Africa's largest colocation data centre provider, Teraco Data Environments, has begun construction on a new data centre in River Fields Bredell, 20km north of the current Isando campus.

The company has confirmed the development while it finalises expansion of its Isando campus to 20 megawatts.

Teraco CEO, Lex van Wyk, says that the Bredell site will bring Teraco's total power supply to 50 megawatts by the end of 2017: "Teraco will be comparable to global data centres and by a large margin, Africa's biggest data centre provider."

He says the current 20-megawatt site will be completed in December 2016 and the target for the new site's completion is September 2017: "The new data centre facility will be situated in Bredell, we are excited to be part of the development of the area and to be able to meet the demands of our local and global clients."

As part of the expansion to Bredell, Teraco will also be extending NAPAfrica, Africa's largest Internet Exchange Point (IXP): "We want to ensure that all our clients are able to benefit from the peering exchange and all the technology within existing Teraco data centres," says Van Wyk.

Giving context to the rapid expansion and impressive 50 megawatt power offering, van Wyk says there are a few key drivers for growth within the colocation data centre market: "Cloud computing and outsourcing within enterprise has grown in acceptance and popularity. The Internet of Things (IoT), increased demand for online content and storage requirements are also all trends playing a significant role within a data centre."

Meanwhile cloud industry experts have said the rate of adoption of cloud solutions in Africa has increases significantly compared to the situation a year ago.

Recent research by Oracle suggests that by 2025 80% of corporate owned data centres will move to the cloud, and 80% of IT budgets will be spent on cloud and not on traditional IT systems.