Kenya Data Networks (KDN) will construct a state of the art, eco-friendly data centre at the Sameer Business Park in Nairobi, which will cater for the East and Central African region. The initiative is expected to determine the future of data storage, security, management, sharing and recovery in the region. Since many companies spend as much as 2percent to 4percent of their IT budget on disaster recovery planning, the completion of the data storage facility will enable these companies to avoid major losses and damage resulting from interruptions of the company’s IT infrastructure and data. 

Construction of the Data centre will be in line with the overall plan by the government to establish a National Neural Data Center to safeguard corporate data and integrate data from the various government agencies. “This investment is a Kenyan first and when completed, the facility will deliver data centre capacity at a lower cost to corporate organisations, the government and international organisations than could be achieved independently, while securing greater flexibility and setting high standards for environmental sustainability, “said Mr. Naushad Merali, KDN Board chairman. Referring to a recent research conducted by Fujitsu, Mr. Merali said the shared data centre was a win-win situation for Kenya’s corporate institutions as the global village strives to conserve its environment: “According to research conducted by Fujitsu, a global IT company ,greenhouse gas emissions from the ICT sector are forecast to increase from 2percent in 2009 to 6percent by 2020 as a proportion of global total emissions.” “The data centre will not only provide a secure and well connected facility but will also cut gas emissions and energy use through an improved architectural data centre design which will use the latest solar-power technology on to provide the energy requirements of the facility. The facility will also harvest rainwater that will be used in the washrooms and other amenities,” he added. KDN’s Chief Executive Officer Mr. Kai Wulff said the Data Center is designed to host mission critical computer systems with fully redundant systems and compartmentalized security zones:  “The company’s decision has been influenced by our demonstrated innovation in sustainability and our long-term commitment to develop environmentally friendly and sustainable data centre.”  Kai said the facility will provide great opportunities for growth of the small and mid-sized companies in the region.  “This will bring considerable savings, the opportunity to increase data centre capacity in a more flexible and rapid way as demand increases, as well as substantial energy efficiency and sustainability,” said Kai. The facility has been designed to ensure maximum availability on services to be offered with a 24 hour a day monitoring from the network operations center.