In this episode of ITWeb TV, Samuel Mungadze, ITWeb Africa editor, speaks to Prenesh Padayachee, group chief digital infrastructure officer at Seacom, about Africa’s hyperscale economy and connectivity.
In today’s hyperscale economy, connectivity is no longer sufficient. Enterprises and global cloud providers want infrastructure that is not only high-performing and scalable, but also vendor-neutral, interoperable and trust-based.
This is according to Prenesh Padayachee, group chief digital infrastructure officer at Seacom. He noted that for digital infrastructure providers, this presents a strategic dilemma: how do you scale up and integrate vertically without compromising client control? How do you build a high-capacity, resilient network while staying data centre-neutral in a market increasingly shaped by alliances and exclusivity?
Resultantly, he said these parties want the freedom to connect wherever they want, however they want, and with whomever they wish, without being locked into closed ecosystems or bundled platforms.
In an interview with ITWeb TV, Padayachee discussed the digital infrastructure landscape in Africa, with a particular focus on the need for improvements in both subsea and terrestrial networks.
He also addressed data neutrality and the role of data centres in fostering trust and affordability in data hosting across Africa.
Padayachee explained how Seacom’s infrastructure is vital for connecting to these data centres, facilitating seamless data transfer.
He went on to introduce the concept of elastic connectivity, which he said allows customers to scale bandwidth according to their needs, which is crucial as data centres expand.
Additionally, the challenges posed by data sovereignty requirements are a laser-focus of discussion, as data centre neutrality enables multinationals to comply with local regulations while optimising their operations.
“The way we see it at Seacom is that data centres have become a necessity across all industries. Lots of people move into the cloud. Many organisations previously used to have what they considered a data centre, but by and large it was a machine room that hosted a couple of servers and things like that.
“I think with the advent of data centres, or rather the ‘explosion’ of data centres across the African continent, what’s starting to happen now is there’s much more trust in data centres.
“The cost points to host in a data centre are much lower than they were previously as well. This has now kind of prompted people into: do I host on site or do I put it into a data centre? I’m not just talking about ‘do I put it into public cloud or not?’ That’s a different sort of discussion.”
He continued: “Moving into data centres, they also want to have the ability to have some sort of redundancy in what they do in a data centre.
Prenesh Padayachee, group chief digital infrastructure officer at Seacom.
“But from a Seacom perspective, and specifically under Seacom infrastructure, we provide that underlying infrastructure to connect to the data centre. It’s all fine and well to host the data centre, but if you can’t connect out of the data centre, you have a different sort of problem or different issues to deal with.
“So, that’s why this data centre neutrality thing for us is important. And when you look at the investments that we made, and you look at the sort of portfolio of services that we have, you’ll see in our portfolio of services, we don’t have a data centre portfolio.
“We use generally carrier-neutral data centres that we put connectivity into. And that allows us then to be a seamless provider of connectivity, not just in South Africa, but across the African continent, because those data centres then connect directly onto the SQL backbone and we can move your data to wherever you want to.”
Padayachee highlighted the advancements in subsea connectivity, but emphasised the outdated state of terrestrial infrastructure, especially in South Africa, where there has been a lack of new long-distance networks.
He also noted the transition from copper to fibre, acknowledging that while fibre rollout has progressed, it still does not adequately serve a significant portion of the population.
Padayachee explained: “I think as long as we continue to grow the consumer market in Africa and the SMME market in Africa, there’ll still be a place for fibre.
“I do think fibre will work very closely with fixed wireless access technologies. But as much as you may have those technologies as a last mile connectivity medium, you’ll still need fibre from the aggregation point as backhaul and things like that. It’s whether it’s taking it to a different continent, via subsea cable, but you still have to have that ability to aggregate that capacity.
“And fibre is the only way to do that. Whether we’ll get large rollouts of last mile fibre in underserviced areas, I think that will take a long time to come. And I think it’s purely because the economics for that don’t make sense just yet. But I do think it will become a reality in time.”
