Demand for data center is rising in the East African Market. Dan Kwach, data centre product manager at Kenya Data Networks (KDN) says the demand is driven by several factors such as the country been IT savvy.

Others are regulations by the Central Bank of Kenya who now require banks to have disaster recovery centers outside their physical premises. This is expected to even rise further in the future as enterprises adopt data intensive cloud computing to offer services to their consumers.

“We import content from the west – there were innovative ideas in the west that brought in content. In a few years we will have local content that will need to be hosted locally. We already have an invention culture, fuelled by the huge push for development of mobile applications. These apps are usually mission critical and will require data centers to host them,” says Kwach.
Kenya has been leading in the implementation of data centers in the East Africa region, with a few big projects already set up and a few others coming up. Gestalt Gild is one player already offering solutions from Essar’s data center while Safaricom has also been offering corporate solutions from its own data center.
Equity Bank is a major end user of data center services with its own tier 4 data center which is currently the largest in operation in East Africa with a current installation of 77 racks with a further capacity of between 50 - 70 racks. Equity Bank has plans to lease off excess capacity on its data center, which the bank build after its demand for data center space outmatched offerings in the market.
Kwach says that institutions like Equity Bank were forced to build their own data centers as existing ones did not meet their demand. This is about to change with KDN’s new solution.  “IT is not a core service for banks. This gives an opportunity for KDN and other technology industry players to set up data centers and lease them out to such institutions.” 
There is also a lot of interests from overseas companies who have been looking for physical space in the country to host their data centers.
KDN has also set up a tier 3/tier 4 data center. Kwach clarifies that the data center is not fully a tier 4 as the country has only one power distributor, Kenya Power and Lighting Company. For a data center to be fully tier 4, it must source power from 2 independent distributors.
The data center is located at Sameer Park along Mombasa road. Kwach says that the data center occupies the basement, first, second and third floors of one of the six blocks that make up the business park. The ground floor forms an operational, staging and training area – customers who want to perform scheduled maintenance's of their data centers do it from this area.  Usable data center is 50,000 square feet per floor to give total usable space of 200,000 square feet or 20,000 square metres. Each floor carries 150 racks, with each rack consuming about 5 kilowatts.
Additionally, KDN had the building specifically constructed to data center standards, with concrete walls and enhanced security. This is in contrast to most other data centers in the region which usually occupy the same building as other commercial tenants. This compromises the security of the data center and also poses a hazard to other users of the building from the electrical infrastructure of the data center.
Unlike what is currently on offer in the market, Kwach says that KDN’s data center offers space and does not consist of servers. This means that the KDN provides and manages everything in the data center down to the rack level, however, clients bring in their own servers which they manage and operate.
Kwach explains that KDN’s strategy is more focused on whole sale than retail offerings. Clients will mainly be corporates and other data center resellers who will in turn focus on retail customers.
To complement their strategy and make it more attractive to consumers, the company’s customers will not be involved in interfacing. This will be achieved by allowing other connectivity providers to provide fiber links from the data center to their customers, thus providing a data neutral environment.
The main challenge so far has been getting power connectivity to the data center which usually takes several months. In addition, an assessment and survey is important prior to setting up a data center in an area. “Some areas like Mombasa do not have sufficient power infrastructure to support data centers,” he says.
Data centers can still run off the power grid in Africa. The United Nations Offices in Nairobi are the first such clients of Microsoft’s IT pre assembled components (ITPAC) data center. The data center resides in a 7 meter x 3 meter x 2 meter container that is similar in size to a 20 foot container and with a capability to hold 4 racks hosting up to 460 thin blade servers depending on the configuration. “The ITPAC utilizes air flow to reduce the cost of cooling of a data centre. It makes the cost more affordable,” says Richard Kiplagat, Global Strategic Accounts Manager at Microsoft. The ITPAC is built by Savier, an Italian firm and has advanced heating, ventilating, and air conditioning systems.
Kiplagat says that the data centre, part of the new generation 4 data centres, is not restricted to Microsoft products/technology and can be fitted with servers from competitors.  “The ITPAC presents a phenomenal opportunity for Africa where energy costs present a challenge,” he adds.
The ITPAC is located in the open on a concrete platform. This, according to Kiplagat, does not presents a security challenge as one would treat the environment the same way they would do to a conventional data center.
Another great advantage of the ITPAC is its modularity and can be shipped and installed in less than 2 weeks. This means that it can be used in a situation where an immediate deployment is required or in addition to a data center that has run out of capacity.
While Kenya has ideal altitudes of 1800 meters and ideal weather for deploying the ITPAC, it can also be deployed in hotter countries and is designed to withstand weather elements.