Banco de Moçambique, Mosambik

After the Data Center Group was able to win the former Lampertz partner Store-IT in Portugal as a partner in 2013, the managing director and owner of the company, Carlos Búrcio, started his activities to market the DC-Products product portfolio. However, the first project approach did not arise in Portugal, but in Mozambique. The emerging country has mineral resources. The income from this is to help improve the infrastructure throughout the country. In addition to road and rail construction and the expansion of airports and ports, this also includes the strategic expansion of communications networks and a strengthening of the most important bank, the Banco de Moçambique (BM).

The need for a complete reorganization of the bank, including a modern IT landscape and new buildings, was recognized. The bank wanted to build with state-of-the-art technology, but also to make its IT internationally competitive, future-proof and secure, in order to better contribute to the country's development. Initial contacts were made through a large Portuguese consulting firm, proposals were outlined and specifications were developed. In the process, Carlos Búrcio benefited from his experience with high-security IT rooms in Portugal. They made it possible to use the requirements of the current EN-1047-2 with ECB-S certification as the basis for planning all of the bank's computer rooms. During a visit of the Data Center Products management with Carlos Búrcio on site and a visit of the responsible managers of the bank and the JV at the Data Center Group, the first course for a positive decision of the customer was set. Our innovative Granite rooms were a perfect fit for the requirements and offered numerous user benefits.

The continuous continuation of the activities by our partner in cooperation with the signatory as internal interface for the extensive planning, revisions and changes by our employees, finally led to the first joint success: After almost exactly two years of hard work, we received the first order for two rooms with 126 and 66 m² floor space for the server room and the backup server room in the new building of the Banco de Moçambique in the capital Maputo on July 2, 2015. In addition, two DC IT DataSafes were added for the secure storage of backup tapes.

In parallel, the Data Center Group was already working on the next projects for the bank's branches in the provincial capitals of Nampula, XaiXai, Beira and Chimoio. For the city of Nampula, located in the northeast, the computer room of 74 m² and data safes were ordered in January 2016. However, many changes were still pending before production and transport. Likewise, the progress of construction of the shell had to be waited on site, so that shipping could not take place until the summer. Assembly began at the end of August and the room was accepted on September 22, 2016. Here, too, our technicians in the team led by Jörg Lorenz, Peter Mockenhaupt and Serkan Genc had done an excellent job in cooperation with local workers under extreme conditions with up to 40 °C without air conditioning. Without such an experienced, flexible and willing team, such projects cannot be realized - a great advantage of Data Center Group.

In the meantime, work also progressed on the project in the provincial capital XaiXai. Extensive planning, which was repeatedly delayed by changes, nevertheless led to success in the end: on August 15, 2016, the order for two Granite rooms with server room and backup data center with an area of 77 m² and 87 m² was placed with our company. On site, measurements were taken again, which resulted in numerous changes. Subsequent wishes of the customer were also added. Everything had to be taken into account and so the CAD computers in the planning department and in the design department were running as hot as the heads of the employees under the African sun. The final approval was not given until November 2016, and assembly will take place in spring 2017. And it continues: the first plans and offers for the next projects in the port city of Beira and the small provincial capital of Chimoio near the border with Zimbabwe have already been made and the order is expected for the end of 2016 and the beginning of 2017 respectively.

Our special thanks go to all the employees involved and in particular to the installation teams, who delivered outstanding work under the most difficult conditions, but were also able to gain completely new experiences.