A government data center in Jamaica has received a J$600 million (US$3.8m) upgrade.

Known as the eGov Data Centre, works began in 2020 on the upgrade project, which was managed by the Transformation Implementation Unit (TIU).

The upgrade has increased the storage capacity of the data center by more than 100 percent, from 615 to 1,300 terabytes.

TIU has also renovated the physical plant and introduced automated management tools at both the eGov primary data center and its disaster recovery site in St Catherine.

Minister of Finance and the Public Service Dr. Nigel Clarke said of the upgrade: "It’s about making the Government more efficient, as it regards the deployment and use of technology for carrying out the functions of Government. It’s wonderful to see. There is a lot more to be done. But with what has been done so far, I can see massive efficiencies being brought to Government and security being brought to the operations of Government as well."

The Government of Jamaica (GOJ) Cloud Platform has also been upgraded to add more capacity for users.

Clarke added: "Jamaica wins when we have an efficient data center that can provide software as a service, infrastructure as a service, platform as a service, so that the people in ministries, departments, and agencies (MDAs) can do their jobs without having to worry about those details when we have a strategic focal point that worries and is concerned about those kinds of details."

In addition to the data center upgrades, the TIU has implemented around 31 kilometers of high-speed fiber throughout the Kingston Metropolitan Area, connecting around 250 MDAs on the way.

According to the eGov Jamaica website, the data center is Tier-II compliant and features 24/7 accessibility and security. The site offers colocation services ranging from a single 1U server to full racks. Customers can provide their own racks or lease them from eGov.

Jamaica has a small data center market. DataCenterCatalogue lists two facilities in the nation: Caymanas Data Centre and the NBC Disaster Recovery Site, while Cloudscene notes a Digicel data center in Kingston.