First Data Center in Eastern Europe hosted by former sausage factory

Dorobanti area, Bucharest. A team of labourers is intently working these days to finish a building that apparently is no different than the maze of post-Revolution villas that emerged in the area.

This concrete and glass building, whose basement had been designed for a sausage factory five years ago, will become the first Data Center in Eastern Europe in a matter of weeks. It will be a genuine IT bunker destined to protect the activity of large banks, insurance and communications companies against fires, earthquakes, bombings or power outages.

KT Solutions, a fully Romanian-owned company established in October last year, has invested $1.8 million in this bunker so far, but total investments will amount to $2.2 million.

Data Center is located in a seven-story building: two stories below the ground level and five above the ground level. The zero level, that is below the city sewer network, hosts a maximum security bomb shelter destined to large companies with important databases stored on electronic support (banks, insurers, communications companies etc.).

Practically, any company concluding a contract with Data Center may get a “duplicate” of its databases (back-up) stored on its own servers or on those provided by KT Solutions.

In case the computer system of the company is destroyed by fires, earthquakes or prolonged power outages, an emergency team goes to Data Center in Dorobanti and restores the activity of the institution in question.

This Data Center will also provide essential services for every company, which cannot conduct its business without the use of computer networks.

KT Solutions provides space for equipment and offices for the technical team. The client may work from home or from the office, as the computers used are connected to the servers hosted by Dorobanti Data Center by fibre optics.

Along with enhanced security, this solution is also cost-effective (as compared with the in-house solution) and is also better in terms of connection speed.

Ovidiu Crisan, one of the seven KT Solutions shareholders, became one of the IT business stars in Romania: last year, he sold Kappa, the company he had established back in 1993, to the Astral Group, after having declined several takeover offers, including one from RomTelecom.

Sources in the market said the price of deal was some $8 million. Crisan was trained as an aerospace engineer and was union leader at the Machinery Construction Designing Institute for a period of time.

Back in 1992, he assembled the first broadcasting station for cable TV in Bucharest and applied the idea of using subway galleries to expand cable TV broadcasting network throughout the Capital.