The South African data centre company paving the way for an AI-enabled Africa

Digital Parks Africa is blazing a trail in South Africa with its flexible, world-class data centre facilities designed to deliver reliability and future-proof capacity to support the growing demands of AI.

This South-African-owned data centre operator has seen incredible growth since it was founded in 2017. 

• Click here to learn more about Digital Parks Africa

When cloud computing started gaining popularity, the company’s founders noted a large increase in companies demanding open access colocation hosting as a superior option to running on-premises data centres.

This trend has accelerated, as organisations realise that colocation with the right data centre hosting provider addresses organisational priorities such as cost control, risk mitigation and revenue assurance.

“Delivering what the local market required is what inspired the founding of Digital Parks Africa. We have continued to invest in staying a step ahead of market needs, making us the trusted, carrier-neutral data centre partner of choice for many of South Africa’s largest businesses,” says Digital Parks Africa Chief Commercial Officer, Wiaan Vermaak.

Scalable, innovative design

As demand for advanced, local data centre capacity grew, DPA scaled out capacity with its modular data centre design. This allows Digital Parks Africa to easily accommodate the requirements of any size customer – from a quarter cabinet to a 38-cabinet pod, or even a 500-cabinet large-scale deployment. 

Digital Parks Africa Chief Operations Officer Jacques de Jager says: “The company’s ability to meet the unique needs of every client is one of the secrets of its success.”

“If a hyperscaler wants a large, open, and self-designed space for its numerous servers, DPA can simply use the space that would be taken by several smaller pods, and equip a larger room to serve the client’s needs,” he says.

DPA also uses innovative design, cooling and power backup systems to ensure the data centre facilities can accommodate the new compute and power demands of AI. Among other innovations, it uses a contained hot-and-cold-isle system – where cold air is forced into each module through the floor into the heat generating equipment, while the hot air is sucked out through the top.

These pods are self-contained, too, providing clients complete control and isolation of their racks, making it easier and more efficient for security, cooling and fire prevention.

Internal excellence

Another area in which Digital Parks Africa (DPA) sets itself apart is its internal expertise.

It boasts an in-house team of Tier-3 internationally certified architects, engineers and operational staff. This combined with the many years of global experience, they have in design, build, and operations within their group of companies, gives DPA an unrivalled advantage in the data centre industry.

“DPA leverages over 25 years of specialized experience in data centre infrastructure, drawing from the expertise within its dedicated group of companies,” says Vermaak.

Unlike other data centres, which rely on external analysts, consultants, and third-party service providers – often increasing costs and introducing external biases—DPA manages these functions internally.

This approach allows the company to be truly cost efficient, a benefit it is committed to passing on to its customers.

Opportunities for the future

De Jager explained that while it can be constraining to make long-term plans in a rapidly-evolving industry, there are technologies that Digital Parks Africa is tracking with interest.

These include low & medium earth -orbit satellite services, which are quickly rising in popularity thanks to their technological advances in reduced latency and time to market.

Furthermore, AI continues to be a major focus within the data centre industry – largely due to the technology’s huge energy and cooling requirements. This is driving many businesses that still run on-premise data centres to reconsider these facilities for colocation with dedicated data centre companies. 

DPA is well-equipped to meet these evolving demands. “Colocating within the right data centre is of the utmost importance to ensure cost effective and sustainable hosting service.” says Vermaak.

In addition to this Digital Parks Africa is collaborating with Boston IT Solutions South Africa to lower the barrier to AI adoption, making it more accessible and affordable for South African businesses. By offering scalable, high-performance GPU infrastructure and AI Progression as a Service (PRaaS), this collaborative partnership will democratise access to GPUaaS and address challenges around high costs, technical complexity, and resource limitations, providing a transparent billing model that will help lower the barrier to AI adoption.

Click here to learn more about Digital Parks Africa or book a tour to see our Samrand facility for yourself.