Teraco: A Digital Realty Company, a leading carrier-neutral data centre and interconnection services provider in South Africa, today announced the acquisition of the iconic Great Westerford building in Cape Town from Ingenuity Property Investments.
Great Westerford, a landmark building with over 30 000sqm of premium grade office space, is situated in the prime location of Rondebosch, Cape Town.
The conclusion of the acquisition means Teraco has ownership of the building that houses its CT1 data centre investment, and results in the full ownership of all facilities and the underlying land that support Teraco’s leading, carrier-neutral colocation portfolio. CT1 is Africa’s second largest interconnect hub, with over 6 300 interconnects and more than 1 000 deployable cabinets supported by five megawatts (MW) of utility power.
As one of Africa’s most digitally connected cities, Cape Town is a preferred destination for Teraco’s continued investment in data centre infrastructure in South Africa. Home to thriving digitally connected enterprises, including telecommunications, financial services, e-commerce, logistics, and retail, Cape Town benefits from being the landing of multiple major subsea cable systems such as ACE, WACS, SAT-3 and SAFE. The abundance of subsea cable connectivity is set to continue with the landing of Google’s Equiano and the 2AFRICA cable systems.
“We’re extremely honoured to be the next custodian of this iconic building,” says Jan Hnizdo, CEO at Teraco. “We see Great Westerford as the home for technology, professional services, telecommunications, and financial services firms looking for the convenience of being located in the heart of Cape Town’s southern suburbs, close to transport nodes, shopping centres, and excellent schools while enjoying access to Teraco’s global digital reach.”
As part of Teraco’s broader Cape Town campus, the CT1 data centre provides enterprises with direct access to Platform Teraco, comprising a rich ecosystem of over 250 network providers, global cloud on-ramps, subsea cable systems, access to over 50 managed service providers, and direct peering at NAPAfrica, Africa’s largest internet exchange point. Clients deployed in either of these facilities can connect to AWS Direct Connect and Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute directly or via Teraco’s Africa Cloud Exchange (ACX). The Great Westerford acquisition brings an historic South African building into the digital age, which is now capable of supporting its tenants’ physical and digital business requirements.
Clients at Great Westerford benefit from having their digital operations and data close to the edge of their networks, increasing performance, reducing connectivity costs, and scaling their digital business operations globally while reaching their entire connected data communities through a single private and secure connection.
“The sale of this prime property was done to provide capital for our large development pipeline. Our close relationship with Teraco, one of many good years standing, afforded us the opportunity to identify the appropriate buyer for this unique asset. We are confident Teraco will take this building into the digital future, providing a home for the many fine tenants it already has,” says Arnold Maresky, CEO at Ingenuity.
About Teraco
Teraco, a leading carrier-neutral colocation provider in Africa, is the first provider of highly resilient, vendor-neutral data environments in sub-Saharan Africa. With its world-class data centre infrastructure and network-dense ecosystems, Teraco forms a vital part of the African Internet’s backbone and is essential to the modern enterprise’s digital transformation strategy. Teraco is part-owned by Digital Realty (NYSE: DLR) – offering customers a global data centre platform designed to enable digital business to scale within a highly connected data community across 300+ data centres in 50+ metros and 27 countries on six continents – and a consortium of private equity investors, including Berkshire Partners LLC and Permira. For more information, please visit teraco.co.za or follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.
About Digital Realty
Digital Realty brings companies and data together by delivering the full spectrum of data center, colocation and interconnection solutions. PlatformDIGITAL®, the company’s global data center platform, provides customers with a secure data meeting place and a proven Pervasive Datacenter Architecture™ (PDx) solution methodology for powering innovation and efficiently managing Data Gravity challenges. Digital Realty gives its customers access to the connected communities that matter to them with a global data center footprint of 300+ facilities in 50+ metros across 27 countries on six continents. To learn more about Digital Realty, please visit digitalrealty.com or follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.
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