JSE-listed Allied Electronics (Altron) subsidiary Altron Systems Integration (Altron SI) has partnered with vendor-neutral co-location data centre provider Teraco Data Environments.

The partnership will enable Altron SI to offer its customers a secure data environment within the most interconnected cloud ecosystem in Africa that matches infrastructure and networks to one or multiple clouds and business partners.

“Our customers need a partner who is going to manage the migration and ongoing operations of this infrastructure so they do not have to worry about it and can, in turn, focus on delivering on their own business promises to their customers,” says Altron SI chief digital and technology officer Vaughn Naidoo, highlighting the start of a beneficial partnership for the business and its customers.

“The interconnection density present within Teraco’s facilities is not available elsewhere in Africa. Teraco’s diverse ecosystem is home to all major cloud on-ramps in the region, making this a strategic choice for the deployment of Altron’s platform,” he says.

“The cloud on-ramps in Teraco’s data centres offer fast, highly secure interconnection to the banking, insurance, mining, retail and logistics sectors. Partnering with Altron SI as an enablement platform allows us to extend a truly hybrid cloud environment to their customers,” adds Teraco head of sales Sven Blom.

According to Naidoo, the partnership will fill an important part of the strategy for customers who have a cloud strategy, but no longer want to manage their own data centre or computer room, or are midcycle in their current technology lifecycle.

The process of placing the right workloads into the right architectures starts with gaining an understanding of customers’ holistic strategies and proposed journey to the cloud.

“Not all workloads belong in the cloud, as can be seen by how many of our customers are moving back to hybrid architectures.”

Through Teraco, Altron SI can provide simplified deployments. With cloud and outsourced networking services now becoming the norm, Altron SI customers can more easily benefit without implementing additional physical hardware, software or infrastructure.

Teraco’s uptime and resilience will give Altron SI customers access to a distinct competitive advantage, with fewer errors and downtime, as networks architected on interconnection principles are far more resilient than one supported by point-to-point connections.

Further, Altron SI will provide seamless collaboration and access to carrier-neutral data centres where they can connect to multiple providers, improving resilience as issues that may crop up with only a single vendor are negated.

In addition, with the rise of the Internet of Things as a trend, Teraco’s interconnected environment will allow all endpoints to work as intended.

Teraco provides carrier and cloud-neutral co-location data centres in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban and, with over 20 000 cross-connects, is Africa’s most interconnected data centre hub.