Africa's data centre market has the potential to benefit from new international cables and growing demand, says a new research report from Balancing-Act.
The UK-based ICT, telecoms and audiovisual media research company says the arrival of several international cables on both sides of the continent has set the stage for growth in Africa's data centre market.
Several new undersea cables will land at points along the continent in the next few years, in addition to current cables Seacom and the Eastern Africa Submarine Cable System. These include the West Africa Cable System, Main One and the Africa Coast to Europe cable.
Balancing-Act says data centres are a key ingredient of the nascent telecoms and IT infrastructure in Africa. “In 2011, the outlook for the growing data centre market in Africa is very promising”.
According to the research, some parts of Africa, such as SA, are seeing a “booming” data centre market in anticipation of cables that will land shortly. However, says Balancing-Act, several regions on the continent are still untapped, despite growth in demand for data centre services.
The report highlights 108 “shared” data centre facilities in 11 African countries, including those in which projects will shortly be completed. Balancing-Act says Africa can benefit from a growing demand, as Internet traffic from Africa grows due to lower connectivity costs, thanks to the new cables.
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More Internet traffic will drive Internet companies to localise some of their operations in Africa in a similar way to Google, which has located some of its search functions in Kenya, says Balancing-Act.
Although Internet penetration was at 8% at the end of 2009, far short of the global average of 27%, this rate is now rising faster than at any time over the last 10 years, it says.
Balancing-Act says a move to cloud computing and the need to trim costs through outsourcing will also drive demand for data centres. Regulatory changes that will require data to be stored in-country are another growth driver, the report cites.
However, despite growing demand, there are barriers to entry in the African market. Balancing-Act says the two main barriers to effective roll-out of data centres in Africa are power and bandwidth access at all levels: international, national and local.
In addition, says the report, there is a skills gap that has not yet been filled. Many of the enterprise customers interviewed for the research said they were worried that data hosted in Africa would not be as safe as it would be if stored in Europe or North America.
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