climate and comms

--> All companies – large and small – have IT requirements.   Especially today in the age of big data where everything is connected and all functions are automated and digitised and need to be online.   Those enterprises that are large enough – such as banks, MNC’s, Telco’s, mining houses have been able to afford to build their own data centres to house their IT infrastructure.    Others like SME’s which could not afford to (build their own DC’s) opted for a ‘server room’ or outsourced some of their requirements to a Cloud provider. There are numerous challenges for all companies in respect of how they approach ensuring the reliable provision of IT capacity to run their businesses.    Some companies are not big enough to justify their own DC (scale) and there is a shortage of IT expertise (skill).    Often times those that have the scale to build their own DC’s   then run foul of not having the requisite skills to run the...

Why build Data Centres in Africa when the rest of the World is better geared for them with power and connectivity and they continue to be built at a rapid pace in these advanced markets?     On the face of it – it makes more sense to continue hosting data and services in North Carolina or in Finland if you are an Africa corporate with data hosting and storage requirements. However things are changing in Africa.   “ Ex Africa semper aliquid novi ”   to quote Pliny the Elder – There’s always something new coming out of Africa.    What now?    Well there have been a few drivers.   Firstly there is now connectivity between Africa and the rest of the World.     Numerous submarine cables provide an instantaneous connection between the various landing points and the World Wide Web (in other words the Internet.)   Secondly there is a large effort to install fiber optic capacity within and between numerous African countr...

I saw an article the other day headlined   “ Why saying ‘ seven of the ten fastest growing economies are in Africa ‘ carries no real meaning” [1] (By Morten Jerven writing on africanarguments.org).    Not one to be put off by such one eyed perspectives – I thought I should read it.    Always get the ‘other ‘ perspective is what   I believe and advocate,   and so I did.    What followed was a clinical analysis of GDP’s, growth rates, inflation rates and the like, indicators, so oft leant upon by economists to underpin their arguments.   Basically a dismissing of the current African economic turnaround as being statistically misleading and so on.    But all was not bad – there was a concession at the end that   ‘ the evidence does not yet readily provide us with an answer ’.   Had it been included in the title as a rider, perhaps one would have read the article with a little less disregard for the approach of the aut...