HPE brings multi-cloud data centre solution to South Africa

HPE has brought a new multi-cloud Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) data centre solution to the South African market. This powerful multi-cloud data centre model is all about leveraging the cloud to define the customer experience, while underpinned by HPE’s GreenLake platform.

This unique multi-cloud offering is the latest culmination of a long-standing partnership between HPE and Datacentrix, and the infrastructure power of Teraco – Africa’s largest data centre ecosystem. Says HPE South Africa CEO, President Ntuli: “With their expertise and knowledge of cloud hosting, Datacentrix is the ideal systems integrator and partner for multi-cloud collaboration.”

The data centre offering runs on HPE’s GreenLake platform, with a variety of Datacentrix solutions and services bolted on top. These include backup and disaster recovery by Veeam, as well as storage and compute. It delivers the cloud experience across data centres, multi-clouds and edges, and provides data insights to better manage capacity, performance, compliance and cost.

Ntuli says the solution is not only technologically innovative, but is also a direct response to the needs of South African enterprises. “There is a considerable uptake of public cloud services in South Africa, but companies still need to retain control over their own data. As a result, many applications and a lot of data remain on-premises for business reasons.

“However, companies with an existing public cloud presence can now leverage GreenLake to combine the cloud’s simplicity and agility with the governance, compliance, and visibility of the Hybrid IT model.”

Ntuli says while companies cannot take everything to a public cloud, the new data centre offering gives customers flexibility by enabling them to pay for the services and capacity that they use rather than having to invest upfront.

Managing complex environments

Datacentrix CEO Ahmed Mahomed says the company has the expertise to manage complex customer environments, as the data centre solution is an extension of a service already being offered to the market. “We manage complex environments and the customer can be assured that they are outsourcing these capabilities to two reputable organisations.”

He says the PaaS solution lowers capital expenditure as it gives customers the flexibility to only pay for what they use and to scale up services as and when needed. “If you think about it, the cost of managing infrastructure is significant. Now, customers never have to worry about building their own data centre. We provide a cost-effective cloud platform, where the customer can obtain extra capacity in our data centre when they need to for solutions such as data recovery, for example.”

Teraco CEO Jan Hnizdo says the organisation is excited to be the critical infrastructure provider to further the strategic partnership between HPE and Datacentrix. He adds that this cloud hosting platform is significant for businesses as most are now pursuing a hybrid cloud adoption strategy, given the attractiveness of the pay-per-use model that the cloud offers.

Greater choice

Hnizdo says the offering has come at a great time for South African enterprises that now have even more choice with regards to cloud offerings. “Enterprises will benefit from the flexibility of the cloud while leveraging the Teraco data centre and interconnection platform. This provides enterprises with cost-effective and secure interconnections to dense ecosystems and cloud-on-ramps. As a result, Datacentrix deploying the HPE GreenLake cloud platform at Teraco was the strategic choice,” he says.

“Our core business practices will continue to be a value-driven, innovative approach that is services-led, spanning both customers and partners, as well as a people-focused environment that fosters a culture of inclusivity,” says Mahomed. “HPE is one of our strategic partners and we are excited about pursuing this opportunity with them.”