Interview: Teraco CFO Jan Hnizdo

Loading player...
In this episode of the podcast, Duncan McLeod interviews Jan Hnizdo, chief financial officer of Africa's largest data centre operator, Teraco Data Environments.
Hnidzo speaks about the origins of Teraco, why it was founded, who financed it in its early days, its rapid expansion and the investment by private equity firm Permira in 2015. Is a listing on the cards?
In the podcast, he talks about the investments Teraco has made to date in building its various data centre facilities, and why that number will more than double in the coming years.
Hnidzo also explains what’s involved in running data centres at scale, the challenges of ensuring five-nines (99.999%) availability and why major content distribution networks have chosen the company’s facilities as their hub for the African continent.
He talks about Teraco’s expansion plans, its approach to East Africa and West Africa – why the company may pursue acquisitions to establish a presence there – and the impact that the Internet exchange point NAPAfrica has had on Internet costs and communication in South Africa.
It’s a great podcast. Don’t miss it!
25 Jul 2018 English South Africa Technology · Business

Other recent episodes

TCS | Frogfoot sees bigger fibre deals coming

Frogfoot plans to keep buying smaller fibre network operators in South Africa’s suburbs as the market consolidates, but CEO Shane Chorley stopped short of ruling out a sale of the business. “I’d be ignorant to say that we would ignore any offer,” Chorley said on the latest episode of the…
8 Oct 40 min

Meet the CIO | Vodacom’s Mohamed Sami on the agentic future

Mohamed Sami, group chief information officer at Vodacom, says autonomous AI agents that resolve customer problems without handing them to a human are the next big shift in customer experience – and that it is closer than many think. Speaking on TechCentral’s Meet the CIO podcast series, brought to you…
5 Oct 44 min

TCS | Norrsken22’s Lexi Novitske on how China is winning African tech

Chinese companies have built their position in African technology one layer at a time – first phones and telecoms equipment, then fintech and now the AI models that local start-ups build on. American private capital, meanwhile, is pulling back. Lexi Novitske, general partner at Norrsken22, thinks US investors will regret…
1 Oct 28 min

TCS | Dominic White and Adam Ely on AI agents going rogue

AI agents are no longer a thought experiment for security teams. They are breaking out of test environments, hacking real companies and, according to one of our guests, already going rogue inside large businesses. In this episode of the TechCentral Show, TechCentral deputy editor Fanie van Rooyen talks to Dominic…
29 Sep 1 hr 26 min

TCS | Octotel’s Trevor van Zyl on the fibre merger question

Octotel CEO Trevor van Zyl joins the TechCentral Show to talk about where South Africa’s fibre market goes next – including a potential merger with MetroFibre Networx. Van Zyl told TechCentral that Octotel and MetroFibre Networx are assessing a combination that would create the country’s third-largest fibre network operator, with…
16 Sep 25 min