Pan-African carrier-neutral datacentre operator Open Access Data Centres (OADC) has announced its flagship datacentre in Lekki, Lagos, is operational, and that it has rolled out three new core facilities in South Africa – including expansion of an existing facility in Durban.

The company is looking to engage telecommunications services providers, ISPs, cloud operators, the wholesale community and enterprises with what it describes as “a truly client focussed service experience and an extended African cloud ecosystem.”

The first phase of OADC’s flagship facility, OADC Lagos, is now operational.

A statement released by the company reads, “Built on the largest (four hectares) single datacentre (DC) campus in West Africa, OADC Lagos is a carrier neutral, Tier III, hyperscale DC designed with expansion capacity up to 20MW of site load across more than 7,200m2 of white space – sufficient for 3,200 racks. High-capacity international connectivity will be available directly from the facility as soon as the Equiano subsea cable goes live at the end of this year, and the datacentre is fully interconnected to all cable landing stations and key datacentres, enabling a wide range of organisations to extend their operations in Nigeria and into the broader West Africa region.”

OADC CEO Dr Ayotunde Coker says: “OADC Lagos is our flagship datacentre, offering tailored hosting/colocation solutions and high-availability interconnection to existing internet exchange points in Lagos. It also hosts the landing of Google’s 144 Terabit per second Equiano cable, delivering an open-access gateway to hyperscale international connectivity, and as such playing a crucial role in meeting Nigeria's future international connectivity needs.

“OADC Lagos is integral to our unique, core-to-edge, open-access DC ecosystem. Key clients from the cloud and telco community have committed their expansion to OADC Lagos, while we also continue to progress our plans for nationwide deployment of core and edge DCs during 2023.”

New datacentres in South Africa

OADC has deployed a new core DC to serve the cloud ecosystem in Isando, Johannesburg.

“Configured with an initial 1,600 square metres of IT white space and up to 7MW of site load, OADC JNB1 has significant expansion capacity, enabling growth in line with client demand to 3,000 square metres and 15MW,” the company states.

According to OADC, two new DCs in Cape Town will soon be operational, with one coming online in Rondebosch in December, the second at Brackenfell in January 2023.

“Both facilities have been configured with an initial 1,000+ square metres of IT white space, can be scaled up to 800+ racks as demand grows and have site loads of up to 5MW and 3MW respectively.

To meet growing demand for world-class, carrier-neutral datacentre services in Durban and across the wider KwaZulu Natal region, Phase 2 of OADC Durban will also be operational by mid-December 2022, adding a further 110 racks at this strategically important facility where the international 2Africa submarine cable is scheduled to land in January 2023,” the company adds.