More than 4 000 servers, 2 Petabytes of SAN storage, 1 460 databases and 270 terabytes of unique daily data backups this is the scale of service that Cybernest's data centre operations is currently supporting.
"That's only what we've been doing for Telkom itself. Over and above managing about R2.5 billion worth of IT infrastructure for Telkom, we do data hosting and disaster recovery for about 80 external enterprise customers," says Althon Beukes, Executive: Infrastructure Operations.
"We also have the IT skills, with more than approximately 600 full-time specialists in infrastructure management, operations support systems, database management, storage and desktop support. All in all, this makes us one of the biggest IT shops in South Africa."
How, then, has it kept such a low profile in the IT marketplace?
"The traditional focus area was serving our internal IT customers," says Beukes, pointing out that Telkom has 32 000 e-mail users generating more than 700,000 emails each day and runs 732 enterprise software applications across three data centres "We have significant IT capabilities but, being internally focused until relatively recently, the market didn't know it."
It's a little-known fact but Telkom's track record in IT services goes back 15 years. "Ever since becoming a company, Telkom had always handled its own IT, from customer billing through to e-mail and the call centre operations," Beukes says.
Then, about seven years ago, Telkom started strengthening its data hosting and disaster recovery capabilities. A key driver for this was its preparations for listing on the New York Stock Exchange, which meant having to comply with the United States' Sarbanes-Oxley Act. "Sarbanes-Oxley's data retention, data security and disaster recovery requirements are arguably the most stringent in the world," says Beukes.
Partly to comply with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and partly to prepare for what Telkom early on realised would have to be the next wave in its evolution, Telkom began expanding its data centre infrastructure. Before 2002, it had only two smaller data centres: one at Telkom head office in Pretoria and the other in the facility now known as "Bellville 1".
The third data centre opened in 2002 at the Information Technology Centre in Centurion, next to its Network Operations Centre. About three years later, in the same Centurion campus, Telkom commissioned its fourth and largest data centre at the National Business Solutions Centre.
Gradually, Telkom started signing up enterprise business customers seeking data hosting and disaster recovery services. "These were typically customers whose Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) we were already managing, who were pleased with Telkom and wanted an end-to-end ICT service," Beukes says.
"But there was a limit to the volumes we could service since we were still using our internally focused processes and methodologies typical of an enterprise data centre offering to serve external customers. Not being purpose built for multi-tenancy, shared service offerings or flexibility meant lengthy service provisioning, where enterprise customers' need is for speed and agility."
Enter the two newest data centres, at Hartebeeshoek in the Magaliesberg and "Bellville 2" in Cape Town.
While Hartebeeshoek is intended mainly for extended high availability and even disaster recovery solutions, Bellville 2 has been purpose-built for customer hosting. It has been pre-provisioned so that customers can literally "plug and play" in the shortest possible time. The pre-provisioned racks are powered and under floor network cabling pre-wired, while cooling, backup power and security services are available as required.
"We can move customers in as soon as they sign up," says Beukes. "Bellville 2 is open for business."
Ends