Vodacom, South African subsidiary of the UK-based telecom Vodafone, has launched a new data center in Cape Town's Foreshore district. The company has partnered with VMware and Novell to use their technology for cloud services offered at the seven-story facility.

Chris Ross, a Vodacom managing executive, said the company had been aggressively expanding its cloud-based hosting capabilities across the African continent, and addition of the new Cape Town site was part of the initiative.

"The infrastructure reaches through all of (Vodacom's) data centers and as such enables customers to deploy rapidly in any geographic region - bringing the Foreshore data center online is an integral link in those capabilities," he said in a statement.

By launching the first phase of the data center, Vodacom brought more than 16,000 sq ft of data center space to the market. The facility's capacity can be expanded to accommodate about 30,000 sq ft of data center floor total.

The carrier-neutral data center features redundant electrical infrastructure (2N), but designed with a focus on energy efficiency. The efficiency elements include a water-cooled chiller plant, 98% efficient air-cooled step-down transformers, maximum high-voltage power distribution, efficient light bulbs and motion-activated lighting controls.