Probax launches South African data centre
Mon 16 Jan 2017
Probax, an Australian provider of data backup and storage services, has announced that it will expand its international presence with the opening of a data center in South Africa.
The new data center in Johannesburg will offer local cloud computing capabilities, an option that African Managed Service Providers (MSPs) have requested. It is intended to provide users with Probax monitoring and control services along with local data storage.
Nic Thorburn, Head of Operations for Probax Africa, noted that the services to customers are inexpensive, and that Probax will offer monthly Veeam and StorageCraft licenses to Probax customers at ‘massively reduced’ rates. He also noted that MSPs will be charged in local currency, to minimize issues with exchange rate fluctuations. Customers with existing Veeam and ShadowProtect backups can easily replicate them to the new Probax center in Johannesburg.
Kevin Allan, Managing Director for Probax added, “South Africa is our first storage location in the EMEA region. We see a real opportunity to help MSPs of all sizes due to factors such as high crime rate, unstable power and seemingly inadequate bandwidth.” Providing local data storage will allow users to overcome challenges including latency and speed of backups and restores, which are exacerbated when data is stored in physically far-off destinations. “By having ‘hands and feet’ on the ground, we are able to overcome these problems by providing the ability for MSPs to send and receive hard drives between a local Johannesburg data centre.”
Probax Control Service provides a single dashboard that allows MSPs to manage Veeam, ShadowProtect and File backups for all users at a glance, while providing alerts and recommendations for corrective measures as required. Hyperperformance allows users to monitor, verify, and create reports related to data backups. The Probax Scout links cloud storage and local backups. The company also offers DeepFreeze archival storage, for scalable off-site archival storage of data.
Probax is adding the Johannesburg data center to a network that includes the Port Melbourne flagship facility, an Uptime Institute Tier-III certified data center. Other locations include Perth, Sydney, and a dedicated cloud facility in Beauharnois, Quebec, Canada.
