[kictanet] [KICTAnet] TEAMS | EASSY Fiber Cables Cut? SEACOM | LION?

[Brian Munyao Longwe]

Hi Michuki,

You raised an interesting point regarding size of market. When it
comes to ICTs or anything to do with the Internet I like to think of
"our market" as being the sub-region and especially the countries that
are economically linked to Kenya i.e. Eastern Africa. Considering the
fact that this region represents about a quarter of the entire African
population which is over 1 Billion, we are a VERY significant market -
especially now as most western countries, investors, companies are
looking to Africa to grow their businesses, revenues and other
interests.

Ergo, Kenya can strategically position herself as the destination of
choice to tap into the regional economy - if we can present the right
mix of ingredients to the interested parties. Konza is a step in the
right direction, as Bw Ndemo has severally pointed out; it will give
us the opportunity to have the right standards as far as buildings,
roads, water supply, electrical supply, healthcare, police etc are
concerned...

Regards,

Brian

On Thu, Mar 1, 2012 at 4:42 PM, Michuki Mwangi <michuki at swiftkenya.com> wrote:
>
>
> On 3/1/12 1:30 PM, Brian Munyao Longwe wrote:
>> But I was talking in the context of getting the content owners who our
>> eyeballs go to, to set up their data centers here in-country so that
>> all access is 'local'. By default that would mean
>> mirroring/replicating their existing data center infrastructure -
>> which includes hardware, software, data, etc...
>>
>
> I prefer to see the content owners put limited (read relevant data
> incountry) and have a private circuit (read peering) into Kenya.
>
> For instance, am happy to have the Google East Africa maps hosted in
> Kenya that the whole Google map database.
>
> At the same time am happy to see Google peering at the local IXP with
> multiple 10G pipes back to their Mega-data centers in Europe and USA.
>
>> energy for a single facility. Imagine if the following were to
>> consider setting up facilities in Kenya?
>> - Microsoft
>> - Google
>> - Facebook
>> - General Electric
>> - EBay
>> - Amazon
>> - IBM
>> - HP
>>
>
> Am happy to see versions of Ebay.co.ke Amazon.co.ke, etc that accept
> M-PESA, et al and support local sellers through local payment gateways,
> and instead of home delivery, pickups at local points like Posta
> locations, etc. It would be nice to have a gmail platform thats hosted
> in Kenya, etc. If you can imagine how many individuals and businesses
> alike are bound to suffer if all 3 cables had outages at the same time -
> remember it happened in Asia 2 years ago.
>
> The bottom line being that if they are building the infrastructure to
> support the size of the market - then we are not looking at capacity we
> dont already have.
>
>
>> If all of them set up data centers in Kenya, they would collectively
>> need about 500-800MW. Peg this against our current installed capacity
>> of 1300MW and we are definitely not anywhere near the top of the list
>> in terms of destination of choice for an African data center
>> destination.
>>
>
> +1 - unless our focus is to have them implement more regionally focused
> content/solutions. Not Global ones.
>
>> Let us not forget that these are all key target tenants for Konza. How
>> would we go about meeting their energy requirements? Let alone the
>> water requirements for cooling systems and (this may touch some
>> nerves) the human resource (skills) required to man and run the
>> centers?
>>
>
> You raised a fundamental question in an earlier post. Who develops or is
> responsible for the ICT strategy of this issues.



-- 
Brian Munyao Longwe
e-mail: blongwe at gmail.com
cell:  +254715964281
blog : http://zinjlog.blogspot.com
meta-blog: http://mashilingi.blogspot.com

"Give us clear vision that we may know where to stand and what to
stand for, because unless we stand for something, we shall fall for
anything."