First Purpose-Built E-Commerce Data Centre Opens In The Bahamas

by Robert Lee, Tax-news.com, London

29 May 2001

Aiming to assist the Bahamas in achieving its goal of making e-commerce the third pillar of its economy, Emagine (Bahamas) Ltd recently brought online the first purpose-built data centre in the Bahamas to house e-commerce businesses. There are already plans for expansion to larger facilities once the demand for the centre's services has been established.

The centre houses servers that can be used for all Internet business including Website Hosting, ASP Services and Data Processing/Distribution. The centre, which is located at the heart of the financial services area of Nassau, can house up to 400 servers.

Andrew Pike, Technical Director, said in a press release: 'We took everything into consideration, such as necessary steps to protect against a fire, power outage or even flooding. Events like these can cause major down time and nobody wants their server to be down during vital working hours. One of the most important items in our planning was security. We are housing servers with vital company information that cannot be accessed by just anyone so we have implemented an advanced access control system.'

He continued: 'Many people have asked why we decided to locate the centre in a high rent area such as Bay St. The answer is a simple one; Power is the most important requirement of a data centre, we researched power outages over the island and downtown has the least power outages on New Providence. Power outages can be managed with UPS and generators but why rely on backup power more than you have to?'

Emagine was established in 2000 and its clients range from financial institutions to law firms. With the high-speed bandwidth available, Emagine has also tapped into the offshore market. Mr Pike said: 'With unrivalled speeds through 2 fibre backbone connections to the internet and multiple satellite connections, the access speeds are unbelievable. This combined with our strong financial and legal sectors puts the Bahamas in a good position for e-commerce initiatives.' Foreign as well as domestic companies can utilize the data centre with no need to invest in infrastructure.

Click here for Emagine's website.

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