INTELLIGENT BRANDS // Data Centres
State-of-the-art data centre
to be built in Ethiopia
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F
irst Brick Holdings has announced that
it is establishing and investing in ‘Raxio
Ethiopia’, which will build and operate
the first state-of-the-art, privately owned
data centre in the east African country.
In line with First Brick’s first data centre
facility in Uganda, Raxio Uganda, the new
data centre will be constructed and operated
as a Tier III standard facility, serving the
large demand for high-quality co-location
data centre services in Ethiopia.
The announcement comes as the telecoms
sector in Ethiopia becomes increasingly
liberalised, with recent regulatory changes
designed to enable broader technology
access and encourage the development of
technology infrastructure.
This reflects the regional trend of increased
demand for high quality environments for
local storage, business critical systems and
data hosting solutions, such as local cloud
services, as well as the need for external data
recovery sites for business continuity.
The key target industries for Raxio Ethiopia
will be financial services, cloud service
providers, IT companies, media companies,
local and regional enterprises, and content
delivery networks. As the telecom sector
opens up, new carriers and Internet service
providers will join to create a new hub of
connectivity in the country.
The data centre will meet the uptime,
redundancy and maintainability requirements
established under the Tier III standard.
The facility will also adhere to the principle
of neutrality, both for carriers and ISPs as
new players begin to enter the Ethiopian
market, and for cloud service providers, that
will be able to operate freely from within the
data centre.
Raxio Ethiopia will offer data centre
colocation services where customers can
house their computing, networking, storage
and critical IT infrastructure in an optimally
operated and secure environment.
By co-locating in Raxio’s facility, customers
will benefit from a ‘shared infrastructure’
model and substantially reduce their
operational and capital costs while
improving application performance and
flexibility. Raxio will also supplement its core
colocation offering with several additional
services, including cross connection and
remote hands.
Robert Mullins, Executive Director at First
Brick Holdings, said: “Recent ICT and
regulatory trends in Ethiopia mark it out as
an ideal location for high-quality co-location
data centre services. The government has
embarked on a process that will lead to a
broader liberalisation of the telecom sector
where new operators will be allowed to
enter the market, and there is also a large
opportunity for the numerous local, regional
and international cloud services providers
seek adequate facilities in-country from
where they can provide their services.
“We believe Raxio Ethiopia will have a
transformational effect on the Ethiopian
digital economy by providing a critical and
missing part of digital infrastructure in the
country. The state-of-the-art facility will
enable Ethiopian companies to operate
more effectively locally, to compete in a
regional and global context and will provide
an environment where new companies
focused on the digital economy can thrive.
“It will have significant knock-on effects,
creating opportunities for technology-
savvy employment and broader
technological exchange.” n
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