The Western Cape government will build a big data centre in Cape Town that will host data generated by the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) telescope.
The investment in the development is valued at R453 million, according to the provincial government.
The shortage of qualified data scientists and data centre facilities in SA for when the SKA telescope goes live prompted fears that data generated will be shipped and hosted overseas.
Pundits say the SKA telescope will produce large amounts of data and will require really fast processing filters to 'clean' raw streaming data, and huge amounts of storage space. The amount of data produced is also expected to grow exponentially over time.
In a statement, the Western Cape government said the "facility is intended to serve as a host for the SKA's computing and data storage requirements as well as for others". The province's initiative is a joint venture with the Department of Science and Technology, SKA SA and the University of Cape Town.
Western Cape minister of economic opportunities, Alan Winde, said in the statement: "The facility will house the systems we need to process and store the data we receive from, among others, the SKA SA, who are key partners in the project."
World first
The SKA project is an international effort to build the world's largest radio telescope to be hosted in SA and Australia. SA's Karoo desert in the Northern Cape will host the core of the mid-frequency dish array, ultimately extending over the African continent.
Eventually, the SKA will be made up of thousands of dishes that will enable astronomers to survey the universe in detail and survey the entire sky much faster, and in more detail, than any system currently in existence.
SA will host about 200 parabolic dishes and Australia more than 100 000 "dipole" antennas.
The SKA telescope will be built in two main phases, with construction of phase one planned to start in 2017/18 and some elements operational by 2020 and full operation under way in 2025.
National importance
Bruce Mellado, professor at the University of the Witwatersrand's School of Physics, says it's great news that the Western Cape government plans to invest in a data centre.
The SKA will generate unprecedented amounts of data. A significant fraction of this data will need to be stored long-term in data centres, he states. "Having the data be resident in SA would be fantastic for the country."
Mellado explains: "The first data processing will take place with dedicated electronics. This first processing happens very fast, almost as the data is being produced. When scientists decide that the data processed during the first pass is interesting for research, it is stored on disk. It is there that the data will be stored for a very long time so that scientists can do careful analysis and studies. The analysis of this data is later published in scientific journals and shown at conferences."
The value of setting up such a facility in Cape Town is that it would greatly improve the country's ability to train data specialists, says Mellado.
"The existence of large data centres would be great not just for the Western Cape but for the country as a whole. Data centres are very large repositories of knowledge. These centres would be accessed by scientists not only from SA but from all over the world. It would significantly enhance our capabilities to deal with the big data problem and it would boost the cyber infrastructure in the country," he adds.
Economic boost
According to Winde, developing the data centre facility is in part to harness the power of real-time data to grow the economy and attract investment into the region.
That is why the provincial government is not going about establishing the data centre alone. Private sector players in the technology space have been invited to provide information on the best model for the data centre, in terms of how it is built and operated.
Winde states he wants to receive advice from private sector experts before putting the final bid documents together.
"The advice we receive will be used to inform the final tender or request for proposal documents. We aim to collect as much information as possible on the best model for the centre, before putting it out to tender later this year.
"There's a deadline for SKA to move into the centre by 2020, and we plan to move swiftly on this project. Our plan is to build a facility that is of a very high standard, taking the advice of experts into account," he notes.
Moira De Roche, MD of e-learning company Aligned4Learning, applauds the Western Cape government's move to set up the SKA dedicated storage facility.
The data centre will draw attention to the fact that the province has the skills backed up by four universities, three of which are strong on research, she says.
"It will be good to increase the number of quality ICT jobs in the province. Too many graduates have to travel to Gauteng and abroad to find a suitable job. Data scientists are in demand and the demand will grow - ultimately this will grow the skills base for the province and the country," states De Roche.
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