Teraco acquires iconic Great Westerford building

Great Westerford, a landmark building with over 30 000sqm of premium grade office space, is situated in the prime location of Rondebosch, Cape Town.

The conclusion of the acquisition means that Teraco has ownership of the building that houses its CT1 data centre investment and results in the full ownership of all facilities and the underlying land that support Teraco’s leading, carrier neutral colocation portfolio. CT1 is the second largest interconnect hub in Africa, with over 6 300 interconnects and more than 1 000 deployable cabinets supported by five megawatts (MW) of utility power.

As one of Africa’s most digitally connected cities, Cape Town is a preferred destination for Teraco’s continued investment into data centre infrastructure in South Africa. Home to thriving digitally connected enterprises, including telecommunications, financial services, e-commerce, logistics, and retail, Cape Town benefits from being the landing of multiple major subsea cable systems such as ACE, WACS, SAT-3 and SAFE. The abundance of subsea cable connectivity is set to continue with the landing of Google’s Equiano and the 2AFRICA cable systems.

“We’re extremely honoured to be the next custodian of this iconic building,” says Jan Hnizdo, CEO at Teraco. “We see Great Westerford as the home for technology, professional services, telecommunications, and financial services firms looking for the convenience of being located in the heart of Cape Town’s southern suburbs, close to transport nodes, shopping centres, and excellent schools while enjoying access to Teraco’s global digital reach.”

As part of Teraco’s broader Cape Town campus, the CT1 data centre provides enterprises with direct access to Platform Teraco comprising a rich ecosystem of over 250 network providers, global cloud on-ramps, subsea cable systems, access to over 50 managed service providers, and direct peering at NAPAfrica, Africa’s largest internet exchange point. Clients deployed in either of these facilities can connect to AWS Direct Connect and Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute directly or via Teraco’s Africa Cloud Exchange (ACX). The Great Westerford acquisition brings an historic South African building into the digital age, which is now capable of supporting its tenants’ physical and digital business requirements.

Clients at Great Westerford benefit from having their digital operations and data close to the edge of their networks, increasing performance, reducing connectivity costs, and scaling their digital business operations globally, while reaching their entire connected data communities through a single private and secure connection.

“The sale of this prime property was done to provide capital for our large development pipeline. Our close relationship with Teraco, one of many good years standing, afforded us the opportunity to identify the appropriate buyer of this unique asset. We are confident Teraco will take this building into the digital future, providing a home for the many fine tenants it already has,” says Arnold Maresky, CEO at Ingenuity.