Roko emerged winner from a total of 6 companies that were invited to bid for the civil works in a competitive process that started late last year. The two firms formally signed the contracts on Thursday 14th March 2019 at Raxio’s offices in Rwenzori Towers. Representing Raxio were Directors Robert Mullins and Brooks Washington and James Byaruhanga, the Raxio General Manager. Roko was signified by Mark Koehler and Willie Swanepoel the Roko Managing Director and Director. Robert Mullins confirmed that the project to construct Raxio Data centre had received clearance from Mukono Municipality as well as an Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) approval certificate from National Environment Management Authority (NEMA). Therefore, construction will start immediately to meet the target of going live by November 2019. The Raxio Data Centre is being developed to Tier III standards and will be the first truly carrier-neutral co-location facility of its standard and shall require an investment of approximately $15 million over its life-cycle. Mullins affirmed that they have assembled the best teams and the best contractors that will construct the multi-billion Raxio Data Centre as designed by Future-tech, a UK-based specialized data centre design company, and Symbion Uganda. Raxio, handed over the construction site to Roko engineers on Tuesday, March 19th 2019. Only just, Raxio took on Hamilton Cloud Services (HCS), a company focused on providing local cloud services, as its first customer. Raxio also recently co-hosted an event with global ICT giant, Oracle Corporation that intends to provide state-of-the-art cloud services solutions within the Raxio data centre- a move, expected to lower the cost of computing to Ugandan businesses. In the word of Joachim Steuerwald, the Oracle Cloud Platform Sales Director for East Africa, many of the data centres in the region are fairly old.
Uganda’s first privately owned modern data & disaster recovery centre ready for set up Raxio Data Centre signs Hamilton Cloud Services, announces early bird discount Raxio Data Centre gets the nod as BoU roots for shared ICT infrastructure
Shared Infrastructure is the way to GO
Raxio Data Centre will reduce 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. According to a NITA survey, 86.4% of IT managers working for Uganda government ministries, departments and agencies said that shared services offered in data centres, such as cloud services significantly cut ICT related costs. Also, 77.3% said they increase productivity and flexibility amongst a host of other benefits. Dr. Tumubweine Twinemanzi, the Executive Director Supervision, at Bank of Uganda, also, recently 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.
