Altech Sameer East Africa has launched its tier 3 data centre in Nairobi today. Shahab Meshki, Altech KDN CEO says that a tier 3 data centre is only expected to have maximum downtime of 1 minute per week or 52 minutes per year. The opening ceremony was held at the data centre premises, behind Sameer Park along Mombasa road, Nairobi. The occasion was graced by the Prime Minister, Hon Raila Odinga, top Altech executives and other industry executives.
The data centre offers 4000 square meters of space, divided between 1000 square meters of operational space on the first floor and three floors of actual data centre space. The data centre is an infrastructure-only data centre where clients lease floor space and bring in their own cabinets, racks and servers. Also in the data centre is a meet-me room where connectivity providers exchange traffic.
 

Meshki says that each of the floors consume 1500 KwH of electricity per day, enough to power 120 homes for an year. Meshki says that the data centre's power supply at the moment is insufficienct to meet the full capacity of the data centre. Kenya Power plans to build an extra sub station which will meed the data centre's power demand.

Airtel is the biggest client and has already taken up half of the first floor and half of the second floor. The remaining half of the first floor has been taken up by a variety of clients including Kenya Data Network themselves, Seacom who are establishing their Nairobi Point of Presence. Equity Bank who already have their own data centre have also bought up space to establish load balancing servers.

Altech CEO Craig Venter said that the firm had invested in capacity building, with an academy which offers further education for Altech staff, from diploma to doctorate degrees, for free.

The prime minister commended Altech on the data centre, adding that the ICT sector in the country was growing at a rate of 30 per cent per annum, with the most significant growth in the mobile money sector. "M-pesa is a Kenyan invention, we need to praise ourselves for it is something that no one else has done before. " Raila also stated that the government would be laying a fiber cable as part of the Lamu Port and Lamu-Southern Sudan and Ethiopia Transport corridor. This he said would go a long way in breaking the communication barriers between African countries, increasing trade from the current 10 per cent.