Bringing quality content to African shores

Issued by Lion`s Wing Brand Communications for Workonline Communications
Johannesburg, 08 Jun 2017

Fastly - the edge cloud platform that powers fast, secure and scalable online experiences for the world's most popular businesses - continues to grow and expand rapidly, now adding Africa to its fast-growing global network reach. Privately owned global network service provider, Workonline Communications, and data centre service provider, Teraco, have collaborated to make this move possible for Fastly.

Fastly has been adding global reach to its network in support of increasing real-time Web, app and API content delivery traffic. Fastly helps the world's most popular digital businesses - including Airbnb, The New York Times, and Ticketmaster - keep pace with their customer expectations by delivering the most secure and scalable real-time experiences.

"We realise the importance and the benefits of a CDN deploying in our market, particularly in terms of improved quality and cost reduction. Major CDNs like Fastly's offering add enormous potential to the development of the local market as a whole. Workonline Communications is committed to providing the best for Africa as well as to developing the African market in every way possible. We are excited to be involved in the launch of Fastly in Africa," says Workonline's Director of Business Development, Edward Lawrence.

CDNs are an essential tool to successfully conduct business online, as the Internet was not originally built to handle the demands of massive amounts of data, live HD video, flash sales, and large downloads that have now become the standard. CDNs ensure the Internet works better, delivering media at scale, and enabling a better experience for the end-user.

"Our collaboration with the teams at Workonline and Teraco enabled Fastly to quickly deploy a Fastly MegaPOP into Johannesburg. Our expanded reach reduces latency, improves performance, and enables a more robust user experience in South Africa and neighboring countries. We feel that this is a win-win-win for the Internet ecosystem of South Africa," says Tom Daly, Vice-President of Infrastructure at Fastly.

Michele McCann, head of business development at Teraco, agrees it is consumers who ultimately benefit from access to a CDN rich in content: "Fastly provides a CDN service to digital organisations like BuzzFeed, Pinterest, Shopify, Shazam, and Alaska Airlines from key access points on the Internet (POPs). This indispensable service reduces network transit time when delivering content to end-users, who are now able to enjoy a richer experience from these online organisations."

Workonline

Founded in South Africa in 2006, Workonline Communications is a privately owned global network service provider.

Workonline (AS 37271) is widely acclaimed as one of the largest IP transit networks in southern Africa, and its engineers are often recognised for their achievements in the global community. The Workonline network, along with the reach of its international partners, enables the company to offer high quality IP transit services as well as wholesale connectivity services across Africa and in most locations in the world.

Workonline's customers include some of the world's largest telecommunication companies. It prides itself on the stability and resilience of its global network, which it operates according to the highest standards, in line with global best practices. While Workonline is large enough to ensure consistent reliability and innovation, it remains flexible enough to adapt to the specific requirements of its wholesale customers.

As a trusted advisor to its clients, innovation and agility remain at the core of Workonline's business. The company's research and development is constantly in motion, providing its clients with innovative and cost-effective solutions on a global scale, while maintaining the highest levels of design, build and deployment. Designing innovative commercial and technical solutions has led to its exponential growth over the last decade, and also ensures it remains a leader in the provision of reliable tailor-made communication services.

For more information, please visit http://www.workonline.co.za/ or email communications@workonline.co.za

Twitter: twitter.com/wolcomm
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/workonline-communications

Fastly

Fastly helps the world's most popular digital businesses keep pace with their customer expectations by delivering fast, secure and scalable online experiences. Businesses trust the Fastly edge cloud platform to accelerate the pace of technical innovation, mitigate evolving threats, and scale on demand. Founded in 2011, Fastly powers online destinations including Airbnb, GitHub, Alaska Airlines, Pinterest, Vimeo, The Guardian, The New York Times and Ticketmaster. Learn more at Fastly.com and follow us on Twitter @fastly.

Teraco Data Environments

Teraco is the first provider of resilient, vendor neutral data environments in South Africa. Clients benefit from the cost savings and improved resilience of securely housing their information systems and networking equipment in a colocation facility purpose-built and operated to global best practice by an expert organisation with an absolute focus on data centre technology and infrastructure.

Founded in 2008, Teraco Data Environments has brought international best practice in vendor neutral data centre management to South Africa to give businesses a technically superior, physically safer and lower cost environment for their information systems.

As the local telecommunications market began to deregulate, Teraco's founders recognised an opportunity for a truly vendor neutral data centre offering in South Africa. The possibility of providing a service that was not tied to any carrier or ISP became not only technically feasible and economically viable, but increasingly desirable to South African enterprises which needed unrestricted choice in how they interconnected their facilities and connected to the Internet.

Teraco manages colocation data centres in Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg. Teraco is backed by leading international investor Permira. Teraco is a Level 3 contributor (DTI codes).

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