icolo.io, a leading provider of carrier-neutral colocation services in Africa, announced the commencement of construction of their second data center in Kenya. The new Data Center – called NBO1- is located in Nairobi, a new city for icolo.io following the construction of the company’s first data center in Mombasa.
Construction of the data center started in November 2018 and is expected to be complete in August 2019. This new site will host more than 250 racks and accommodate IT power of 825kW.
“With the announcement of the build of our second data center in Kenya, we reaffirm our resolution of making Kenya a major convergence point in data communication in Africa. With this sizeable investment, NBO1 will be Nairobi’s first true carrier and vendor-neutral data center with scale,” said Ranjith Cherickel, Founder and CEO of icolo.io.
NBO1 will have over 624m2 of rack space with a 99.999% guaranteed power uptime. The architectural design of the data center sits on a 4,400m2 area ensuring redundant power complete with back-up generators which are DCC certified, N+2 high precision cooling and pre-cabled interconnects. The entire infrastructure will be concurrently maintainable.
This data center will serve major businesses in the East African region ranging from internet service providers, financial services institutions, enterprise customers, medical facilities among others.
“NBO1 will be at the center of Silicon Savannah and it’s a fantastic opportunity for our talented ICT professionals to build scalable infrastructure in and around the region. This places Kenya at the heart of Digital Africa” added Mr. Cherickel.
The building will be supported on drilled concrete piles with reinforced concrete columns, beams, and hollow-core concrete slabs, as well as raised floors in the data center to enhance the flow of cold air in all the white space and technical rooms. The building will have two dedicated Meet-Me Rooms that will serve as two diverse entry points for all fibers coming into the building thus providing redundancy for our connectivity partners.
Highlights / Key Facts:
NBO1 is located in Karen, a suburb of Nairobi, which has very good connectivity, power and road infrastructure. The data center is situated more than 10km from the city center, providing an objective solution as a compliant disaster recovery site, a key requirement in the industry.
NBO1 is conveniently located in the Catholic University of East Africa Campus, 8.4km from Wilson and 23.7km from Jomo swKenyatta International Airports.
NBO1 will be equipped with 624m2 of IT space, designed to carry power loads of over 2MVA on full IT load.
Most major ISPs are already at the NBO1 site providing carrier-grade services to customers nearby. There will be over 12 different carriers to choose from with multiple fiber entries that ensure complete redundant connections when operations commence in August 2019.
Seven physical security zones and dual security control provide defense in depth.
Certifications planned for NBO1 are PCIDSS, ISO 27001 and Tier 3 ‘Constructed Facility’. NBO1 will be unlike any other facility in East Africa.
icolo.io as a pure play colocation provider as such does not provide any network services in and between its data centers.
