Stacuity, iONLINE and the Future of High Performant, Programmable Connectivity

Following the announcement of Stacuity’s new South Africa edge location, delivered with lead partner iONLINE, we sat down with the companies’ respective CEOs John Freeman (Stacuity ) and David Farquharson (iONLINE ). They detailed the enhanced capabilities the programmable edge network brings to the region, focusing on low-latency, agility, and realtime control.

David, let’s start with the big picture. iONLINE recently selected Stacuity as its core network provider. What drove this partnership, and what are you trying to achieve for global enterprise connectivity?

David: “Traditional network infrastructure simply can’t keep pace with the demands of modern global enterprises. They need speed, control, and resilience. By integrating Stacuity’s programmable mobile core and edge capabilities, we’re achieving unmatched agility. Where traditional operators might take eight to twelve months to deploy a large-scale enterprise solution, our joint capability means we can deliver the same outcomes in as little as two weeks. That uplift in speed is transformative for industries like logistics and manufacturing.”

John, agility is clearly a key differentiator. Can you explain how Stacuity’s core technology enables this rapid deployment and also hands back control to the customer?

John: “Our architecture is fundamentally different. It’s a cloud-native, software defined mobile core that separates the control plane from the user plane. This allows us to deploy many user plane nodes, creating that local user experience in terms of latency, data sovereignty, and content delivery. We also provide an incredible level of granularity and visibility.”

“Via Stacuity’s platform, customers can dynamically manage traffic flows, security policies, and device behavior in real-time. For large IoT estates, like smart meters, if devices stop connecting, you don’t wait weeks for an operator to troubleshoot; you (or through a managed service such as that provided by iONLINE) can instantly click a button and see what’s happening, providing real-time visibility and control.”

The most recent step in this partnership is the launch of the South Africa PoP. David, why was Johannesburg chosen as the location for this strategic Edge site, and what does it mean for customers in the region?

David: “Africa is a growing market with unique needs, particularly around resilience and latency. The launch of the South Africa Edge location in Johannesburg, allows us to deliver Stacuity’s full suite of software-defined features and capabilities locally, significantly improving performance. For our customers, it means low-latency, high-reliability in-region routing, rather than having data backhauled across continents. We’ve seen banking systems sitting with 400-500 milliseconds of latency drop down to about 40 milliseconds, significantly speeding up transaction times.”

John, beyond latency, the topic of data sovereignty is critical globally. How does the South Africa PoP address compliance and security concerns for enterprises operating across Africa?

John: “By placing our PoPs at the Edge we guarantee that enterprise data originating in South Africa is processed within the country’s borders. This ensures compliance with regional data sovereignty laws and enhances security. The PoP supports industries where real-time decisioning and data residency are non-negotiable, such as healthcare, utilities, and security networks, providing them with enhanced security and regulatory assurance.”

Looking forward, how does the South Africa PoP fit into Stacuity’s wider plans for global network expansion?

John: “The South Africa site is an important piece of our global strategy to build a truly distributed, global architecture that provides a locally optimized experience everywhere. Over the next few months we will increase our global expansion further with deployment underway in Brazil, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Sydney, and an additional U.S. site.”

“Our continued focus is solving real-life problems by surfacing all the valuable, hidden network metadata. As such we empower our partners such as iONLINE to offer a single, consistent, feature-rich service experience to their customers, regardless of where in the world they are operating.”

To learn more about our growing edge network or to discover how this partnership can benefit your business, please reach out to sales@stacuity.com.