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Johannesburg - Mobile operator Vodacom Group [JSE:VOD] will officially open a new seven-storey, energy-efficient data centre on the Cape Town foreshore on Tuesday.
The group said that scalability of the data centre was a key design feature, with the data floor area being able to expand from an initial 1 552 square metres to an ultimate 2 862 square metres.
All major building works and the envelope of the building were completed in Phase I and further expansion can be easily introduced by fitting out of electrical and mechanical services as and when required.
"As part of the journey to reduce our carbon footprint, one of the key design goals when building this data centre was to ensure energy efficiency, which will not only help reduce carbon emissions, but can result in cost reductions that can be passed on to our customers. We're excited about this data centre because it shows our commitment to our joint initiative with our parent company Vodafone, to ensure that we reduce our carbon emissions worldwide," said Portia Maurice, chief officer of corporate affairs at Vodacom.
The data centre was the latest built to meet the needs of the growing community of Vodacom business customers and to prepare for the expansion of cloud computing, which is already gaining traction in SA.
"Since the establishment of our business services division just over three years ago, we are seeing business customers of all sizes demand more and more services to run and grow their organisations," said Chris Ross, managing executive for commercial at Vodacom Group.
"Virtualisation, hosted services such as hosted call centres, telepresence, and increased acceptance of convergence have all been major factors in the investment in our new data centres. Vodacom has now established itself as a leading cloud-based hosting provider in SA and is aggressively expanding its capabilities across the continent. The infrastructure reaches through all of its data centres and as such enables customers to deploy rapidly in any geographic region - bringing the foreshore data centre online is an integral link in those capabilities," Ross said.
Scalable cloud computing plays a vital role in any modern data centre and Vodacom has partnered with VMware and Novell to give customers all the benefits of efficient and cost-effective market-leading technology.
"Vodacom has reduced the space needed to host traditional servers in our data centre. We have also reduced power utilisation to help reduce our carbon foot print. We will pass the benefits of cloud computing to our customers and enabling a truly flexible, agile and scalable cloud service," Ross concluded.
The group said that scalability of the data centre was a key design feature, with the data floor area being able to expand from an initial 1 552 square metres to an ultimate 2 862 square metres.
All major building works and the envelope of the building were completed in Phase I and further expansion can be easily introduced by fitting out of electrical and mechanical services as and when required.
"As part of the journey to reduce our carbon footprint, one of the key design goals when building this data centre was to ensure energy efficiency, which will not only help reduce carbon emissions, but can result in cost reductions that can be passed on to our customers. We're excited about this data centre because it shows our commitment to our joint initiative with our parent company Vodafone, to ensure that we reduce our carbon emissions worldwide," said Portia Maurice, chief officer of corporate affairs at Vodacom.
The data centre was the latest built to meet the needs of the growing community of Vodacom business customers and to prepare for the expansion of cloud computing, which is already gaining traction in SA.
"Since the establishment of our business services division just over three years ago, we are seeing business customers of all sizes demand more and more services to run and grow their organisations," said Chris Ross, managing executive for commercial at Vodacom Group.
"Virtualisation, hosted services such as hosted call centres, telepresence, and increased acceptance of convergence have all been major factors in the investment in our new data centres. Vodacom has now established itself as a leading cloud-based hosting provider in SA and is aggressively expanding its capabilities across the continent. The infrastructure reaches through all of its data centres and as such enables customers to deploy rapidly in any geographic region - bringing the foreshore data centre online is an integral link in those capabilities," Ross said.
Scalable cloud computing plays a vital role in any modern data centre and Vodacom has partnered with VMware and Novell to give customers all the benefits of efficient and cost-effective market-leading technology.
"Vodacom has reduced the space needed to host traditional servers in our data centre. We have also reduced power utilisation to help reduce our carbon foot print. We will pass the benefits of cloud computing to our customers and enabling a truly flexible, agile and scalable cloud service," Ross concluded.
