Orange avoids Nigeria; builds largest data centre in Ivory Coast selects ENGIE for keeps
…Set to drag market share with emerging MainOne Data centre in Abidjan
Nigeria has yet again, lost another chance of hosting massive data centre to Ivory Coast, after losing similar infrastructure by Microsoft to South Africa last year.
Otherwise, leading global technology group, Orange has built multibillion dollar data centre to cater for the needs of West African sub-region in Abidjan with arrangements to have Engie as the operation and maintenance manager the new data centre. The contract is sealed for a five-year deal that will start early June 2019.
Though Orange claimed that its datacenter, is one of the few datacenters existing in West Africa complying with the Level IV classification, Business Hilights recalls that Nigeria’s technology giant, MainOne Group will be unveiling its datacentre in Abidjan before the end of the year. Orange Datacentre, according to available details has the required redundancies to ensure continuity of service in all circumstances. It received the ward of Best Data Center from Africa at the 2017 “Datacloud Congress” in Monaco.
The perimeter of the contract includes preventive maintenance of the multi-technical lots of the datacenter buildings, including the electrical substations, high voltage, cooling and air conditioning, Central Management Technology, fire alarm systems, security and control, video surveillance and access control.
This contract demonstrates ENGIE’s ambition to accelerate its development in energy services in West and Central Africa and to become one of the leaders in energy efficiency, installation and maintenance services in Africa.
Built on the Free Zone of Grand-Bassam, located 40 km from Abidjan, the economic capital of Côte d’Ivoire, the building has a floor area of 1 450 m² including a 420 m² computer room. This next-generation datacenter has a power capacity of 1.3 MW and a design which is oriented towards reliability and energy optimization of data storage.
The center represents a strategic infrastructure for Orange in West Africa and primarily hosts Orange’s service platforms of its Middle East – Africa subsidiaries but it is also a colocation space for BtoB customers’ needs in this region.
