Neotel's new R100 million data centre - unveiled in Midrand, Johannesburg, yesterday - will form part of the distribution for Seacom capacity.
Head of product and solutions at Neotel Rajeev Sinha says Neotel has invested significant time in developing a highly-sophisticated centre that will allow it to terminate Seacom capacity, as well as serve customers in a single space.
A second centre, which will be built in Cape Town, is expected over the next few months. The two local data centres will both act as primary and disaster recovery sites, depending on where particular customers choose to host their key services.
He says the connectivity to Tata's global hosting centres is an added boon. “We can now offer a primary site to customers in India and a secondary site in another country, and perhaps they would like a tertiary in SA,” he adds.
According to Sinha, the partnership with its parent company could also create a positive impact on international investment to SA. “A hosted offering allows those businesses to enter SA without the capex costs of setting up technology.”
Local streams
Aside from the initial location-hosting that the company is offering at the data centre, both the sites in Johannesburg and Cape Town will act as distribution centres for Seacom capacity.
When the company initially announced its decision to build a hosting centre, executive head of the enterprise group, Stefano Mattiello, explained it would be capable of passing through Terabits of information, with a later possibility of far higher speeds.
Mattiello also hinted the company may well look into streaming content across its local network, which could see it compete with Google some time in the future.
Racking it up
Sinha adds it has been designed in a way to minimise energy consumption, including new cooling techniques, such as water chilled and hot-row, cold-row methods. He says each half rack is equipped with power monitors.
The company is using an international standard rack size for customers. “We are staying as flexible as possible, so if a company wants to bring in their own racks, or even their own mainframes, we are able to accommodate those.”
While it has not yet released the costs of its hosting products, Sinha says customers can expect them to be “attractive”.
Sinha would also not indicate how many customers have committed to using the data centre; however, he says a few existing clients have agreed to use the service.
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