Cassava Technologies' Africa Data Centres JHB1 facility in Johannesburg has been officially designated as an Azure ExpressRoute Metro peering location—marking the first such deployment on the African continent. The addition, confirmed this week in Microsoft’s ExpressRoute documentation, pairs JHB1 with the existing Teraco JT1 site to enable dual-homed private connectivity into the South Africa North Azure region. For enterprises running hybrid cloud workloads, it means a local option for carrier-grade network resilience that wasn’t available until now.

What Actually Changed

JHB1’s new status upgrades Johannesburg from a single ExpressRoute site to a full Metro configuration. With an ExpressRoute Metro circuit, organizations can connect to Azure through two physically separate peering locations within the same metropolitan area, ensuring that a fiber cut, power outage, or equipment failure at one data center doesn’t sever the private link. Microsoft’s documentation now lists “Johannesburg Metro” with Teraco JT1 and Africa Data Centres JHB1 as the two peering locations, serving the South Africa North region.

The practical change is straightforward: When you provision an ExpressRoute Metro circuit (or work with a managed provider), your traffic can traverse both facilities with automatic failover. Liquid C2, Cassava’s cloud and cybersecurity arm, is packaging this into a managed service called Secure CloudConnect, adding integrated security controls on top of the private connectivity. Cassava says it has an on-net presence at both locations, giving it full control over the data path.

It’s important to note what didn’t change. This isn’t a new Azure region, nor does it expand the portfolio of Azure services available in South Africa. Network latency to Azure workloads won’t magically drop if you were already using a single ExpressRoute site—unless you design your routing to take advantage of the dual paths. And while the setup can keep your connection alive during a data center outage, it doesn’t automatically make your applications highly available across availability zones or regions. That still requires architecting your workloads for redundancy.

What It Means for You

For IT infrastructure and network teams at South African enterprises—and organizations across Africa that backhaul traffic through Johannesburg—this is a significant resilience upgrade. If your company relies on Azure for critical services like Azure Virtual Desktop, domain controllers, backup and disaster recovery, or line-of-business applications, an ExpressRoute Metro circuit gives you a documented, supportable failover path that avoids the public internet entirely.

Regulated industries should pay close attention. South Africa’s financial services and government entities, as well as firms subject to data protection laws in Kenya, Nigeria, and elsewhere, increasingly face mandates for operational resilience and business continuity. Having two geographically separate peering points in the same metro can satisfy auditors that you’re not reliant on a single facility. However, data residency remains a function of where your data is stored and processed—ExpressRoute Metro provides a private pipe, not a sovereignty guarantee. You’ll still need to ensure that Azure resources like storage accounts and databases are configured for the appropriate geography.

For enterprises already using Teraco JT1 for ExpressRoute, you now have a straightforward migration path to add resilience. You can either add a second circuit homed at JHB1 and configure routing yourself, or adopt Liquid C2’s Secure CloudConnect for a bundled managed service. The choice depends on your in-house networking expertise and appetite for operational complexity.

What about cost? Microsoft charges for ExpressRoute circuits based on bandwidth and the specific Metro SKU. Adding a second peering location will increase circuit costs, and you may need to contract with a connectivity provider for the physical link into JHB1 if you don’t already have a presence there. Liquid C2 hasn’t yet published pricing for Secure CloudConnect, but it’s likely to include both the Azure circuit and managed security services. Start your evaluation by asking Microsoft or your partner for the Johannesburg Metro circuit SKU and bandwidth options, then compare with your existing spend.

How We Got Here

Azure ExpressRoute has been available in Johannesburg since 2019, initially through Teraco JT1. But the standard ExpressRoute offering relied on a single peering location—fine for many workloads but a single point of failure for mission-critical systems. Microsoft introduced ExpressRoute Metro in 2023 to address that gap, requiring two peering sites within the same Azure metro area. Since then, the company has rolled out Metro availability to cities like Amsterdam, London, Singapore, and Sydney, gradually expanding the list.

Cassava Technologies has invested heavily in African data center infrastructure, operating facilities across multiple countries under the Africa Data Centres brand. The JHB1 facility opened in 2022, but until now it wasn’t part of Microsoft’s ExpressRoute ecosystem. The push for official Metro designation likely involved technical audits and network testing to prove that JHB1 meets Microsoft’s requirements for latency, security, and redundancy.

Regulatory pressure has also played a role. South Africa’s Reserve Bank and other African financial regulators have been tightening IT resilience standards. The inability to achieve true site diversity for private cloud connectivity within the continent forced some enterprises to consider duplicate circuits to Europe, adding latency and complexity. The Johannesburg Metro eliminates that trade-off, keeping traffic local while providing the dual-site architecture that auditors demand.

What to Do Now

If you’re in a position to act, here are concrete steps:

  1. Inventory your current ExpressRoute circuits. Check the Azure portal or work with your networking team to identify any circuits in Johannesburg. If you’re using JT1, note the circuit SKU, bandwidth, and whether it’s metered or unmetered.
  2. Review the ExpressRoute Metro documentation. Microsoft’s ExpressRoute locations page now includes Johannesburg Metro details. Read up on Metro’s architecture, redundancy features, and limitations.
  3. Contact providers. Reach out to Microsoft or Liquid C2 to understand pricing, bandwidth options, and lead times for provisioning a Metro circuit. If you plan to use Secure CloudConnect, ask for a technical deep dive on the integrated security services.
  4. Plan your network architecture. A dual-site ExpressRoute setup requires careful routing design. You’ll need to decide whether to run active-active or active-passive BGP sessions, how to handle asymmetric routing, and how to integrate with your on-premises firewalls and load balancers. Test failover scenarios before going live.
  5. Evaluate your application stack. Identify which workloads would benefit most from network-level resilience. Azure Virtual Desktop, hybrid domain controllers, and backup/replication traffic are prime candidates. Conversely, if your applications already replicate across Azure regions, you might prioritize regional redundancy over local Metro.
  6. Run a cost-benefit analysis. Factor in additional circuit fees, cross-connect charges at JHB1, and any managed service premiums. Compare with the cost of downtime for your critical applications. For some organizations, the math will clearly justify the investment; for others, it may be a “nice to have” that can wait until the next budget cycle.

Deadlines? No immediate ones, but if you’re in the middle of a compliance audit or planning a major cloud migration, moving sooner could help. The Johannesburg Metro is available now, so you can start the procurement process immediately.

Outlook

The Johannesburg Metro deployment sets a precedent for the rest of Africa. As more hyperscale data centers come online in cities like Nairobi, Lagos, and Cairo, Microsoft is likely to use similar dual-site configurations to expand ExpressRoute Metro across the continent. That will be a boon for pan-African enterprises and multinationals that want consistent, resilient connectivity into Azure without relying on European peering points.

Watch for other cloud providers to follow suit—AWS Direct Connect and Google Cloud Interconnect may eventually offer their own metro-style redundancy in African locations. And as Liquid C2’s Secure CloudConnect gains traction, we may see more managed service providers bundling private connectivity with security and SD-WAN capabilities, simplifying the on-ramp for enterprises that lack deep networking expertise.

For now, the Johannesburg Metro is a concrete upgrade that network architects in any South African hybrid cloud shop should seriously evaluate. The pieces are in place; it’s up to your team to put them together.