By Beaven Dhliwayo.
Harare, Zimbabwe. (News Of The South) – Minister of ICT, Postal and Courier Services, Supa Mandiwanzira on Thursday officially launched the TelOne Data Centre which is a sub-project of the National Broadband Project under the $98 million China Exim Bank facility effectively trebling its capacity to 640 000.
A Data Centre is a centralized location where large amounts of data are collected, stored, processed, distributed and accessed.
The Data Centre comes after TelOne suffered losses because of the general decline of voice services as customers now prefer Over-The-Top (OTT) instant messaging services provided by third parties, for example Facebook and WhatsApp applications.
Mandiwanzira said the deliberate transition by TelOne from a purely fixed voice business to becoming a fixed mobile converged company with an emphasis on broadband, cloud and digital services is expected to see the company return to profitability within the next two years.
He said as the Government have redefined TelOne as a modern ICT company, it is thrilled to be adding another feather on its hat through the Data Centre.
He said the facility has been built to cater for the current and future ICT processing needs of enterprises in the country and beyond.
“This Data Centre is a sub-project that was born out of the National Broadband Project under the $98 million China Exim Bank facility being implemented by Huawei. Without the support and guidance we got from Government we would not have been able to have such capital let alone
the progress we had made so far.
“We are pleased to confirm that the facilities we have built are world class, Tier 3 meaning we guarantee reliability at 99.982 percent uptime,” he said.
Mandiwanzira pleaded with the Zimbabwean business community and those abroad to consider using the services being offered by TelOne Data Centre.
“I therefore implore on all of you to seriously consider us to host you instead of constructing your own centres. As a specialized entity, not only are we guaranteeing the expertise but we will also help you to cut your connectivity costs by up to 35 percent.
“The TelOne Data Centre offers a variety of services including co-location which allows enterprises to have their ICT equipment housed at TelOne.
“As the hosting organization, TelOne will host many other enterprises allowing the sharing of resources such as power, air-conditioning rates and real estate rental and thus significantly cut down on the enterprises’ operational costs.
“Hosting is available as a single server unit, quarter rack, half rack or full 47u rack and enterprises can bring their own racks into a co-location room especially set aside for this purposes. The co- location provides both AC and DC power supply for the customers’ convenience,” he said.
He said TelOne also provide storage facilities enabling clients to store their data, create databases, backup their critical data for quick recovery in case of emergencies and recovery facilities that include hot standby capabilities are also available enabling clients to instantly recover from disastrous situations.
Mandiwanzira added that other services available from the Data Centre include virtualized hosting environments whereupon enterprises do away with the need to buy capital equipment such as servers and related infrastructure.
Also speaking at the launch TelOne Managing Director, Mrs Chipo Mtasa said the launch is an important development worth celebrating as it sync with the big data era that the country has entered into making such facilities indispensable.
“The centre is designed for scalability meaning customers can save on their budget through using and paying only for the required level of service.
“The TelOne Data centre is a Tier 3 DC that offers reliable and integrated services which guarantees business continuity and secure backup solutions to support safe data Centre 99.982 percent uptime.
“TelOne offers better service quality and security achieved from centralized high quality service operation and standard maintenance,” she said adding that customers will benefit from lower IT costs leading to savings of 15 to 35 percent.
TelOne Board Chairman, Eng Charles Shamu said to date TelOne has drawn down a total of $33 million from the China Exim facility since commencement National Broadband Project in October 2016 as the company moves to introduce multimedia services to counter the decline in voice
revenue.
“The Data Centre project, the digitalization of several of our exchanges, convergence and introduction of pre-paid billing platform, upgrade of information superhighway of Mutare-Harare-Bulawayo-Plumtree fibre link from 10 to 100 Gigabits per second, upgrade of Bulawayo-Victoria Falls link from 622 Megabits per second to 1.2 Gigabits per second, and the on-going Bulawayo-Beitbridge fibre backbone link roll-out are some of the projects that have been implemented through the drawdown to date,” he said.
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