Orange Maroc, the Moroccan division of the multinational telecommunications company Orange, has acquired EtixEverywhere Maroc, part of European global data centre developer and operator EtixEverywhere. As part of this acquisition Orange is also to be the owner of a data centre in Casablanca, Morocco.
The Moroccan arm of Orange will take on the certified Tier III, 1MW facility to the south of the city. No further details on the deal have been made available.
This data centre will, it seems, be part of an Orange Morocco service offering that aims to support both local businesses and major accounts in their digitization strategy by offering them a hosting space.
In fact Brahim Sbai, B2B vice president of Orange Maroc, was quoted as saying that the deal helped the company contribute to the development of IT services for its customers as well as support companies. This is especially timely given the advent of 5G and related requirements around data and latency.
Etix offers colocation services mainly to second-tier EMEA cities as well as parts of Latin America and North Africa. According to the Data Center Dynamics website, the Casablanca facility was the company’s first on the African continent. It opened in 2015 and more than $4.2 million was invested in the project. The carrier-neutral facility has three telecom operators as customers.