Roko Construction To Undertake The Civil Works of Raxio Data Centre

Nathan Ernest Olupot March 20, 2019

2 minutes read

Raxio Director Robert Mullins (left) and Mark Koehler, the Roko Construction Managing Director, exchange signed contracts.

Roko Construction Limited on Tuesday emerged winner from a total of 6 companies that were invited to bid on undertaking the civil works of Raxio multibillion data centre at Kampala Industry Park, Namanve.

The two firms formally signed the contracts on Thursday 14th, March 2019 at Raxio’s offices in Rwenzori Towers, Kampala — making it official on Tuesday 19th, March 2019.

Robert Mullins, Brooks Washington and James Byaruhanga from Raxio signed on behalf of Raxio while Mark Koehler and Willie Swanepoel signed on behalf of Roko.

During the signing, Robert Mullins; Raxio Director, said the project received clearance from Mukono Municipality as well as received an Environment Impact Assessment approval certificate from National Environment Management Authority (NEMA) to have the construction start immediately.

“We’re not leaving anything to chance. We’ve assembled the best teams and the best contractors and are now good to go,” said Mullins — handing over the construction site to Roko engineers on Tuesday 19th, March 2019.

(Left-Right): James Byaruhanga, the Raxio General Manager, signs the contract as Robert Mullins, Director, Raxio as Roko Managing Director, Mark Koehler and Willie Swanepoel the Director, Roko Construction look on.

Designed by Future-tech, a UK-based specialized data centre design company, and Symbion Uganda, Raxio Data Centre is being developed to Tier III standards. The data centre will be the first truly carrier-neutral co-location facility of its standard—requiring an investment of roughly USD$15 million (approx. UGX55.7 billion) over its life-cycle.

In February Raxio signed Hamilton Cloud Services as its first customer. The company also early this month, co-hosted an event with Oracle Corp. that intends to provide state-of-the-art cloud services solutions within the Raxio data centre. This move is expected to lower the cost of computing to Ugandan businesses.

Joachim Steuerwald; Oracle Cloud Platform Sales Director for East Africa said Raxio’s Tier III data centre will be a significant constraint to achieve up-times that a digital economy demands and thus their partnership with Raxio.

Joachim Steuerwald, the Oracle Cloud Platform Sales Director addresses business eladers about the benefits of Oracle’s cloud services at the first Oracle-Raxio executive roundtable event at Serena Kampala Hotel, on March 6th 2019.

Reduced ICT Related Costs
By enabling businesses to share critical infrastructure and related services, data centres are known to cut ICT related costs for businesses, while allowing them access to the latest technologies at flexible “pay as you grow” models, that are scalable as need arises.

86.4% of IT managers working for Uganda government MDAs recently surveyed by NITA-U said that shared services offered in data centres, such as cloud services significantly cut ICT related costs. 77.3% hailed them increased productivity and flexibility amongst a host of other benefits.[related-posts]

Dr. Tumubweine Twinemanzi, the Executive Director Supervision, at Bank of Uganda challenged the financial services sector to adopt a shared technology services delivery model, so as to cut down on the cost of doing business and pass on those benefits to customers in form of reduced cost of lending.