Raxio Data Centre said it has officially become the first Tier III certified datacentre in Uganda after receiving the Uptime Institute Tier III Certification on 20 October, 2020.

This follows an assessment and evaluation by expert teams from The Uptime Institute in the United States and the United Kingdom. The teams evaluated all aspects of design and equipment, such as power, cooling, and fire suppression and detection.

According to a statement, with this certification, Raxio Data Centre becomes one of just 15 Tier III, privately-owned, carrier-neutral datacentres in Africa and the second in East Africa.

An excerpt from the statement reads: “A Tier III data centre requires no shutdowns for equipment replacement and maintenance. A redundant delivery path for power and cooling is added to the redundant critical components of Tier II (Redundant Capacity) so that each and every component needed to support the IT processing environment can be shut down and maintained without impact on the operation and provision of services to customers.”

“Concurrent maintainability across all critical subsystems is actually one of the most important driving design characteristics that many clients look out for when outsourcing their data centre needs as it also ensures full redundancy in the event of unexpected shut downs or failures.”

Raxio Data Centre General Manager James Byaruhanga described this achievement as a turning point for Uganda and the East African region: “The Tier III Certification by the Uptime Institute demonstrates our ambition to achieve the highest standards, and validation that we meet global standards of modern datacentres. This also demonstrates our long-term commitment to existing and future customers as we provide colocation of their data infrastructure.”

Raxio Data Centre hosts the Uganda Internet eXchange Point which allows networks to directly interconnect and freely exchange data traffic at a common point – the company suggests that this makes the internet cheaper, faster, and more reliable.

Raxio Data Centre said the certification is a clear commitment that it will deliver the highest level of service availability for customers who require Colocation Data Centre Services for Disaster Recovery and Cross Connect in the fast-growing ICT sector.

“The certification is of paramount importance to customers with the most demanding needs providing business critical services to customers, such as those in the financial services sector, as well as creating the conditions for international customers looking to bring next-generation services into Uganda,” the company added.