Market Trends of Africa Data Center Networking Industry
IT and Telecom to Hold Significant Share
- Telecom providers are primarily responsible for driving content delivery and facilitating mobile and cloud services, and that's why telecom data centers require very high connectivity. This specific type of data center is connected to other data centers, cloud providers, and telecom operators through outside plant (OSP) cables, with cross-connects greatly deployed to ensure efficient operations through networking.
- By centralizing network control and management, SDN offers a number of benefits over traditional network architectures in Africa. The most significant of these is the ability to more easily manage and configure network traffic. Cisco ACI is a popular software-defined networking (SDN) solution that allows administrators to centrally manage network policies and automate network infrastructure. It enables network administrators to design, deploy, and manage their networks with ease.
- The rapid growth of 4G adoption and the impending arrival of 5G technology are compelling telecommunications providers to invest in data centers in Africa. In October 2022, South African telecom company Telkom successfully launched a high-speed 5G internet network in collaboration with China's Huawei Technologies. Huawei remains committed to supporting South Africa in expanding its 5G infrastructure. The prominent 5G network, the largest on the African continent, currently boasts more than 2,800 deployed base stations.
- The deployment of 5G would play a key role in pushing the expansion plans and executing them as planned. For 5G networks and ubiquitous broadband, the country requires 167,000 km of fiber infrastructure. In Nigeria, data center facilities will be in demand as fiber connectivity increases so that advanced technologies can be used remotely. Such a factor will lead to major data center networking adoption.
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South Africa to Hold Significant Growth
- South Africa is considered to be the most developed cloud market in sub-Saharan Africa. The increase in demand for data storage is also leading to an increase in the demand for ethernet switches. In 2022, South Africa witnessed a surge in data center investment from global data center operators, as well as the expansion of local data center facilities. To serve the growing demand for cloud services, global cloud providers, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, VMware, and others have targeted South Africa.
- AFR-IX offers international high-quality and personalized Internet and data services to corporates and telecommunications in the African continent. Their extensive Pan-African network covered with terrestrial and submarine cables makes AFR-IX one of the leading Telecom operating service providers in Africa, including in South Africa, and the most reliable and largest metro-Ethernet network with multiprotocol label switching (MPLS).
- In South Africa, Carrier Ethernet, which is also known as the Metro Ethernet in SA, has experienced growing levels of adoption and is projected to increase even further in the coming years. Carrier Ethernet is facilitating increased partnering of regional service providers with large numbers of wireless access providers, as standardization and service definitions allow for much quicker integration of external network-to-network interfaces, in turn enabling faster time-to-market of services, as well as monitoring of end-to-end service performance.
- Virtualization enables the hardware resources of a single computer to be divided into multiple virtual computers. Virtualization backup and management software vendor Veeam has grown its South African revenue by 88% in the year since it set up a local presence. Representing an increase of over 150% in its customer and partnership base, this sets the stage for further expansion.
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