By Sybrand Pretorius, Sales
Director, Flexenclosure
www.flexenclosure.comw
Emerging markets need data
centres fast, and the perfect
is close solution to hand
Every day people around the world generate 500 million
tweets, post 4.3 billion Facebook messages and make 6
billion Google searches. And these numbers are growing;
driven not least by Africa’s and other emerging market’s
relatively young population, which in the last 18 months has
seen a huge 47% increase in active mobile social users.
Of course social media is just one source of the data
that’s generated daily by businesses and consumers across
the continent. This is the data that typically needs to be
managed and stored within a data centre, something that
Africa is seriously short of. In fact, there’s only one Tier-
certified data centre in Africa for every 47 million people,
compared to one for every 5.5 million people in Western
Europe. And with Africa’s population growing faster than
any other continent on earth, the problem is only going to
get worse. So why is this actually a problem? Well, there are
three critical issues:
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Micro & Mini
Data
Centres
in
1. Data security
This shortage of professionally built and maintained data
centres means that much of Africa’s data is stored in
unsecured server rooms, often without adequate climate
control, redundant power supplies, fire suppression
capability or a host of other critical systems. All of these
are vital to ensuring the integrity of a data centre and
the optimal operation of the IT equipment it houses –
essentially keeping data accessible and safe.
Of course data safety isn’t guaranteed by simply
ensuring that there is redundancy built in to guard against
and overcome potential points of system failure. Physical
security is also important to minimise the risks of data being
tampered with, corrupted, stolen or completely lost, any
of which could lead to serious damage to an individual or
company. So the risks of storing and managing data in sub-
standard facilities are significant.
2. Data proximity
Equally problematic is the storing of data in facilities outside
the African continent. It may well be kept in professional
colocation facilities that don’t have any of the security
concerns outlined above, but the lack of proximity to
Africa-based end users regularly results in unacceptable
latency when attempting to access data. And in a world
1 9 7 8
/CANNONTECHNOLOGIES
Modular
D a ta
C e n t re s
Data Centre
Design, Build &
Construction
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