CIO100 Delegates Visit iColo.io Data Centre in Mombasa

Delegates to CIO100 Symposium and Awards on Thursday visited  African carrier-neutral colocation services provider Icolo.io MBA1 data centre in Mombasa, Miritini. The Company also boasts of another data centre in Nairobi (NBO1) and a third one (MBA2) which is under construction in Mombasa, Nyali  and is set to be completed in January 2022.

According to the Icolo.io, two of its data centres are situated in the coastal town because it is the landing station for all of the undersea cable operators and an international network hub for internet traffic in the region. Overall, the Company’s two data centres which serve a broad spectrum of clients including global content providers have been instrumental in improving Internet experience to the 200 million people living in the East Africa region.

The MBA1, which began operations in 2017, can host 250 racks across its 4,000m2 IT space. It features redundant power complete with backup generators. It can support up to 675KW IT power and a 2 MVA site load. It also has multiple fibre entries from multiple carriers that ensure completely redundant connections. The hyperconnected, Tier-III data centre also has a working and living space for clients’ engineers.

The NBO1 which is located in Karen can host 250 racks across its 650 m2 IT white space. It can accommodate an IT load of 825kW. On the other hand, MBA2 will provide an estimated capacity of 1.6MW megawatt and 1,200 square meters of IT space. The new facility is projected to host over 600 customer racks making it Icolo.io largest data centre in Kenya.

Whereas Africa accounts for less than 1% of the world’s co-location data centre supply, the number is projected to rise in future due to increased Internet connectivity and smartphone penetration.

According to a GSMA report on The Mobile Economy, 615 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa will subscribe to mobile services by 2025, equivalent to 50% of the region’s population. 28% of the total connections will be on 4G by 2025 and 3% will be on 5G. The bulk of data centres are located in South Africa with the rest spread across Nigeria, Kenya and Ghana.