Eskom power hike will push up online costs

Eskom’s price-hikes will see online costs going up rather than dropping as expected, says Rob Gilmour, managing director of RSAWEB. This warning comes as the logistics industry strives to become paperless and businesses around the world are going on-line to survive. Gilmour encourages companies to start talking to their Internet Service Providers (ISPs) now, before the 45% a year Eskom tariff hikes come into force. He believes data centres will be particularly hard hit by the increases. “Electricity or energy costs contribute significantly to data centre hosting costs, with half of every rand spent on servers in South Africa going towards covering power costs,” he says. “When ISP electricity costs go up, so too will subscription rates, bandwidth, surfing costs and the like,” he predicts The power hikes could nullify any savings on data costs through the new undersea Seacom connection, he warns. There are solutions, however. “Smart ISPs are already deploying virtualisation and cloud computing solutions, which can reduce energy costs and consumption by up to 80%,” he says.