The UoN Vice Chancellor, Prof.Stephen Kiama launched the Educational Data Centre on Tuesday, 14 December 2021.

According to the vice chancellor, ‘the Centre was established to meet the increased demands on data storage, computing resources and communication services that form the core of the University’s computing infrastructure and it is in line with the five 5-point Reform Agenda aimed at transforming the University into “A vibrant, relevant and Sustainable University”, this Data Centre will ensure there is well-coordinated data management and access in the university.’

‘It is as a result of this, that the University set up a state-of-the-art Educational Data Centre (EDC) to meet the growing demand and scale into the future, and at the same time ensure security and high availability of University ICT services,’ added Prof. Kiama.

Additionally, ‘EDC is the nerve centre in which all University’s business processes including student, human resources, procurement and finance among several others are centrally hosted and processed for management and strategic decision making.’

As he spoke on the importance and the role of the EDC, Prof. Kiama mentioned that the EDC will now support strategies in data driven student and institutional management decision making. ‘Through data-driven management reforms as envisaged in the VCs reform agenda, the university has finally established comprehensive and integrated data management systems,’ emphasized Proof Kiama.

While giving his remarks, the DVCAA, Prof. Ogengo reiterated that, ‘the EDC will provide an opportunity where our students will get hands-on training on the latest data centre technologies. The EDC will be open to academic tours by our computing and engineering students.’

Currently, the EDC has partnered with Huawei in training and certification in IT Networking, Cloud Computing, Storage and Security. Blended learning are hosted at the facility, with trainers coming from the ICT Staff.

‘The state of the art conferencing room powered by Zoom (video conferencing equipment used by researchers to collaborate), will enable researchers to collaborate through virtual meetings. The Faculty will use the conference facility for remote teaching and supervision of postgraduate students and that the upgraded data centre is therefore a valuable platform that supports research collaboration with external partners,’ said Prof. Margaret Hutchinson.

In his remarks, the Director ICT, Mr.P.N Kariuki, urged the University to complement the existing database, system and network administrators to ensure retention and continuity.  ‘To this end, I encourage ICT staff in other sections who are interested in data centre related careers to pursue relevant training and certifications.’

‘As the University earnestly undertakes the Data Reforms, new tools and technologies will be applied to get insights on the huge data sets that sit on the infrastructure since the University began the automation journey for over 20 years now. These include data warehouses, data mining, data visualization, and presentation,’ said the COO, Mr. Brian Ouma at the launch.

Faculty Deans, Director, Planning and Development, Director, Facility management, Director ICT, Director Corporate Affairs and Registrar Administration were in physical attendance while all members of the Senate, all central HODs and all ICT staff were in virtual attendance.