Africa Data Centres, the pan-African network of interconnected, carrier-and cloud-neutral datacentres, intends to acquire the datacentre belonging to Standard Bank, located in Samrand, north of Johannesburg, South Africa.

The datacentre firm issued a statement which describes the Standard Bank facility as a Tier IV datacentre “to provide maximum levels of security and reliability for banking IT systems.”

Africa Data Centres said the facility has sufficient power and vacant space for significant expansion and will operate on a fully carrier-and cloud-neutral basis.

Stephane Duproz, CEO of Africa Data Centres, said: “The unique combination of this outstanding facility with Africa Data Centres certified operational excellence makes it the ideal choice for the most demanding organisations, particularly those in the financial services sector, who demand the highest standards of security and resilience for their IT infrastructure. We will open this hidden gem to the market, on an open-access basis, allowing any modern technology-driven organisation to benefit from this outstanding facility.”

Duproz said there is an increasing demand from datacentre service from national, continental and global customers. He said the company has also started work on a further 10 MW IT capacity facility at its Midrand campus.

Jörg Fischer of Standard Bank said: “Standard Bank is extremely pleased to have completed this historic milestone with Africa Data Centres.”

Africa Data Centres said the development builds on the company’s mission to accelerate Africa’s digital transformation.

Recently Duproz told ITWeb Africa that the company will intensify its interests in Kenya, and said the East African Country is ranked in second place – just behind South Africa – in terms of the growth and development of its datacentre market.

Duproz said: “We are currently seeing a significant transformation in the profile in the requests we are getting in Kenya. At ADC Kenya we are still seeing a very healthy take-up by enterprise, they understand that is more secure, more cost effective to have their IT equipment in a proprietary centre than in their own facility, this includes banks… it shows that Kenya is becoming country number two in the datacentre market in Africa.”