SA Altech Group to put KES 830mn in data centres in East Africa.

By bne IntelliNews February 7, 2012
South Africa's technology group Allied Technologies Limited (Altech) plans to invest KES 830mn (EUR 7.6mn) in the next year to build five satellite data centres in East Africa, as it seeks to boost its competitiveness in offering leased storage services in the region, Business Daily reported. The company is going to use its satellite facilities to tap into regional financial institutions, mobile operators and government departments. The five satellite centres will be set up in Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and will be connected to a bigger data centre, which Altech opened in Kenya last week to provide local data backup services. We already have firms like Bharti Airtel who want to relocate data in their 13 Africa countries here in Nairobi. Others like Equity Bank have also indicated a possibility of using it for redundancy, Altech CEO Craig Venter told Business Daily. The main competitors of Altechs Kenyan subsidiary Kenya Data Network (KDN) are the countrys dominant mobile operator, Safaricom, which has teamed up with a local IT firm, Seven Seas Technology, to offer cloud computing, and South African computer firm Business Connexion, which targets government and small businesses with its electronic storage facility that will offer data security and delivery of technology services and software through cloud computing over the Internet to third parties.

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