Raxio To Officially Launch Data Centre in May 25th

Raxio will officially launch their Certified Tier III Data Centre in Uganda on May 25th, after nearly three years of constructing the facility. The Certified Tier III Data Centre was earlier scheduled to launch in March 2021, but due to a few setbacks, the launch was scheduled for May.

Prior the March 2021 and May 2021 launch dates, the construction of the facility was expected to finish by November 2019 and launch in 2020, but with the outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic, the construction was halted for a couple of months and also slowed the process of construction due to a number of SOPs that were issued by the government. In addition to the pandemic challenges, Raxio faced logistical challenges as well.

“It has been a real challenge looking at what we have faced with the pandemic as well as logistical challenges as a lot of the items that went into the construction needed to be important. But we’re almost there, we’re soon going live and ready to serve Ugandans,” Abdul Rahman Baguma Ahmed; Raxio Data Centre Vice President in charge of Technology and Operations told PC Tech Magazine back in an interview in March 2021.

The construction of the facility has been handled by Roko Construction Limited having emerged as the winner from a total of 6 companies that were invited to bid on undertaking the civil works of the multibillion data centre. The two firms [Raxio and Roko] signed the construction contract on Thursday 14th, March 2019 at Raxio’s head offices on Rwenzori Towers, Kampala.

The data centre is set up in Namanve Industrial and Business Park, and was designed by Future-tech, a UK-based specialized data centre design company and Symbion Uganda LTD —and roughly USD$15 million (approx. UGX53,489,730,000) over its life-cycle has been invested in the project.

Namanve Industrial and Business Park was chosen as the site location because it has about 10 Independent Metropolitan Fibre cables. It is also on the highway to Kenya where Uganda picks up Sub Marine Fibre capacity and therefore about 8 fibre connections to Mombasa for internet transit. Thus, location pick being the best pick, according to Raxio.

Raxio Data Centre is to enable business continuity thanks to their carrier-neutral data centre and certified Tier III standards, offering 99.99% uptime. Thus, offering their customers affordable, secure colocation spaces and hosting environments of up to 400 racks to hold all mission-critical IT infrastructure in a 24/7 redundant environment.

The data centre will be providing a colocation environment to their clients to host their equipment which may or may not host their own data.

“Our business model is colocation for our client’s equipment for the purpose of data hosting or cross connection to their clients or providers. These clients can range from private enterprises, ISPs, Fibre Carriers, Cloud Providers, Content Delivery Networks to mention but a few,” James Byaruhanga, General Manager at Raxio Data Centre, told PC Tech Magazine in an interview in April last year.

The Tier III certification is a commitment that the Raxio will deliver the highest level of service availability for customers who require Colocation Data Centre Services for Disaster Recovery and Cross Connect in the fast-growing ICT sector. The certification is of paramount importance to customers with the most demanding needs providing business critical services to customers, such as those in the financial services sector, as well as creating the conditions for international customers looking to bring next-generation services into Uganda.

Raxio as a subsidiary of the Roha Group, a US-based investment firm, believe its data centre will be a center-piece of infrastructure supporting the growth and digitization of the Uganda’s economy and the goals set in the Ministry of ICT Data Strategy.

As the world moves increasingly to the web, users and businesses demand quick information. The closer a business is to a data centre, the higher the performance of the service —and much of the content that we access is currently held far away.

“The closer a business is to a data centre, the higher the performance of the service and much of the content that we access is currently held far away. Raxio will be bringing this information closer to you,” says Ahmed.