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The Mazowe Data centre expansion project is meant to enhance Zimbabwe’s data sovereignty by ensuring that the personal information of citizens, which is a valuable commodity in the global market, is kept within the country’s borders for use by our people to bring value to the nation at large, Dr. Jenfan Muswere, the Minister of Information Communication Technology, Postal and Courier Services has said.
He made the remarks during the launch of the Mazowe Data Centre today where he revealed that currently, more than 88% of all international traffic is going to the US and Europe.
“Initiatives such as the TelOne Data Centre enable entrepreneurs and corporates to capitalise on the opportunity to produce and distribute local content through local resources reducing our burdens on under-sea cables as a landlocked country.
“We call upon corporates to take advantage of these initiatives to save on much needed foreign currency by embracing the culture of infrastructure sharing. By hosting their data and application at TelOne, Companies can pass on the savings to their clients and their core business,” Dr. Muswere said.
He said the expansion of the Mazowe Data Centre is a firm foundation for the implementation of the National Development Strategy One (NDS1) which requires that the government sets up a sound digital economy.
“Certainly, NDS1 rides on efficient digital infrastructure to ensure two-way communication between government and its citizens and efficient gathering and storage of data. The rise of the “Internet Of Things” which is what we are pushing for as we talk smart cities, smart agriculture and smart everything will be creating huge volumes of data that need to be processed and stored.
“From a Government perspective, we therefore certainly are keen on seeing an even quicker increase of this kind of infrastructure in our country – it is as vital as roads, airports, and other infrastructure in the digital economy. Our government wants to create a conducive environment to enhance our ease of doing business and I congratulate TelOne for this effort, which is an addition to our broader national strategy of modernizing the country’s ICT infrastructure and will aid towards the attainment of an upper-middle-income economy by 2030,” the I CT Minister added.
Data centres help Zimbabwe transcend its geographical limitations and market size by allowing it to compete with bigger economies through connections to the rest of the world to access new markets and resources. They also enable companies to take advantage of other initiatives such as African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCTA) which offers launch pads for e-commerce.
Speaking on the same occasion, TelOne Board Chairman, Dr. Douglas Zimbango said the setting up of the data centre is in sync with the company’s objectives of expanding the communications infrastructure and developing data-centric products and services.
He said since the inception of the data centre business in 2016, TelOne has been expanding its product offering as well as its capacity in terms of space through investing more than US$4 million. A further investment of US$1 million has been injected for the latest project which has seen the completion of the fourth Performance Optimised Data Centre structure at Mazowe. This has increased capacity at Mazowe by 150% having moved from 14 racks to 34 racks capable of powering 300kW of IT equipment and up to 6PetaByte of data.
The new modular data centre enhances TelOne’s ability to offer a full suite of rack products from quarter racks up to 48 rack unit (RU) racks. This means that its customers who are largely banks and financial organisations, telecommunication providers, private companies, government departments, and a range of Information Technology service providers will enjoy highly customizable, fully managed, and secure disaster recovery hosting for carrier-grade IT resiliency.
Data centres are an essential IT infrastructure underpinning economic development, supporting pillar sectors like financial services, telecommunications, and other industry sectors. They are also a key driving force to catalyse the development and adoption of e-business, digital government and smart city solutions that rely heavily on highly reliable and efficient computing facilities for technologies such as cloud computing, artificial intelligence, big data analytics, Internet of Things, 5G, etc
Mrs. Chipo Mutasa, the TelOne Managing Director, said the Mazowe Data Centre expansion project is in response to the demand that has been spurred by the premium site and security that it offers.
“We pride ourselves on this facility, which is a premium disaster recovery site with 100% power, cooling, and security. Through this, TelOne will help organisations consolidate their IT resources and functions for enhanced efficiency, benefit from the greater economies of scale and increased compliance measures.
“Furthermore, the expansion strengthens our capacity to provide cloud-based services, such as virtual private servers, web, and email hosting. We are also able to offer a diverse portfolio of future proof services leveraged on data centre and cloud environments thereby allowing the development of new and exciting products to enhance the digital landscape in Zimbabwe,” Mrs. Mutasa said.
She said it is through this realization that TelOne has been investing in the Data Centre business more aggressively, cumulatively spending at least US$4 million in the past 4 years for a total of 1300m2 of floor space. The data centre has uptime statistics of 99,98%, which are well aligned with international best practices.
Tendo Electronics Managing Director, Mr Mike Kamungeremu, whose company was responsible for the expansion of the Mazowe Data Expansion centre said the infrastructure is in line with Industry 4:0 which is the digitization and automation era.
“Data centres are now more critical in the digitization era. The trend is now moving towards embracing modular data centres. Nowadays data centre service providers like Telone are now offering data centre rental services as a specialist service and this is the trend the world over. I urge the government and corporates to use the Mazowe Data Centre. I am grateful to Telone for allowing Tendo Electronics, a local company to do this project that we delivered at the height of COVID-19. The data centre was designed and built as per international standards using world-class technology,” Mr. Kamungeremu said.