Africa Data Centres, a business of Cassava Technologies, a pan-African technology group, has partnered with TechAccess to implement a Data Centre Infrastructure Management (DCIM) solution in Lagos, Cape Town and Nairobi facilities.
DCIM software is used to measure, monitor and manage all of the IT equipment and supporting infrastructure housed within data centres.
As the solutions integrator for the project, TechAccess is responsible for the software, hardware, integrations, project management, professional services and other project deliverables that make up the DCIM platform.
These will come from two vendors. First is data centre optimisation software from EkkoSense, and next is an asset management platform from Assetspire. The solution will be deployed in Africa Data Centres’ two sites in Johannesburg, and its facilities in Cape Town, Nairobi and Lagos.
According to Tesh Durvasula, CEO of Africa Data Centres, the goal of this DCIM implementation is to provide Africa Data Centres site administrators with a holistic view of each facility’s performance to ensure that all resources, such as energy, equipment and floor space, are used as efficiently as possible.
“This will assist Africa Data Centres and its partners to gain critical insights into their operations, with direct and instant access to real-time data at the click of a button. When combined with analytics, these insights will enable our customers to realise a wide range of savings in terms of time, money and increased productivity,” he adds.
“We are delighted to be working with Africa Data Centres in implementing a DCIM solution that delivers exceptional insight into their assets and operations,” says Jaxon Martin, CTO for TechAccess.
Martin says that as data centres evolve over the next few years and net-zero initiatives become increasingly mainstream, data centres have to find ways to adapt and become more energy efficient and responsive to customers’ demands.
Net-zero involves cutting greenhouse gas emissions to as close to zero as possible and creating a state in which greenhouse gases going into the atmosphere are balanced by their removal out of the atmosphere, by oceans or forests, for example, Martin explains. “We aim to deliver next-generation DCIM together with our partners Assetspire and Ekkosense through innovative and industry-leading analytics and machine learning, giving our customers such Africa Data Centres a true, competitive edge.”
EkkoSense’s CEO, Dean Boyle, said: “Across the industry, leading data centre operators such as Africa Data Centres are under pressure to deliver escalating digital workloads while cutting energy usage and securing carbon savings at the same time.
“To help them achieve this balancing act, our EkkoSoft Critical AI-powered data centre optimisation solution is helping the data centre giant to meet these challenges. We are delighted to be working with the TechAccess team on this important project for Africa Data Centres.”
Assetspire is thrilled to have been selected as part of the next-generation DCIM being deployed across Africa Data Centres estate along with its partners, TechAccess and EkkoSense, comments Steve Beber, the company’s Founder and CEO.
“We aim to provide accurate, centralised visibility of all critical building assets, combining lifecycle asset information with intelligent data from existing technologies and those being deployed,” adds Beber. “This will generate an intelligent, digital twin for operationalising, managing and reporting on all business assets.
Beber says where outdated, traditional DCIM has failed for data centres in the past, the combination of smart Spire software and EkkoSoft Critical will succeed, by offering two mature, trusted, best-in-class solutions that harness the best of hardware and software, to deliver immediate value.
In conclusion, Durvasula says Africa’s data centre industry is booming, with a wide range of greenfield projects already set in motion across the continent. “The African data centre market is expected to realise investments of over $5 Billion US dollars by 2027.
This is driven by various factors, such as cloud adoption and increased connectivity across the continent, as the gap in the digital divide is slowly narrowed. DCIM can help the industry realise savings and efficiencies that are key to helping these investments succeed.
