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Business Reporter

Tendo Electronics and Power Engineering Company says the Covid-19 pandemic has seen a surge in demand for digital infrastructure as businesses invest in both system upgrades and new installations.

This comes after Tendo recently installed TelOne’s US$1 million data centre expansion project at Mazowe Earth Station.

“Most businesses have significantly invested in digital infrastructure during the pandemic thereby increasing the demand to upgrade, refresh or install new data centres to support this drive. We expect demand to continue rising,” Tendo managing director Mike Kamungeremu said.

This bodes well for the sector’s future.

“It is looking very promising. The demand for our services and solutions is increasing also because most businesses are going green and a number of very good solar projects are coming up.

“In addition, the fact that almost all businesses have gone digital means the need for us to provide the requisite infrastructure and support for them has become critical hence the increase in demand.

“On the other hand the general rise in price levels even internationally as well as shortages in foreign currency may see some projects being parked by customers but we hope the Reserve Bank will continue supporting us through the auction as they have always done so that we continue providing world class solutions,” Kamungeremu said.

The US$1 million investment injected by TelOne increased the capacity at Mazowe by 150 percent, having moved from 14 racks to 34 racks capable of powering 300kW of IT equipment and up to 6PetaByte of data.

TelOne managing director Ms Chipo Mtasa said it was important that a Zimbabwean service provider had managed to deliver a high quality project.

“Allow me to give a special mention to our partner who worked on this project – Tendo Electronics and Power Engineering Company. This is such a profound story and such great joy to have worked with local suppliers for a technical project.

“They have been able to deliver a very high-quality project and have applied themselves with such a high degree of professionalism.

“This must be a lesson to us that our country has the talent and capacity and we should move more and more to consider local suppliers in many of our projects,” Mtasa said.

“Furthermore, the expansion strengthens our capacity to provide cloud-based services, such as virtual private servers, web, and email hosting.

“We are also able to offer a diverse portfolio of future proof services leveraged on data centre and cloud environments thereby allowing the development of new and exciting products to enhance the digital landscape in Zimbabwe.”