Finhai Munzara

Organisations across the board are seeing a massive rise in the need for data centres to manage their storage, app development and deployment, hybrid working and online customer platforms.

For this reason, hyperscalers are scrambling to deliver more and more capacity driven by growth in both public, and hybrid cloud deployments.

This is according to Finhai Munzara, CFO at Africa Data Centres, who will be presenting a keynote address on “Data Centre investment trends and forecasts”, at the ITWeb Cloud & Data Centre Summit 2022, being held on 24 February at the Maslow Hotel in Sandton.

Munzara says data centres are getting smarter and more intelligent in order to become more efficient and reduce their carbon footprint. “There is an Increased focus on energy efficiency and incorporation of renewable energy into the power mix.” 

He believes we will also see more larger, campus-like facilities delivering hyperscale capacity versus smaller enterprise data centres.

When it comes to trends around data centre investment, Munzara says we can expect Increased interest from infrastructure and real estate funds, as well as market consolidation driven by global data centre operators who view the continent as the last frontier.

During his keynote address, Munzara will unpack all the factors and players that are driving growth and investments in the South African data centre market and the continent as a whole.

He will discuss what is being done to meet this growing demand, and how the industry can create enough skills sets to meet the requirements when it comes to running smart data centres.