Santosh Naraidoo, colocation product manager at SEACOM.

SEACOM, an Africa-focused telecoms and managed services company, now offers colocation and IP transit services via the Equinix-owned and operated JN1 International Business Exchange data centre in Johannesburg, South Africa.

The brand-new data centre, according to SEACOM, which began operations in July 2024 and was officially launched on October 23, provides secure, neutral colocation and interconnection services to enterprise customers, as well as serving as a continental hub for the US-based Equinix.

SEACOM now offers colocation services to enterprise customers through an agreement with Equinix, and the company says it will be providing an operating environment for IT infrastructure that includes reliable power supply and cooling solutions, multiple layers of integrated security, as well as service-level agreements that guarantee system uptime and resilience.

In addition, SEACOM says it will also offer IP transit and scalable bandwidth services of up to 4Gbps from South Africa to Lisbon, Portugal, delivering low-latency Internet connectivity and connecting customers to Europe and other points of presence around the world.

Santosh Naraidoo, colocation product manager at SEACOM, comments: “Though we have enjoyed a longstanding working relationship with Equinix over the years, this is the first time we will be offering colocation services using Equinix infrastructure.

“This is a very exciting time as South Africa’s colocation landscape is shifting, with more and more highly connected data centers such as Equinix as well as vendors and hyper scalers entering the market and expanding the hosting capabilities of the region.”

He continues: “By offering transit services with Equinix, we are increasing the number of transit options and vendors that our customers can choose to work with. The new service offering also aligns with the growing need for cloud computing and cloud-based services across the region, as more businesses start to leverage the power of these environments.”

Naraidoo pointed out that Africa's expanding ecosystem of subsea Internet cables and terrestrial infrastructure is resulting in data centres playing a part in the continent's digital transformation and improving its capacity to host data and enterprise networks.

He adds: “National challenges such as load shedding have also had a profound impact on the demand for colocation. Many businesses now see the value of taking their systems off-site and moving them to facilities that are built to secure and protect critical systems and resources.”