Swazi Observer

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RSTP’S E200 MILLION ‘NEW’ DATA CENTRE BRINGS 300 JOBS

By Kwanele Dhladhla | 2021-06-05

AN investment worth over E200 million is set to be injected towards establishment of a Disaster Recovery Site (DRS) for the RSTP’s existing National Data Centre (NDC).

The Royal Science and Technology Park (RSTP) Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Vumile Dlamini, explained that the fully operational data centre had been intrdouced to contribute to the kingdom’s drive of availing robust Information, Communication and Technology (ICT) infrastructure to improve service delivery to the citizens, business community and foreign partners.

Dlamini said the NDC was conceptualised to be a tier-three data centre with full consideration of confidentiality, integrity and availbility of all ICT resources. availability According to Uptime Institute, a tier-three data centre must provide 99.98 per cent availability of ICT resources located at a data centre to ensure business continuity.

“It is prudent therefore for RSTP to establish a secondary site to be the Disaster Recovery Site (DRS) for the NDC.

The secondary site shall be known as the NDC-DRS. The NDC-DRS will therefore create the necessary and highly enabled IT environment that will ensure that the NDC is a tier-three facility that meets international standards with embedded core elements for business continuity, reliability and security to mitigate cyber-attacks,” Dlamini disclosed.

The CEO said a feasible site for erection of the NDC-DRS had been identified at Siteki, which would be 80km away from the primary site at Phocweni, Matsapha.

He mentioned that economic benefits of the project include, but are not limited to, the provision of more than 200 jobs during the construction phase.

Upon completion of the project, Dlamini said it had been estimated that 100 people would be provided with full time employment. He went on to state that estimated annual revenue was projected at at E100 million with a five per cent ncrease in subsequent years.

Dlamini added that the project would also improve government service delivery through the use of modern e-services with 99.98 per cent availability and ensuring decentralisation of the services through the use of information technologies.

“Successful delivery of the project will see a significant contribution to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by ICT services,” Dlamini pointed out.

When unpacking why investing in the NDC-DRS makes financial sense, Dlamini said it fully aligns with the the fact that government identified information technology as one of the pillars for economic growth. He made refeerence to the Strategic Roadmap 2019 – 2022 which calls for concerted and combined efforts from all stakeholders.

“This project is aligned to provision of ICT infrastructure in growing and sustaining the economy. The project is to enable business continuity in real time in the event a disaster occurs at the primary site (NDC site).

The project will further provide a strengthened security and highly protected national data against cyber-attacks and threats and provide the necessary and required business confidence to clients,” said Dlamini.

He also explained that the use and sustainability of the national data Centre was dependent on the availability of the hosted ICT resources.

recovery

Dlamini said establishment of the disaster recovery site was a prerequisite of scaling up the NDC to tier-three status in order to attract national and international users.

The value of the data assets hosted at the NDC calls for the establishment of business continuity and the disaster recovery site will provide the necessary failover for the NDC.

“When conducting business through e-commerce, users want to be able to access services 24 hours a day in all seven days of the week all year round.

Downtime can result in loss of reputation and cummulative downtime of one business day is intoleratable and can lead to clients looking elsewhere for services,” concluded Dlamini.

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