Transnet, South Africa’s state-owned rail, ports and pipeline company, is continuing with its digital transformation drive as it readies for a hybrid cloud future.
The company has announced the completion of a private cloud data centre in Durban, as well as a Gauteng-based colocation facility in partnership with mobile operator Vodacom.
The announcement comes after Transnet last week migrated its enterprise resource planning system from ECC 6.0 to SAP S4/HANA.
Transnet plays a central role in the country’s economy by managing key infrastructure that supports trade and industrial growth.
Despite facing operational and financial challenges in recent years, it remains a strategic asset tasked with modernising South Africa’s logistics network, improving efficiencies and positioning the country as a competitive hub for global trade.
According to Transnet, the completion of the facilities will modernise its data centre and hosting capabilities.
It says this move will allow it to navigate the increasingly complex digital landscapes, ensuring the foundational operations are resilient, secure and capable of supporting next-generation business applications.
This initiative is one of the four strategic pillars of Transnet’s ICT digital modernisation strategy, says the state-owned company (SOC).
It explains that the private cloud data centre in Durban is designed to serve as a secure and scalable hub for business-critical systems. The colocation environment provides geographic redundancy and resilience, while extending reach into one of the country’s primary ICT corridors.
Supported by a public cloud on Microsoft Azure through its strategic partners − Microsoft and Liquid Intelligence Technologies − these facilities provide the necessary capacity, flexibility and operational resilience to migrate core business applications and decades of data into a hybrid cloud architecture, says the SOC.
Critical to this transformation has been the collaboration with Altron, with its original equipment manufacturer, Huawei, the technology partner responsible for configuring and preparing the two private cloud environments, it states.
Transnet notes their expertise in data centre and cloud solutions accelerated readiness, ensuring the environments are optimised for migration and future integration into the broader hybrid cloud strategy.
By partnering with Vodacom for colocation services in Gauteng, Transnet has also ensured strong network integration and high availability within South Africa’s ICT ecosystem, it adds.
“The journey towards digital transformation is ongoing but achieving readiness at the data centre and hosting level marks an essential milestone,” says Transnet group chief information officer Pandelani Munyai.
“By investing in private and public cloud facilities, leveraging colocation partnerships and collaborating with trusted technology partners, the organisation has built a robust foundation for the future where ICT is a key driver of growth, efficiency and resilience.”
Munyai notes that with the data centre and infrastructure foundation in place, the organisation is now well-positioned to migrate core business applications and vast repositories of historical data into its new hybrid cloud environment.
He points out that this will not only modernise ICT operations, but will also unlock opportunities for advanced analytics, digital platforms and innovation across the business.
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