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Teraco, Africa’s largest interconnection hub and vendor-neutral data centre provider announced on 7 November 2022 that construction has started on a new hyperscale data centre facility at its Isando Campus in Ekurhuleni, east of Johannesburg, South Africa.

The facility, known as JB5, will have 30 megawatts of critical power load and will incorporate the latest environmentally sustainable cooling and water management designs. It is scheduled for completion in 2024.

Features of the JB5 data centre facility include:

• The facility comprises 55,000 square metres of building structure serviced by 120 megavolt amperes (MVA) of utility power supply.
• It is strategically located in the Isando Campus alongside Teraco's 80-MVA 'JB1 + JB3' data centre.
• JB5 will be built in a single phase and includes twelve 1,000 square metre halls.
• JB5 is a significant addition to South Africa and sub-Saharan Africa’s data centre footprint.
• The new data centre development is being built in line with global hyperscale requirements.
• It will augment the existing portfolio of ISO9001, ISO27001, ISO50001, ISO14001, PCI-DSS, and ISAE3402-certified data centre facilities.
• JB5 will feature environmentally conscious designs and monitoring technology to reduce water use and improve energy efficiency.

The CEO of Teraco, Jan Hnizdo, said the digital realty company continues with solid growth as enterprise and hyperscale requirements continue apace because of a sustained demand for hybrid cloud deployments and the adoption of cloud services in Africa. 

“South Africa is a springboard for cloud provision into Africa and, as a result, has become the technology and data centre hub for sub-Saharan Africa. Massive global investments into undersea cables, like Equiano and 2Africa, further strengthen this position. This will enable global cloud providers to service the South African market and the rest of the sub-Saharan African region.

“Teraco is committed to growing its capacity footprint across its core hubs. We ensure our clients have the flexibility to scale and take advantage of the digital transformation across sub-Saharan Africa. We continue to invest significantly in the region’s ICT infrastructure and have built Africa’s largest data centre platform. We take pride in enabling open access interconnection and providing world-class data centre infrastructure for all our clients,” said Hnizdo.

As a Digital Realty Company, Teraco adds South Africa to @digitalrealty's African footprint, joining it's other #datacentre locations based in Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria.

Learn more: https://t.co/7gbieNUgH0 pic.twitter.com/eOSRkcaPB6

— @TeracoDC (@TeracoDC) November 16, 2022

The JB5 facility is Teraco’s eighth data centre development in the heart of Ekurhuleni’s Aerotropolis. It is where Teraco’s data centres already provide access to a wide choice of network service providers, peering at NAPAfrica, regional IXPs, content delivery networks, and cloud provider on-ramps. 

The facility is the latest expansion to Teraco’s growing data centre platform. It takes critical power load capacity to 156 megawatts, which includes the Isando Campus facilities JB1/JB3/JB5 (70 megawatts), Bredell Campus JB2/JB4 (64 megawatts), Cape Town Campus CT1/CT2 (21 megawatts), and Durban (1 megawatt).

Hnizdo said this expansion aims to further support sub-Saharan enterprises by advancing their digital transformation strategies and enabling global cloud providers to expand their footprints, spurring innovation.

JB5 is designed to prioritise sustainability and reduce its environmental footprint. JB5 will incorporate state-of-the-art cooling designs, a closed-loop chilled water system that incorporates 100% free air cooling. This design will bring about industry-leading PUEs, reducing the energy consumed and limiting water used in the ongoing cooling process to zero.

Organisations working to speed up their digital transformation are using Teraco to scale their IT infrastructure, adopt hybrid multi-cloud architectures, and interconnect with strategic business partners within the Platform Teraco ecosystem of global and local clients.

Photo: Rendering of the new Teraco JB5 data centre facility (teraco.co.za)