How will you describe cloud computing to a lay man?
Makwane: Cloud computing is a web based practice of aggregating and computing capacity, which means processing power, memory storage in different networks that connect computers together in a central location and then rendering that as a service to an organization or consumer to consume this computational capability as a service. For example, in the same way you consume power computing through the internet whether you have a private or corporate link to the internet, what sits behind the internet is a whole pile of server computing capabilities, storage hardware, infrastructure and applications which enables you perform the activities you want remotely when required. This is made possible by cloud technology that sits in our warehouse in a remote location. MainOne is that aggregator who can provide computational capabilities so that people do not have to go and build big IT infrastructure.

Can we say the technology is new in this part of the world?
Makwane: I would not say that the technology is new, cloud computing has been around in this part of the world for a very long time. It has actually been evolving in stages. For example, a lot of people have email accounts, which provide you the ability to send and receive letters and mails electronically and are provided through cloud technology. What is evolving is the numbers of services that are coming online which are important to organizations as they are becoming more sophisticated.
What benefit does cloud computing holds for businesses like the SMEs?
Opeke – Cloud computing allows SMEs to access ICT technology without having to purchase and set it up by themselves. They can buy it as a service and they can buy just how much they need. They do not have to go through all the issues of providing power and maintaining it. For SMEs it is cheaper, faster and better.

How much will it cost to host?
Makwane: We can talk about hosting from two perspectives. One of the things worth mentioning is that cloud as a practice has evolved to an extent you can offer cloud in different modes. It can be public cloud; it can be a combination of public cloud and private cloud. It is literally being able to offer Cloud on people’s fingertips and how they want it. So when we talk about cost, one has to provide computing as a utility and computing as a service at the most cost competitive price.
Opeke: Cloud computing for business depends on how much you are consuming. So the pricing structure varies. As a small business, the only thing you may be doing on the cloud is word processing and accounting and you subscribe to just a small number of services with a low utilization rate then you will pay less. If you are an enterprise of thousands of users, you have lots of complicated applications that you are using, and we can set up a virtual data centre for you so you can be running your accounting applications, you can be running your inventory management, your HR and payroll systems. Then obviously you will use more resources and pay more. So just like electricity that you have a rating of how much you are consuming, that is how cloud works. We aggregate all the resources, the hardware, the software and then you come and you subscribe to how much you need and then you pay an ongoing rate for the utilization of the resources. Typically it is like a monthly rental fee for how much resource you have said you will consume and it is reserved for you in a private cloud. It is ‘’pay as you go’’ computing which offers you flexibility, security and even business agility as opposed to the traditional approach.

There is this issue around security, how do you guarantee customers data from breaches?
Makwane: From a security perspective, the ethos of building a cloud environment revolves around trust. The user who is using the service has to trust that the service is reliable and the service is secure. So fundamentally, the building blocks of a cloud infrastructure and environment are built around the highest security standards and modeling the highest literal echelon of security in terms of global security standards. Now what are these types of standards? These standards can permeate to areas like data encryption, identity management and data classification. So you are able to say data is secure if you are dealing with sensitive data because cloud computing in present terms is consumed by health care institutions which handle sensitive patient information as an example. It is consumed by legal practices which typically handle sensitive data information, banks and so on. As service providers, there is need to make sure the consumer who is consuming the service has a high sense of trust or reliance on your service.

Opeke: The technology which cloud services are based on are not really new and are evolving in terms of supporting what we call the multi-tenant environment. That is, being able to segment and separate each customers’ information which is protected and secure through various levels of security, password protection, firewalls, encryption if necessary and physical separation of the networks you can use to access each of the virtual data centers. So, there is a whole body of technology that Microsoft and other partners have developed to ensure that cloud environment can be built securely. Now, further to that technology which is being deployed all over the world and successfully utilized, we have to ensure that we have implemented it successfully to provide a high level of security and that is what we have done in MDX-I. Our technical partners audit and verify our environment. We have also gone for certification so we have the ISO 27001 certification which is the security certification. We have the PCI DSS certification which is for the Payment Card Industry so you can imagine how critical that is.. So we put ourselves through these rigorous audit processes to ensure that the environment is indeed secure and that our customers can be rest assured that if they subscribe to our cloud services, their information will be protected.

What does a customer need to subscriber to cloud services?
Opeke: If a customer wants to subscribe to our services, you would engage us and tell us about your requirements and tell us what applications you want to run, how many people you want to access your application, how much storage you need for the application, if it is something that your customers are going to be accessing over the internet, how we set that up and how we ensure that its secure, how they can access that data and ensure we have enough protection and really if it is something you are already running, what kind of backup do you require and so on. So we go through the technical requirements definition and the environment is setup for you, on our cloud platform, based on your requirements. You are also then given secure access to this environment, enabling you to test and start utilizing your environment. If you are already running a different environment and you want to migrate it, we also work with you to migrate it to our environment and ensure all your performance variables in terms of response time, data backup recovery are met and then you just run as if you have the computer down in your basement but really its residing with us and you do not have to know what physical resources or what software update has been applied. We take care of all that.

How will a customer know that ne needs to bring his or services to the cloud?
Opeke: I think what we are seeing today are businesses that need new applications, new business models, and people starting to try an e-commerce business or generally corporations that need to develop new applications for their business need to subscribe to cloud services.

Some years back, businesses were thinking about the software to be deployed. What hardware do we need? How do we build our network so our customers can access it? In today’s environment, rather than thinking that way, you need to consider Cloud services to grow your existing application. Maybe last year, if you had a 100, 000 customers who were accessing it, now you may need to upgrade because you might have 500,000. Rather than go buy new hardware, new software, set it up and install it, you can just reach out to us and say, I have this application, these are my technical requirements, this is what I need and we will make that provision for you.
How will a customer be guaranteed of uptime, especially in terms of data loss?
Opeke: The assurance we give is that you will have no down time or losses. The processes we have built in are to ensure that losses do not occur. Already we have a Tier III Data centre with availability of 99.99%. So we run the Data Centre to be available all the time. The power, the hardware the systems, everything is designed to be highly available. In addition, we work with our customers in an onboarding process to ensure the environment we are providing them; the tools we are providing them to do their computing, are tested to meet their requirements.

There is no room for data lossand that is why we have all these critical processes. We have adequate tools and technology to ensure that we are protecting against such instances happening. We having scripts to validate data, so data loss will not happen on our account. There has to be a system of logs, password protection and the right controls in terms of protecting the data and if all that fails then the backup kicks in and we can recover the data.

What is the relationship between Microsoft and MainOne in this service?
Makwane: At Microsoft across the globe, we work with our partners to deliver cloud services to the market. We went into partnership with MainOne under the auspices of a programme called Cloud Operator System Network Partner, which essentially means that we make our platforms and our technology available to our partners for them to essentially create the cloud infrastructure, modeling the best standards in the world.

Our partners are then able to provide cloud services to customers that require them. We are a technology partner to MainOne and we are also a B2B support structure to them in rendering their services to customers.
Opeke: We are a Cloud Operator System Network Partner to Microsoft and we are leveraging their technology, their expertise, their support in selling of private clouds and delivering services to businesses in Nigeria.

Why should a customer embrace your union for cloud services?
Opeke: MDX-I, MainOne brings a track record of excellence to the market. We started as a telecommunications services provider to large enterprises and we have a track record there. We have invested in our infrastructure; the submarine cable network, the terrestrial fibre network and our own Tier III Data Centre. We have also invested in training our engineers, we have selected the best technology partners such as Microsoft, and we put all that together under a system of strong governance and accountability and that is why customers come to us. We have also certified our facilities and processes on all fronts; we are certifying at the highest standards to satisfy our customers. We are not attesting to our proficiency, it is the globally recognized standard bodies that are saying, yes indeed, we can attest that MainOne is working at these standards. So that is where we think we are different; we are the first Data Centre to be PCI DSS certified in the Nigeria, and we have the security certifications. We believe we have the best Internet gateway in Africa. We have invested in infrastructure across West Africa; we are interconnected with every major telecoms operator in the region and we have partnerships with the Tier 1 global telecoms operators.

So we offer our customers that level of certainty that if they come to us for this cloud computing service, using the infrastructure that we built and processes we put in place, that we can deliver the availability, the security, the reliability that they need to run their businesses and they can go to sleep at night knowing that their computing requirements will be well taken care of.