Cassava Technologies has achieved a milestone for African cloud resilience by designating its Africa Data Centres (ADC) JHB1 facility in Johannesburg as a Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute Metro peering location.
This designation makes Johannesburg the first metropolitan region in Africa to feature ExpressRoute Metro capabilities, joining a select group of global technology hubs equipped with multi-site private cloud peering.
Strategic Infrastructure Overview
Traditional ExpressRoute connections provide a private link between on-premises environments and Microsoft Azure, bypassing the public internet. However, standard ExpressRoute circuits often terminate at a single physical peering point, creating a single point of failure if that facility experiences an outage.
Azure ExpressRoute Metro solves this by routing a single circuit across two geographically separate peering sites within the same metropolitan area—in this case, pairing ADC’s JHB1 with existing metro peering infrastructure.
| Connectivity Model | Route Architecture | Primary Benefit | Risk Profile |
| Public Internet Transit | Variable routes over public ISPs | Easy setup, zero dedicated hardware | High latency variance, vulnerable to outages |
| Standard ExpressRoute | Private connection terminating at 1 physical site | Low latency, predictable throughput | Single-site facility outage risk |
| ExpressRoute Metro | Dual-peering sites in same metro (e.g., JHB1 + secondary site) | Built-in physical redundancy & automated failover | Enterprise-grade high availability |
The “One Cassava” Operational Model
The rollout demonstrates Cassava Technologies’ integrated infrastructure strategy by leveraging two core business units:
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Africa Data Centres (Colocation & Facilities): Operates the carrier-neutral JHB1 facility, providing the physical layer, power, and cross-connects required for metro-level cloud peering.
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Liquid C2 (Cloud & Cybersecurity): Serves as the service enablement layer, offering Secure CloudConnect. Liquid C2 leverages its existing on-net fiber presence across both Johannesburg peering locations to deliver fully managed private cloud links bundled with enterprise threat protection and compliance tooling.
Key Advantage: By holding an on-net network footprint across both metropolitan peering endpoints, Cassava allows enterprises to source redundant cloud connectivity, fiber routing, and managed security from a single provider rather than managing multiple carrier contracts.
Executive Perspectives
“Being designated a Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute Metro peering location is a defining moment for Africa Data Centres as well as for Africa’s digital infrastructure. It reflects growing confidence in the continent’s ability to support the next generation of cloud and AI-driven services while demonstrating the strength of our One Cassava model.”
— Ziaad Suleman, Senior Vice President, Cassava Technologies South Africa & Botswana
“South Africa isn’t waiting for the AI era – it’s helping to shape it, and that ambition rests on digital infrastructure the country can trust. With Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute Metro now available in Johannesburg, organisations across South Africa gain a more resilient and secure path to the cloud for their most critical workloads.”
— Vukani Mngxati, CEO, Microsoft South Africa
Strategic Implications for Enterprises
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Regulatory & Compliance Alignment: Banking, healthcare, and public sector organizations facing strict operational resilience standards (such as business continuity and data sovereignty rules) gain a compliant framework for mission-critical cloud hosting.
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Foundation for Enterprise AI: High-availability hybrid setups ensure that real-time AI workloads, model inference pipelines, and central databases remain accessible even during localized facility issues.
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Reduced Vendor Complexity: Operating via Liquid C2’s Secure CloudConnect streamlines network governance, giving IT teams a single point of contact for WAN management, cloud gateways, and security policies.
