Colocation is key now, but diversification is paramount to a sustainable strategy

“As a data centre player or operator, you mustn’t only think like a colocation service provider,” says Dan Kwach, General Manager, East Africa Data Centre.

In an exclusive interview with Construction Global, Kwach believes that while colocation is key in the current data centre market, providers must think differently and continue to meet or align with current market trends in order to remain sustainable.

"Colocation has been supported by the idea of customers buying their own equipment. This is very much a trend of today, but will it be the same in the future?” he says. “When I look at the market and the industry strength, there’s a growing shift from buying hardware to re-leasing services. Where does that place data centre providers?"

Kwach insists that the future rests with providers aligning with OEMs and the cloud service providers, as these will still remain as the business entities that will need colocation.

“As much as we are having the end users of these players hosted in our facilities today, that’s not the most sustainable business strategy moving forward,” he says.

Data centre providers must continue to ask the questions; how can we partner with cloud and content service providers so we can get into providing enterprise IT solutions and services, not just colocation?

For businesses with colocation the core centre of their business strategy, the companies cannot rest on their laurels.

“But if a company was to offer colocation, then it must think of value added services to realise a key differentiator in the market” he says.

Read the full interview in the September issue of African Business Review.