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Liquid Telecom to become Azure ExpressRoute partner

Paula Gilbert
By Paula Gilbert, ITWeb telecoms editor.
Johannesburg, 09 Nov 2017
Nic Rudnick, group CEO Liquid Telecom.
Nic Rudnick, group CEO Liquid Telecom.

Liquid Telecom will become a Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute partner across Africa when the Microsoft Azure cloud platform is generally available in 2018.

The pan-African telecoms group, a subsidiary of Econet Global, made the announcement at AfricaCom 2017 in Cape Town.

In September, Liquid Telecom announced it had partnered with Microsoft to deliver scalable cloud services in Africa. Now, through its CloudConnect service, Liquid Telecom will offer direct private connections to Microsoft's South African ExpressRoute locations, allowing African businesses to have private access to Azure on their own continent.

"The arrival of the Microsoft Azure cloud platform in South Africa is a statement to the world on how far Africa's cloud ecosystem has come," said Nic Rudnick, group CEO of Liquid Telecom.

To support access to Azure services, Liquid Telecom said it is adding CloudConnect nodes to over 25 points of presence across Africa. It is also making major upgrades to Liquid Telecom data centres in Johannesburg and Cape Town, to meet the needs of global cloud players and enterprise customers.

Willem Marais, chief business development officer at Liquid Telecom, previously told ITWeb that Liquid Telecom already provides ExpressRoute services to Azure deployments in Europe. This will now be available across Africa.

ExpressRoute can support businesses for scenarios such as periodic data migration, replication for business continuity, disaster recovery and other high-availability strategies. Liquid Telecom said it is already taking pre-orders from some of the region's largest enterprises for CloudConnect.

Liquid Telecom offers communications services and solutions across 13 countries in Eastern, central and Southern Africa that serve carrier, enterprise and retail customers. Its fibre network spans over 50 000km, and it operates data centres in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Nairobi, with a combined 6 800-square metres of rack space.

It is also expanding its East Africa data centre in Nairobi, Kenya, which currently houses 2 000-square metres of secured space for data servers over four floors.

"Liquid Telecom's extensive fibre footprint across Africa provides support for the upcoming launch of the Microsoft Azure cloud platform in South Africa. With scale and reach across Sub-Saharan Africa, Liquid Telecom will increase Azure ExpressRoute availability across the region and help deliver Azure to more enterprise customers," said Ross Ortega, Microsoft Azure networking product management at Microsoft.

Bond update

Rudnick also announced the group had this week reopened its bond to the international market. The aim was to raise an additional $180 million (R2.5 billion) to be used "partly for refinancing and partly for additional network expansion and corporate purposes" Rudnick told journalists at AfricaCom. The bond reopened on Tuesday and was oversubscribed by the time it closed at midday.

"It's great to see that international markets are supporting African companies and the investment in infrastructure and digital services across the continent. I hope it leads the way for other companies across Africa to realise there is money available for investment in the continent and that it can be accessed. Also that international markets are willing to put money, on very favourable terms, into the future of the African continent."

In July, Liquid Telecom raised $700 million (R9.9 billion) through its debut bond.

Huawei partnership

In a busy week for Liquid Telecom, the group also announced it was partnering with Huawei to deliver 100G upgrades to its network in SA.

The upgrade to 100G wavelengths will take advantage of the latest DWDM technology from Huawei, enabling Liquid Telecom to offer additional capacity, faster speeds and greater redundancy on its network.

The first phase of the project will see Liquid Telecom deploy Huawei's OptiX OSN Solution along 1 200km of its long-haul network connecting Johannesburg and Cape Town. In the second and third phase of the project, the DWDM core network will be extended to the North West and then North East regions of South Africa.

"Higher network speeds and bandwidth will play an integral role in supporting the rise of the African cloud. Through our partnership with Huawei, Liquid Telecom is ensuring its network is ready to meet the increasing demand from businesses for cloud-based services," said Rudnick.

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