Expereo reveals major data center expansion into Africa

Expereo has announced a major data center expansion into the growing African market.

Numerous strategically located, carrier-neutral data centers are planned to launch across 2018 in pivotal pan-African locations. A Johannesburg, South Africa hub recently opened, with more locations to follow in East, West and North Africa throughout 2018.

According to the company, the new Africa Cloud Acceleration Hubs will enable Expereo to connect more customers across the Internet on an enhanced global scale, with improved infrastructure and optimised Internet connectivity for the highest availability and performance of SD-WAN, IPSec and Cloud/SaaS acceleration via Expereo’s XCA and XCA Edge platforms.

Irwin Fouwels, CEO, Expereo speaking on the expansion said, “Across Africa, we see enormous opportunity for the cloud to accelerate innovation, allow governments to provide better services, and drive economic growth for both African-based businesses and global corporates operating on the continent. To succeed, they need guaranteed performance and reliability from their Internet. That’s why we are expanding our reach with these strategically located African hubs, providing our customers with the best options for cloud connectivity on a truly global scale.”

Africa expansion
Expereo’s 2018 network infrastructure expansion will focus primarily on Africa, enabling enhanced connectivity and reliability for enterprise companies in the area. The recently launched Johannesburg hub is soon to be bolstered by new locations across East, West and North Africa.

Previously, African Internet traffic was dominated by “northbound” traffic, with data routed primarily via Europe due to the structure of the global cable systems, before arriving at its destination. Expereo expects to see a reversal of this trend, with “southbound” traffic increasing as the economies of African countries continue to grow, thus creating more cloud demand and SaaS adoption.

Major SaaS providers such as Microsoft and AWS are already opening cloud data centers in South Africa to meet this demand. Domestic Internet requirements within African countries are rising and corporates continue to expand their business into the area, all of which will drive this ongoing change.

Expereo hubs list:

• North America: Seattle, Los Angeles, Dallas, Miami, Ashburn, New York, Chicago, Toronto
• South America: Sao Paulo
• Europe: London, Paris, Madrid, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Milan
• Africa: Johannesburg, East Africa (2018), West Africa (2018), North Africa (2018)
• Asia-Pacific: Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, Sydney

Data center selection
Expereo partners with data center providers on a case-by-case basis. According to the company, its hubs are strategically chosen to leverage the best service in each location, with robust connectivity to the major Internet exchanges, and with the best proximity to the Internet’s major nerve points. They are built to meet the demand of global customers who require optimal connectivity for their SD-WAN and network operations as their business grows in the African area.

Edited by Dean Workman
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