East Africa Data Centre (EADC) in Nairobi, Kenya, has become the first in central and eastern Africa to be granted Tier III Design certification by the Uptime Institute, having had its blueprints checked by the standards organization.

EADC, Nairobi, Kenya
EADC, Nairobi, Kenya – EADC

It’s up time 

The Uptime Institute is an independent body that uses standardized criteria to assess the performance, efficiency and reliability of data centers. It administers one of the very few globally accepted certifications schemes for data centers.

A Tier III Design certificate signifies that the facility has been built to support concurrently maintainable infrastructure, meaning that it can ensure 100 percent uptime.

“This is an important step for data center standards in Kenya and the rest of east and central Africa. EADC joins a relatively small number of data centers across the world in gaining the Uptime Institute Tier III Design Certification,” said Dan Kwach, general manager of EADC.

EADC is a subsidiary of Liquid Telecom Kenya. It runs Africa’s largest carrier-neutral data center, hosting the Kenya Internet Exchange Point and offering interconnection, colocation and cloud services.

EADC recently invested $5m in Kenya Power’s new substation, which has allowed the company to become significantly less reliant on diesel-powered back-up systems, commonly used in Africa due to the unreliability of the grid.