Teraco Data Environments, South Africa’s first provider of vendor neutral data centres, has appointed Brendan Dysel as its facilities manager. Originally hailing from Port Elizabeth, he returns to South
Africa bringing a decade of expertise in facilities management and
engineering in some of the world’s most advanced data centre operations.

Prior to Teraco, Dysel worked at Credit Suisse, an international financial services group, where he was the engineering manager. This
entailed looking after all eleven the company’s UK data centres,
including a new £52m facility in Slough. Before that, he was the data
centre manager at data centre maintenance contractors, Elyo Services and
Johnson Controls (for Morgan Stanley).

Dysel brings to South Africa a methodical approach to data centre design, build, management and preventive maintenance. His experience
will give Teraco a solid foundation for growth, while ensuring Teraco
lives up to its promise of global best practice as the company expands.

Dysel will work closely with Gys Geyser, head of operations at Teraco, to manage and oversee provisioning from utilities and infrastructure
development at the company’s multiple sites. His responsibilities will
include process and procedure management, demand forecasting, capacity
management and the implementation of additional power efficiency
improvements to ensure clients see steady advances in cost saving
techniques. His priority project will include overseeing the design of
phase two of the Cape Town data centre, and the commissioning of the
fourth data centre in Durban during the first quarter of 2011.

“Brendan brings us a wealth of experience in managing large-scale, mission-critical data centres to complement our existing mix of skills,”
says Lex van Wyk, managing director of Teraco. “He also has experience
in information systems for the financial sector, which has incredibly
strict standards and procedures. This will further raise the bar at
Teraco, giving our customers a great deal of confidence that their
valuable information systems are safe with us.”