NAMIBIA – PARATUS Namibia, a telecommunications and infrastructure provider, is constructing a N$123 million (US$8.15m) data centre in the Brakwater area of Windhoek.
According to a statement released by the company the facility, to be christened the Armada Data Centre, will be launched in August.
“It will be the first carrier neutral and the largest data centre in Namibia and it will complement the Equiano Cable which lands in Namibia in a few months,” said the statement, adding that Paratus already built the landing station.
Paratus Namibia is part of the Paratus Group, which is the largest privately owned pan-African network operator. It offers the private and corporate sectors various access technologies such as fibre, microwave, V-SAT, as well as fixed and mobile LTE.
“We are committed to delivering Africa’s quality network. Our connectivity and network services are complemented by our hosting, firewall and storage capability,” said Paratus Namibia managing director Andrew Hall.
“We can work with our partner and our customers to help ensure that Africa realises its full commercial potential. Armada is another testament to that vision.”
The facility houses two separate colocation data halls, each supported by two separate energy centre pairs. Housed in 734m square space, a total of 240 cabinets will provide essential state-of-the-art colocation options, data and cloud services.
The centre will help meet the ever-increasing customer demand for these services and, as existing facilities in Namibia are at capacity, fill the market void.
Paratus, which has already built two data centres in Angola and one in Zambia in recent years, confirmed 55% occupancy of one of the two Armada data halls.
“Our customers understand that technological advancement in the form of big data, cloud services and artificial intelligence is critical for their future success,” Paratus chief operations officer Schalk Erasmus said.
“They need an independent, secure and highly sophisticated data centre. The Armada will store and protect client data 24/7; house and physically protect all equipment and computer systems; handle the migration from off-site to the data centre; provide back-up power generation; and offer an array of add-on services and features.”
Although Paratus operates its own resilient fibre network that interconnects the Armada facility to the rest of the world, it is carrier neutral, providing clients and tenants with host connectivity options and freedom of choice.
ResearchandMarkets.com reports that the African data centre market was worth US$2 billion in 2020 and the Arizton.com market report states that the data centre market saw investments of US$2,663 million in 2021 and is forecast to achieve a compound annual growth rate of 12,73% between 2022 and 2027.
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