Given the rapid growth of data and data consumption in Africa, South African-based global provider of engineering, management and specialist technical services, Aurecon believes telecom operators will have to find better, smarter ways to serve a data-hungry population throughout Africa.
In a media release the Company states that over 90% of all the data in the world was created in the past two years, and the total amount of data being captured and stored by industry doubles almost year-on-year.
"It is expected that by 2020, the amount of digital information in existence will have grown from 3.2 zettabytes today to 40 zettabytes," the company says.
"Every minute we send 204 million emails, generate 1,8 million Facebook likes, send 278 thousand Tweets and up-load 200 thousand photos to Facebook,"
The Company says the sheer size of the African continent, coupled with the fact that Sub-Saharan Africa's population is rising faster than the rest of the world (Population Reference Bureau predicts that Africa's population will double to 2.4 billion by 2050), equates to several hundred million internet users who demand internet performance.
The role of mobile infrastructure as a platform to connect to the Net is considered a key influence.
According to Statistics South Africa's General Household Survey Report, published in June 2014, which states that 17,9% of rural households in the country access the internet from mobile devices. Additionally, 30.8% of households use mobile devices to access the internet.
Peter Greaves, Aurecon's Expertise leader for Data & ICT Facilities comments: "The impact of this is that telecom operators will have to find better, smarter ways to serve a data-hungry population throughout Africa. Corporations and governments are also becoming aware of the increased need for data centres and the fact that outsourcing these services allows them to focus on their core activities. Concerns about unreliable power and inadequate security can similarly be delegated to a dedicated third party that will guarantee the required uptime and data integrity."
He adds: "While it's true that data centres can be remote, countries (especially African countries) need to start looking at more local solutions in order to ensure data sovereignty and efficient network performance. This demand will drive a significant data centre build-out in both East and West Africa over the next 20 years and now is the time to start reassessing the number of data centres in Africa, where they are located and how we can create scalable solutions to meet future data needs."
"There are many complexities involved with building data centres that become long-term assets. Creating long-term, dynamic, scalable data centres in Africa will require us to draw on the key lessons learned from around the globe as well as the knowledge from local experts in the field," believes Greaves.
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