With the recent announcement of load-shedding in Zambia, including the possibility of up to 12-hour long outages in a single day, businesses in the country are facing significant risks to their operations. Power outages can result in costly data loss, disruption to production and decreased customer satisfaction, all of which can have a detrimental impact on a company’s bottom line.
The risks of hosting your own equipment during load-shedding are clear. A loss of power to critical business infrastructure can lead to data corruption, loss of productivity, and a total inability to service customers. In addition, many companies do not have the resources or expertise to ensure their servers are protected against prolonged power outages, leaving them vulnerable to significant losses.
But there is hope for Zambian businesses. Paratus Zambia, with its state-of-the-art, internationally certified Data Center in Lusaka, offers a solution to these risks with a guaranteed 24-hour resilient power supply. This can provide the critical back-up and continuity that businesses need to weather the load-shedding storm.
Power and Connectivity
The benefit of moving IT infrastructure offsite and migrating to the Paratus Data Center (DC) is that the facility guarantees uninterrupted power and connectivity. It runs at a 1-megawatt power capacity with two dedicated generators, and this ensures uninterrupted power. Each on-site data hall has connectivity resilience, and each cabinet has dual UPS feeds which deliver up to 3.5kVA. It is advantageous to have UPS systems in place as this allows for back-up power to be activated in case there is a utility power outage. However, having a dual UPS feed is more beneficial, as this means that there are two separate sets of these components always operating independently, so if the one cuts out, the other one automatically starts operating.
Although Paratus operates its own resilient 100 gig fiber network that interconnects the Data Center to the rest of the world, the Paratus Data Center is carrier neutral. This means that the client has more choice in connectivity options and has the freedom to connect to the facility using a solutions’ partner that works for them.
Colocation
The Paratus Zambia DC offers colocation services. This means customers are given the option to rent space within the data center for their equipment. Businesses can choose from a range of options, including dedicated, shared, caged, and private suite options.
The benefits of using colocation services include unlimited 24/7 physical access to equipment and the facility. If a customer is not able to physically travel to the facility, the Paratus Zambia DC team will offer its remote service which enables the DC team to perform any immediate functions on the customer’s behalf.
The Data Center has been designed to ensure optimal resilience and ease of maintenance. Additionally, it features redundant systems such as power, cooling, and connectivity. Each system has a primary and alternate setup, which allows them to work together to ensure maximum uptime and keep our customer’s systems online.
Country Manager of Paratus Zambia, Marius van Vuuren says: “At a time when businesses must make plans to cope with the power outages, I’m pleased that with our DC we have built the highest standard of infrastructure and considered all the services that are needed. And this means that we can indeed provide a safe harbour in any loadshedding storm. Protecting your data and ensuring your business’s continuity is vital, and the risk is simply too great to leave it to chance.”
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About Paratus
Based in Lusaka, Paratus Zambia is part of the Paratus Group. Paratus is Africa’s quality network. With an eye on the future, the group is investing in infrastructure and establishing itself as a key player in delivering integrated network services across Africa. Paratus is managed by a passionate and professional operational team in seven African countries – Angola, Botswana, DRC, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, and Zambia – and the business’s extended network provides a satellite connectivity-focused service in more than 30 African countries to a magnitude of customer satellite connections across Africa. This connects African businesses across the continent and delivers end-to-end service excellence. The group’s footprint extends beyond Africa to international (points of presence) PoPs in Europe and the US.
Born and bred in Africa, Paratus is thinking big as it grows its footprint to deliver Africa’s quality network. By understanding the unique opportunities that Africa offers business and individuals to break boundaries and to connect without limits, Paratus is committed to raising the bar for providing quality connectivity in Africa.
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