Companies will struggle to continue growing their data centre if electricity continues to escalate, and this in turn will put huge pressure on the economy.
This is according to Derek Wiggill, 3Com regional sales director for Africa, who points to Eskom's proposed electricity tariff hikes of 45% every year for three years. He warns there will be a time when electricity operating costs will exceed a data centre's capital costs, and companies will need to turn to greener, more energy-efficient, technologies in order to remain sustainable.
“Businesses and telecommunications carriers have got to find ways to increase their capacity, while at the same time keeping down costs and remaining efficient. They will need to look at next-generation technologies.”
Wiggill says 3Com is driving green technology in the networking and data centre space, as part of its strategy to help companies cut costs in the financial downturn.
New avenues
Cutting energy costs within a recession has opened more business avenues to 3Com, Wiggill says. “The recession has given us the opportunity to help companies drive down costs and improve efficiency. We are also pushing into the telecommunications service providers' space as the market becomes more deregulated.”
Mike Ansley, 3Com VP and GM for Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), says SA has not felt the recession as much as its European counterparts.
Ansley says its global brands - wholly owned H3C, a China-based joint venture with Huawei, and Tipping Point, an intrusion prevention system provider - are doing well despite the recession.
“In the next four years, we expect China to overtake Japan, and by 2027 to become the top economy in the world based on GDP. H3C's home market is China, and we expect the economic growth to drive sales for 3Com. Some of our customers include the Bank of China as well as the Russian Savings Bank.”
Earlier this month, the South African government's Social Security Agency awarded an R86 million tender to 3Com to build a national network for 600 branch offices around the country during the next three years. The network is being built to support 15 000 users, and implementation should be complete by the end of 2011.
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