Source: www.nationmedia.com

Operators of Business Processing Outsourcing firms (BPO) will soon have the bandwidth charges subsidised to make connection cheaper and competitive.

Players in the industry yesterday said the World Bank initiative, that tentatively should start next week, is a temporary measure to enable the firms in Kenya operate at par with India and Malaysia.

The expected completion of three undersea cables next year will drastically cut the bandwidth charges to march with the two countries that are leaders in business outsourcing.

Teams, EASSy and Seacom undersea fibre optic cables are currently being laid and the project is due to be completed in the last quarter of next year.

Speaking at a media briefing in Jacaranda hotel, Kenya BPO & Contact Centre Society chairman, Ms Gilda Odera, said the firms that will benefit will have their charges drop to $500 from a high of $6500. The firms currently use the satellite for connection, that is more expensive.

She, however, said new entrants would continue to bear the high bandwidth charges adding the problem would be fully solved when the region is covered with fibre optic cable. She said the high bandwidth charges were still a hindrance to accelerated growth of the BPOs.

Fair comparison

“We think its feasible to bring the costs of bandwidth to $100 to compare with other parts of the world,” Ms Odera said.

She said the sector, which has been identified as among the growth areas in the government’s Vision 2030, had the capacity to generate between 10,000 and 15000 direct jobs and three times the number if indirect jobs.

The government, she said, must step up marketing of the country as an ICT hub to attract critical mass of corporates and individuals from the developed world.

Source: www.itnewsonline.com

BT announced that it has received its first major data center outsourcing contract in Hong Kong from CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets, an independent brokerage and investment group in Asia. BT has been contracted to design, build and manage the global data center for CLSA.

The contract includes the design for the High Power usage racks, supporting blade servers, upgrading the existing facility through the installation of new generators and the provision of new Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) and cooling systems. As part of this fully managed service, BT will also provide 24×7 management of the facility and its infrastructure through a dedicated onsite team.

CLSA said that being a leading financial institution, reliable support for its global data center is of utmost importance to the company.

Rajah T., CIO of CLSA, said, “As a strategic partner and the manager of our network infrastructure, we rely on BT’s prompt delivery and outstanding service to ensure business continuity. Based on our previous experience, we agreed to contract BT to establish and manage our global data center. We have been encouraged by the technical, operational and commercial flexibility of the entire BT team and look forward to strengthening this strategic partnership.”

Allen Ma, president of BT Asia Pacific, said, “The agreement marks the extension and strengthening of our strategic relationship with CLSA. It is also the first time we are providing a fully managed data center service in Asia Pacific. This demonstrates our ambition to be recognized by our customers as the leading networked IT solutions partner of choice in the Asia Pacific region.”

BT said that leveraging its regional capability, which will be further strengthened by the proposed acquisition of Frontline Technologies Corp. Ltd., the company is moving aggressively to provide managed and outsourced ICT solutions to our major regional and global customers.

BT and CLSA have a long and successful relationship in Asia Pacific. Prior to this deal, CLSA has secured managed global MPLS network and a set of network security services from BT to help grow its business in Asia Pacific.