Intelligent Data Centres Issue 04 | Page 59

Orange selects ENGIE for operation and maintenance of West Africa data centres E NGIE, a specialist in services, distribution and equipment manufacturing in the industrial electricity sector in West Africa, has been selected for the operation and maintenance of the Orange Services Group’s data centre in Abidjan, for a five- year contract that kicked off in early June 2019. This data centre of the latest generation, built by the Orange Services Group (GOS), is one of the few data centres in West Africa that meets the highest standards of security and redundancy to ensure continuity of service in all circumstances. It received the award of Best Data Center from Africa at the 2017 ‘Datacloud Congress’ in Monaco. The perimeter of the contract includes preventive maintenance of the multi-technical lots of the data centre buildings, including the electrical substations, high voltage, cooling and air conditioning, central management technology, fire alarm systems, security and control, video surveillance and access control. This contract demonstrates ENGIE’s ambition to accelerate its development in energy services in West and Central Africa and to become one of the leaders in energy efficiency, installation and maintenance services in Africa. Built on the Free Zone of Grand-Bassam, located 40 km from Abidjan, the economic capital of Côte d’Ivoire, the building has a floor area of 1 450 m² including a 420 m² computer room. This next-generation data centre has a power capacity of 1.3 MW and a design which is oriented towards reliability and energy optimisation of data storage. The centre represents a strategic infrastructure for Orange in West Africa and primarily hosts Orange’s service platforms of its Middle East – Africa subsidiaries but it is also a colocation space for B2B customers’ needs in this region. ◊ www.intelligentdatacentres.com Issue 04 59