FG’s decision increases patronage for local data hosting- rack centre

Mr. Ezekiel Egboye, director of Operations at Rack Centre, said, his firm has witnessed increased requests as more public and private companies are now willing to bring their data home.

He said, “It is a great thing on the government requesting that data should be hosted in the country, and that is what is done globally. It will increase our footprint and we are now seeing enquiries from potential customer base”.

Egboye added that, “The key value proposition that Rack Centre places at the fore front as a business resonates with clients who are looking for reliability. Since the inception of Rack Centre in October 2013, we have not had a single down time. This tells the clients that we are as reliable as where they are coming from globally. Rack Centre is the only Tier III Carrier Neutral Constructed Facility data centre in Africa demonstrating our world class quality and reliability.

“We are also able to aggregate multiple carrier requests and do a deal with the ISP or the carrier. We have over 25 network carriers directly connected and we host the Internet Exchange Point of Nigeria (IXPN). This means large customers can save 30 to 35 percent of their connectivity costs, low latency and inherent redundancy with multiple network carries.

Recall that the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) had recently brought to the attention of Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) as well as private sector organizations of the need to patronize Nigerian data centers.

This, NITDA said, was in pursuit of Section 14.1 of the Guidelines for Nigerian Content Development in ICT which makes it mandatory for Data and Information Management Firms to “Host government data locally within the country and shall not for any reason host any government data outside the country without an express approval from NITDA.

According to the circular signed by Dr. Isa Pantami, the NITDA DG, the progress made in the adoption and utilization of ICT in both the public and private sectors of the economy makes hosting data and information inevitable.

He, however, said it was disheartening to note the practices of both public and private sector organizations hosting data offshore, despite having highly reliable Tier III Data Centers, certified by various international organizations and guaranteeing almost 100% availability as well as multiple layers of security.

Dr. Pantami disclosed then in December 2017, that as stated in Section 14.3 of the Guidelines, the Agency is working with local data hosting firms to set appropriate service level requirements and standards for data service provisioning.