expanding into three new asset classes, including data centres.

Rack Centre, which describes itself as the only carrier and cloud-neutral Tier III Constructed Facility Certified data centre in Africa, has revealed plans to build a new 12MW data centre in the Ikeja area of Lagos in Nigeria.

Following on from last year’s announcement, reported on this site, that internet exchange operator AMS-IX had signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with MainOne’s Lagos data centre, MainData Nigeria (MDXi), AMS-IX and MDXi have announced the launch of a new internet exchange in the city.

A sustainability-linked debt facility of up to US$170 million in multiple tranches has been secured by Raxio Data Centres, a leading pan-African data centre developer and operator.

Digital infrastructure and technology provider Cirion has announced the expansion of its fibre network and data centre capabilities across Latin America “to better serve the growing demands of our customers and continue to migrate workloads to hybrid cloud solutions”, as the company puts it.

BDx Indonesia, one the largest wholesale data centre and cloud-focused operations in the Indonesian market, recently held the ground-breaking ceremony for its greenfield data centre, CGK3A, in TB Simatupang, South Jakarta.

Liquid Intelligent Technologies signed a memorandum of understanding with the Zambian government, committing to deploy more infrastructure to provide affordable connectivity to Zambians.

Chinese company Highlander, which specialises in maritime and marine technology, has built what is described as the first commercial underwater data centre facility off Hainan island in China – and now wants to sell submerged data centre facilities to global customers.

KIO, a data centre and digital infrastructure platform with more than 20 years of experience in colocation and IT services, has announced the signing of an agreement for the acquisition of a new data centre campus in Colombia.

Actis, a leading global investor in sustainable infrastructure, has agreed to acquire 11 data centres across six countries in Latin America and the US from Nabiax, a European data centre operator owned by independent investment management firm Asterion Industrial Partners and service provider Telefonica.

Omani service provider Omantel has partnered with Wingu Group’s Djibouti Data Centre to expand into the African market and, it says, further boost its standing as a leading regional wholesale hub.

Hard on the heels of the announcement that it plans to use renewable solar energy for its facilities in South Africa, Africa Data Centres has now said that it intends to deploy what it calls a cutting-edge data centre infrastructure management (DCIM) solution in facilities in South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria.

The Bolivian president has announced a US$20 million investment to build a new data centre in the city of El Alto, the country’s second-largest city in Bolivia, located adjacent to La Paz in Pedro Domingo Murillo Province in the west of the country close to the Peruvian and Chilean borders.

Agility Logistics Parks (ALP) has announced the launch of tailored, master-planned data centre campus sites in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt and Ghana, with more to come.

Nokia is set to provide OSS/BSS software solutions to Egypt’s New Administrative Capital city.

Several years of sustained investment in data storage solutions coupled with continuous innovation and significant improvements in vision and execution, mean that Huawei can boast a full set of storage products that ranks it among the market leaders in terms of product competitiveness.

Vertiv, a provider of critical digital infrastructure and continuity solutions, has announced a distribution agreement with TechAccess, a leading information technology company based in South Africa. This agreement, targeting customers in sub-Saharan Africa, allows TechAccess to distribute Vertiv’s integrated rack solutions portfolio designed for the enterprise sector and to support critical infrastructure systems.

Data centre provider Princeton Digital Group (PDG) says it has unveiled what it calls its SG+ strategy with the announcement of a 96 MW data centre campus in Batam in Indonesia.

The initial phase of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)’s first open-access, carrier-neutral data centre - OADC Kinshasa; FIH1 - will go live in Q2 2023.

iColo, a Kenyan carrier-neutral data centre provider with campuses in Mombasa and Nairobi, says it has opened its first data centre in Mozambique.

As the developing world in particular copes with fast-expanding data demand, the arrival of a new prefabricated modular data centre solution aimed at customers in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) may be timely.