Internet Solutions (IS) has announced the launch of a new datacentre in Kwa-Zulu Natal, which forms part of the company’s current expansion project within the hosted and managed services division.
“The launch of the new Kwa-Zulu Natal (KZN) datacentre in Umhlanga supports our current national and African expansion strategy,” comments Greg Montjoie, Hosting Business Unit Manager at IS. “The KZN region has a strong base, with many industrial businesses and a well developed corporate community in Umhlanga, especially in the FMCG sector. We have therefore made a substantial investment into the KZN market, to the point where we now have the biggest hosting and managed services presence in the region.” IS currently has a staff compliment of 40 people operating in Durban to support the customer base there.
The new Umhlanga based datacentre is 250m² in size but has the ability to scale to 400m² should increased demand require. “This new datacentre adds to our existing 200m² premises, also located in Umhlanga, which has allowed us to establish a dedicated customer hosting centre that offers reduced costs and supports the growing trend of Software as a Service wrapped offerings,” says Montjoie.
Montjoie explains that an additional datacentre in KZN is also of strategic importance due to IS’ partnership with the eThekwini Municipality and their involvement in their metro connect fibre network. “The eThekwini Municipality has invested heavily in provisioning their own core fibre-optic cable network infrastructure, which is currently enabling them to self-provision their own connectivity services,” explains Montjoie. “The Municipality has begun offering this service to corporates, which in turn will fund the expansion of this initiative to local communities, giving Internet access to many underprivileged communities in the eThekwini Municipality. This project has also decreased the cost of last mile connectivity for local customers, which will enable us to offer more cost effective, fully integrated and aggregated hosted and managed services to local businesses that utilise this backbone.”
Montjoie also points out that IS’ managed hosting services are telco agnostic, which enables them to provision across any of the new or established service providers, ensuring IS clients can break out of the datacentre on any network infrastructure. “This is an important element as we are expecting a boom in the market due to the recent launch of the Seacom undersea cable,” he says. “The cable lands in Mtunzini and connects to Johannesburg and Durban, which will enable us to backhaul certain services over this infrastructure. This positions us well to accommodate the expected increase in demand from the new La Mercy airport and associated residential and commercial development when it all comes online.”
IS has secured bulk power supply from City Power to support all of our datacentre expansion initiatives. “The launch of our new KZN datacentre will also give us the opportunity to partner with Durban based content providers and Independent Software Vendors, so we would like to encourage them to approach IS to see where we can assist with developing and delivering local content,” says Montjoie.
“With all compliance and certifications already in place, as well as the extensive capacity planning and management that has gone into the launch of the datacentre, IS is confident that local customers will benefit from a world class hosted service,” he concludes.
