Intelligent Data Centres Issue 11 | Page 10

NEWS Paratus extends coverage across Africa aratus, a leading telecoms operator with operational offices in six African countries, has now implemented additional routes for redundancy and is in the process of an aggressive rollout plan, building even more routes across the region to ensure maximum uptime for clients using this route. The company reported in August that it had finally completed a terrestrial East and West coast of Africa connection between the WACS undersea cable in Swakopmund, Namibia and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. P Paratus Group COO Schalk Erasmus says the route extends 4,160 kilometres and is fully operational under one single Autonomous System Number (ASN) and boasts a Round Trip Time (RTT) of 62ms. “Connecting land-locked countries, that do not have access to undersea cable systems, with much-needed capacity is critical to ensure that we leverage the infrastructure investment we have made across the African region,” he said. Paratus is currently in the process to complete the Maputo link, which will not only connect into the Trans-Kalahari Fiber (TKF) route which already extends through various countries in SADC, but will also be the second East to West Coast route completed by the operator after completion of the initial route from Dar es Salaam, reported in August. “Africa is a continent with countless opportunities, and we believe that we need to harness this potential to see more growth across the continent,” added Erasmus. “It is evident that investment in infrastructure does show growth in the economy and are inextricably linked.” OrbitsEdge signs OEM agreement with Hewlett Packard Enterprise rbitsEdge, which provides commercial access to data centre-grade computing and analytics in orbit, announced it has signed an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) agreement with Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) to host HPE Edgeline Converged Edge Systems with its hardening solution, SatFrame, to enable commercial space companies to deploy computing in orbit and accelerate exploration. O OrbitsEdge’s SatFrame is designed to host and provide the environmentals, power, communications and hardening which permits the use of terrestrial (Earth designed) technology in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). The SatFrame is built to compensate for the environmental stressors in orbit, such as radiation, on the hardware itself. The initial mission for the SatFrame is to host the HPE Edgeline Converged Edge System to provide 10 Issue 11 a micro-data centre in orbit to process the vast amount of space-based data and help minimise the cost of backhaul to earth. OrbitsEdge SatFrame design provides years of constant and robust performance in a small and affordable footprint as space commercialisation becomes a reality. “Hewlett Packard Enterprise is the ideal partner for OrbitsEdge since its technologies have proven to withstand extreme environments on Earth and in space, with its deployment of the Spaceborne Computer in the International Space Station (ISS). This partnership follows HPE’s innovative strategy of enabling new solutions to be developed and deployed years in advance,” said Barbara Stinnett, Chief Executive Officer of OrbitsEdge, Inc. “OrbitsEdge will leverage HPE’s Edge technology to run sophisticated analytics such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) on the vast amounts of data that will be created as space is commercialised.” www.intelligentdatacentres.com