Recent announcements from Oman and Nigeria underline the continuing growth of data centres across multiple regions outside their traditional homes in the US and Europe.
Digital infrastructure company Equinix and leading Omani telecommunications company Omantel have launched Equinix’s first data centre in Oman and its fourth across the Middle East and North Africa region.
Operated by Equinix, the site covers around 2,200 square metres of colocation space and 725 cabinets. The site also has space to expand to more than 2,150 cabinets.
Located in Barka, near Muscat, MC1, as the centre is known, benefits from connectivity to strategic cable landing stations and subsea cable systems. It will also link customers with more than 30 markets via the Equinix Internet Exchange platform. Equinix and Omantel announced their partnership in 2018.
Omantel says its network reaches over 50 countries globally. It currently has investments in more than 20 cable systems and leverages six cable landing stations in Oman and one in Marseille, France. Due to its Omantel links, MC1 will benefit from any further submarine cable investments by the telecommunications company.
Meanwhile engineering company Arup has announced that it has finished designing and planning Rack Centre's Lagos data centre expansion, announced last month.
Currently, construction is underway to increase the data centre's power capacity to 1.5MW. The subsequent Phase Two expansion will grow Rack Centre's facility to 6,000 square metres and to an IT capacity of around 13MW.
