South African data centre revenues are expected to grow at a rate of 9.6% per year to reach R4 billion in 2016, up from the R2.3 billion reported in 2010.
This is according to research by Frost & Sullivan, which outlines a number of factors that have an impact on the growth rate. These include insufficient power availability for new high-density servers, ageing equipment that can't keep up with performance requirements, and an SME sector that is increasingly adopting a variety of data centre services.
The research further found that the financial, government and ICT sectors contributed two-thirds of data centre revenues. The governmental sector is likely to continue outsourcing its data centre requirements to vendors that comply with good environmental stewardship and carbon emission goals, which the research found to be a key trend in data centres.
Cost savings, lack of facilities and streamlining business operations were the major drivers for outsourcing in the future. When examining cost savings, organisations weighed up costs associated with outsourcing and compared those to the cost of investing in their own data centres.
A lack of facilities indicates that, as business data requirements grow, their current facilities are no longer sufficient and organisations then turn to outsourcing or upgrade their facilities. In terms of streamlining business operations, organisations are looking for ways to increase efficiency among their core business processes.
Other trends in the South African data centre market, according to the research, included virtualisation, the consolidation of data centres, and a growing dependence on third-party services.
The research report is titled “Data Centre Market in South Africa”.
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