ECONET Wireless Zimbabwe is set to begin onboarding corporate clients to its new 5-MW data centre in Harare by the end of this month, a facility designed to boost the nation’s digital infrastructure.
The facility was designed and built with the assistance of Africa Data Centres (ADC), the largest operator of data centres in Africa and a sister company of Econet.
Econet Wireless Zimbabwe group CEO Dr Douglas Mboweni said the Econet Data Centre (EDC) – which is owned by Econet Wireless Zimbabwe – will enable clients to host their computer and IT activities in the facility, which has 100 percent power availability.
“They will have access to a host of services, including cloud storage, cybersecurity and AI from the world’s leading technology vendors, such as Google, Microsoft and Palo Alto Networks, all partners of Cassava Technologies.
“We eventually plan to expand the data centre to a 10 MW facility because of the expected demands from AI,” Dr Mboweni said.
Dr Mboweni said one of the key reasons for companies choosing to use the facility was the 100 percent availability of power.
“It is hard for a company to have proper computer capability if there is frequent load shedding. This facility has multiple layers of power availability to the highest specifications. So, companies don’t need to have ‘on-premise servers’. They simply bring their servers to us, and we do the rest.
“We also allow our clients’ own computer and IT support people to look after their systems without any interference,” Dr Mboweni said.
A data centre is a secure physical location that houses powerful networked computing infrastructure that stores, processes and distributes large amounts of data that can be remotely accessed by client users.
Africa Data Centres (ADC), Econet’s sister company, already runs multiple data centres across the continent in several African cities, including Johannesburg, Lagos and Nairobi. – Herald
