Democratising AI in SA: Digital Parks Africa and Boston IT Solutions South Africa set to lower the barrier to entry

AI is a top priority for businesses around the world, but challenges such as high costs, a lack of skills, finding appropriate use cases, and a lack of access to right-sized solutions, stand in the way of widespread adoption in the enterprise.

• For more information about Digital Parks Africa, click here.
• For more information about Boston IT Solutions South Africa, click here.

Wiaan Vermaak, Chief Commercial Officer at Digital Parks Africa (DPA) and Chris Coetzee, Business Director at Boston IT Solutions South Africa (Boston), are working together to address challenges, starting with affordable access to the necessary infrastructure, architecting the right solutions, and providing world-class technical support.

Coetzee says: “Major enterprises with the necessary resources are pioneering the use of AI in South Africa, but for many enterprises and small to mid-size businesses, there is hesitancy around AI. There is a perception that custom AI is costly and complex, and a growing realisation that the compute resources required to run AI can prove prohibitively expensive whether it is on-premises or in the public cloud.”

Vermaak explains that AI requires high performance computing capacity, significantly more electrical power than required for traditional data centres, and advanced cooling systems. 

“The cost and complexity of upgrading on-premises infrastructure to cope with the demands of AI could deter organisations from harnessing AI,” he says.

GPUaaS, PRaaS designed for Africa

However, they note that South African organisations need not follow the AI models adopted by organisations in Europe and North America. 

Coetzee says: “Boston IT Solutions South Africa and DPA believe there’s no need for AI to be overly costly and complex in South Africa. 

We’re taking hands to democratise the technology with GPU as a Service (GPUaaS) and AI Progression as a Service (PRaaS), which puts the necessary infrastructure, solutions and support within reach of local businesses.”

The collaboration will make GPUaaS available via DPA, which offers world class infrastructure, transparency on power costs, and expert infrastructure management and support. 

This offering will deliver a cost-effective, scalable service model providing access to high-performance GPUs.

PRaaS from Boston, a global provider of bespoke certified IT systems, will support businesses in launching AI initiatives. 

Coetzee says: “ PRaaS brings to market the developer skills, applications, implementation and support to help customers deploy the appropriate AI for their use cases.”

Lowering the barrier of entry to AI

This collaboration aims to address the high cost of AI implementations. Coetzee says: “As an NVIDIA Elite partner, we are able to design better GPU infrastructure solutions that will facilitate a lower barrier to entry. By offering data scientist-as-a-service and algorithm-as-a-service we are able to design unique applications, addressing our region’s unique problems. Our partnership with DPA is critical, as their world class data centres effectively create an ecosystem whereby the right infrastructure is powering the right application.

By making the infrastructure available as a service with DPA, we can lower the barrier to entry to AI, with issues such as power, availability and data sovereignty addressed, and billing in Rand rather than foreign currency.”

Vermaak notes that Digital Parks SA data centres were designed, built and maintained by the leaders on the continent for Data centre construction, Master Power Technologies (Pty) Ltd, with facilities designed to meet the demands of organisations harnessing AI.

He says: “DPA is well prepared to host medium and large infrastructure, GPUs are power hungry, and our data centre can accommodate this, with each rack providing 15kW and higher power available upon request. We can cater for every size of customer – from a quarter cabinet to a 38-cabinet pod, or even a 500-cabinet large scale deployment. Our pass-through power billing model means customers don’t pay a fixed monthly power cost; they only pay for the power they actually use. Customers find this transparency attractive, and it can deliver significant savings for them.”

Coetzee concludes: “Through our collaboration, DPA and Boston IT Solutions South Africa are bridging gaps to make AI accessible and available as cost effectively as possible, helping local businesses advance their AI journey.”

About Digital Parks Africa

Digital Parks Africa (DPA) is a 100% African-owned data centre service provider, committed to revolutionising Africa’s digital landscape. We deliver world-class, reliable, and agile data centre solutions tailored to the needs of businesses of all sizes. With expertise rooted in local knowledge and enhanced by global insights, we understand Africa’s unique challenges and opportunities. 

Our facilities offer scalable, high-density rack solutions, innovative cooling, and industry-leading PUE ratings. DPA is dedicated to empowering businesses with seamless scalability, low latency, robust disaster recovery, and 24/7 support. Always reliable, always agile—DPA is your partner for world-class data centre solutions. 

For more information about Digital Parks Africa, click here.

About Boston Limited

Trusted for over 30 years and operating in over 40 countries, Boston Limited is a global provider of co-designed, custom, certified IT systems for next-generation intelligent infrastructure. The company’s edge devices, desktops, servers, storage, clusters and reference architectures are available via its industry-leading ecommerce platform as well as its customer-centred engineering-led engagement model. Boston Limited is a part of US-based SourceCode, LLC. 

We are an innovative technology company that has evolved and thrived over the course of three decades, each marked by distinct focuses and achievements. We take pride in our journey, which has seen us transition from a component distributor to a system integrator, then a system integrator with value-add, and now, in this decade, a leader in data, HPC, and AI solutions. 

For more information about Boston IT Solutions South Africa, click here.