ICT infrastructure critical to Nigeria’s economic growth, says Coker

HOW would you assess the operations of Rack Centre amidst the growing demand for big data storage and management among organisations in Nigeria?

We are aware of the new trend in the growth of big data across organisations in the country, and we have gone ahead to invest more in big data storage and management, in order to address the new demands. We operate a Tier 111 data centre with modern facilities that best address data storage and management and it is for this reason that we have most bluechip companies and several organisations across all sectors of the Nigerian economy, patronising our data centre.

We have the lowest Power Usage Efficiency (PUE) in Nigeria and the whole of West Africa, which makes our data centre highly optimised, highly efficient, with the capability of green power environment.

What can you say about the future of data centre in Nigeria and do you build specific data centres for the various industries including oil and gas; telecommunications; financial institutions among others?

The future of data centre in Nigeria is very bright and that is why we are offering services with the latest technology. Our build up time is modular and this allows us to fine-tune the modules that we build into the environment where we operate. We do not build separate data centres for specific industry because doing so is not an efficient way of deploying technology.

   What is needed in data centre is flexible technology that allows us to deliver services that different sectors need. This is because each sector does not need different technology solution to handle their data. Although each sector differs a little from one another, but the key thing is having a flexible solution that addresses all these needs and that is the kind of solution we offer to our clients.

  Again, technology changes fast and we are on top of our game, offering the latest data centre technology solution to our clients.

Data centre management comes with huge risk. What measures have you put in place to safe guard clients investment?

Risk management is key to us. Already, we have enterprise risk management processes in place that is reviewed frequently. We plan for even the unexpected, because we want to ensure safety of customers’ data always. Apart from having disaster recovery plan in Rack Centre, we also advise organisations to have their own disaster recovery measures in a different location outside the premises of their organisations. This will help should anything disastrous occur within their premises, their data will always be saved and could be easily recovered for business continuity.

   We are multiple network provider, which enables our customers to have choice of high quality network services. The other thing we do is that we are extension of our customers’ Information Technology (IT), because we have different certification standards, which makes us unique in data centre operation with diversified service offerings.

With Rack Centre being a Tier 111 data centre, what exactly qualifies a data centre for a Tier 111 certification?

For any data centre to be certified as Tier 111 by the Uptime Institute, it must be concurrently maintained in such a way that some of its components may be removed for servicing, and immediately replaced with another to avoid any disruptions of the operations of the data centre, and to achieve this, there is a required level of design mechanisms that must be put in place, and approved by the Uptime Institute.

Is it true that Nigeria cannot have an efficient Tier 111 data centre because of the single grid system that the country operates?

It is absolutely possible for Nigeria to have a Tier 111 data centre, because Rack Centre is already Tier 111 certified. You may be referring to Tier IV data centre, which requires additional routes of grid supply, outside a single national grid system that Nigeria currently has. But all over the world, we have very few Tier IV data centres, because the cost of delivering Tier IV is extremely high and most global data centre operators, settle for Tier 111 data centre because the service demand for Tier IV data centre is on the low side.

Can you list the benefits of a Tier 111 data centre to organisations and the economy as a whole?

The Tier 111 data centre comes with several benefits for the customers. It gives customers full assurance of the safety of their data, security wise, and this is essential to any business, be it small or big. Data Centre investment is huge and looks like a non-earning assets on the balance sheet of any organisation.  

   So, what data centre operators like Rack Centre has done is to carry that burden off the shoulders of organisations, since it is not their core business in the first place to operate a data centre, giving them enough time to focus on their core business. So, it saves organisations huge sum of money that could be invested in their core operations to boost returns on investment. It also saves organisations the challenge of having downtime in their businesses.

    Again, building data centres by organisations, amounts to serious distractions on the part of the organisation. My experience as a Chief Information Officer (CIO) in one of the banks some years ago, tells it all, where I have to be worried about maintaining the data centre of the bank. It also saves physical space for organisations.

With your Tier 111 data centre, what sectors of the Nigerian economy are you targeting?

Rack Centre is targeting all sectors of the Nigerian economy that manages data, because we have the service offerings for all of them, be it financial services, oil and gas, power, telecommunications, governments, among others. Significant amount of government operations require data management and we have all it takes to manage government data. Currently we are servicing most of the bluechip companies from our data centre, as well as top insurance and payment companies, including banks and telecommunications companies.

Looking at the infrastructural challenge in Nigeria, are there opportunities for the growth for data centres in the country?

The opportunities are huge and we can see other data centre operators springing up in the country. Again there is opportunity for expansion in length and breadth of the business and I can see that already happening. For Rack Centre, we intend expanding beyond Nigeria, into other West African counties.

Specifically, what are the challenges of running a Tier 111 data centre in Nigeria?

The challenges are huge, just like the opportunities. We run generators with diesel 24/7 without the use of electricity from the national grid. We decided to do it that way because we want to avoid a situation where operations will be put to a halt because of power failure from national grid, which will be a lot of cost on our part.

   Maintenance is also challenging, as we spend so much in maintaining the entire system and also putting backup in place. Monitoring the facilities is also challenging and we have skilled staff that are on standby for monitoring, and all these are challenges of maintaining data centre in Nigeria.

One critical component of any data centre is the cooling system. How effective is the cooling system of Rack Centre?

We have the air optimiser cooling system that operates with censors in each of the information technology (IT) rooms. Each censor determines the amount of cooling system that the equipment requires. We have four IT rooms, with each having a censor. What the air optimiser does is to generate the exact amount of cold air required by the equipment in the IT rooms and then supply that exact amount of cooling that is required, such that it does not generate more that or less than the cooling required by the equipment. This is the reason why our data centre is not under very low temperature that could be freezing to human.

   If two units are able to provide the cooling required, then only that two will be working, while the other two will be on standby. If there are more equipment in the room and more cooling is required, the censor will send the signal to the air oprtimser to generate more cooing and this is done automatically without any human intervention.

   If the cooling system in the equipment room is not controlled by the censor, there will be condensation and the moisture from the condensation can conduct electricity that can burn the board and damage the equipment. So we have the best cooling system among other data centre operating companies.

So, how does the cooling system operate?

Cold air blows from the optimiser, cools the system, and the hot air that emits from the racks is returned to the optimiser where another cooling takes place, and the air circulation girls round and round in that manner. With this system in place, we are able to maintain 1.3 Power Utilisation Efficiency (PUE). In most data centres, you will not find the readings of the PUE, because it reads up to 3.0, which is abnormal.

   We have enough racks to accommodate small and big data of organisations and our facilities are designed to accommodate more racks in the future as the business expands further. Our data centre is designed to accommodate 225 racks in each floor of three floors design, which is a calculated design for future expansion.

    Again our data centre has a neural collocation centre for all operators, which enables them to have redundant links that they could switch over to at anytime, from the same location, and this makes us unique.

Your kind of business is highly competitive. What has been your surviving strategy in this regard?

Competition is good for us and for the kind of business that we do, and we welcome competition because it will make us more innovative always, in order to give the best to our customers. With competition, in means we just have to continue to develop the muscle and capability that will keep us at the forefront of what we do. Again, we do not benchmark ourselves with data centre operators in Nigeria alone, but we benchmark ourselves with other African companies and the rest of the world. In doing so, we are building local capacities in Nigeria that have global vision.

As a data centre operator, what kinds of security support are you giving to customers that will enable them build up their trust in your service offerings?

We have differing layers of security in out business offerings, which can be grouped under 10 levels of security. With Rack Centre, customers’ assets are secured because we have built different layers of security that will always protect customers’ data in our centre.

   In terms of reliability, Rack Centre service offerings have been proved to be highly reliable. For instance, we have a Tier 111 certification from the Uptime Institute, which certified us as qualified Tier 111 Data Centre with the appropriate facilities to offer data services to customers.

   We offer the best design in downtime and our design criteria downtime is 8 minutes maximum per month and we have not experienced one second of downtime since we commenced data centre operation in Nigeria, and this is the reason we had always retained our customers and also received new customers periodically.

Have you got any remote location that gives customers convenient access to their data?

Yes, customers have access their data remotely, through a specialised software that we have installed. They can also have direct access and control of their data from the premises of our data centre, if they choose to do so.

   We also have a system in place called the remote arm, which allows our technical engineers to control data of customers on their behalf, if the customers so desire.

  We also have close circuit television (CCTV) monitoring system and the online real time access for six months or more. Big customers can also monitor their CCTV as desired.

What is your projection in terms of business growth in data centre operations in the next five years?

We see ourselves developing technology parks in Nigeria in the next five to ten years, that will be comparable to global technology parks. We also want to see Rack Centre driving the Nigerian economy through data technology.