{"id":82253,"date":"2013-07-18T10:57:19","date_gmt":"2013-07-18T08:57:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=82253"},"modified":"2013-08-03T08:51:49","modified_gmt":"2013-08-03T06:51:49","slug":"standard-banks-excellent-data-centre-bleeding-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/cloud-hosting\/82253-standard-banks-excellent-data-centre-bleeding-money.html","title":{"rendered":"Standard Bank’s excellent data centre bleeding money"},"content":{"rendered":"

Standard Bank<\/a> spent R1.6 billion to build a magnificent tier 4 data centre in Midrand, but according to well-placed industry sources, the facility remains mostly empty and is costing Standard Bank millions to keep up and running.<\/p>\n

The data centre is widely considered to be the best in the Southern Hemisphere, and features its own electricity sub-station and fully redundant terrestrial, wireless, and satellite connectivity.<\/p>\n

Standard Bank DC bleeding money<\/h3>\n

Building and maintaining this excellent facility comes at a cost. One industry source said that the 27,000 square meter facility, built on a 65,000 square metre site, costs around R1 million per month to maintain.<\/p>\n

While the basic facility cost R1.6 billion to build, it did not include the cost of much of the computer equipment and networking requirements. Some experts put the total bill in excess of R2 billion.<\/p>\n

According to information received by MyBroadband, Standard Bank is trying to sell the facility to limit its losses, but to date has not been successful.<\/p>\n

The bank was, according to these sources, also trying to lease co-location space in the facility to generate revenue. However, security requirements related to a banking data centre put a spanner in the works.<\/p>\n

Standard Bank recently told BusinessTech that it was still looking at ways of \u201ccommercially optimising the capacity we are not currently using\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe nature of the transaction may take on many shapes so it\u2019s too early to speculate,\u201d Standard bank said.<\/p>\n

\"Standard<\/a>

Standard Bank data centre in Midrand<\/p><\/div>\n

Upgrade to older Standard bank Riverclub data centre<\/h3>\n

What is curious is that the bank is expanding its existing data centre in Riverclub despite the fact that its Midrand facility has a lot of unused space.<\/p>\n

Standard Bank explained that its Riverclub facility is a disaster recovery site and should be a standalone facility to ensure business continuity.<\/p>\n

\u201cStandard Bank strives to ensure that there is minimal disruption to its daily banking activities. It is therefore imperative that any backup facility can accommodate the full data load should there be any disruption at any of our data centres,\u201d a Standard Bank spokesperson said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn line with good business practice the necessary investments and upgrades are made as and when required.\u201d<\/p>\n

Standard Bank added that existing (non-disaster recovery) services are being migrated to the Midrand facility in a phased approach.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe migration is substantially complete which has enabled us to consolidate and shut down two other data centres. The remaining services will be migrated as and when appropriate,\u201d the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n

More on data centres<\/h3>\n

Standard Bank R2 billion data centre bleeding cash<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Big Internet boost for Teraco in South Africa<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Lower prices and faster downloads, NAPAfrica promises<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Free national peering points from Teraco<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Standard Bank has built what is widely seen as the country\u2019s best data centre, but according to industry sources it is bleeding money<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":82183,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[447,35,1851],"class_list":["post-82253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cloud-hosting","tag-data-centre","tag-headline","tag-standard-bank"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82253"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82253"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82253\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82321,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82253\/revisions\/82321"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/82183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}