Rack Centre, IXPN in new initiative to boost internet economy

Rack Centre and the Internet Exchange Point of Nigeria (IXPN) have announced the establishment of an Internet Exchange Point at Rack Centre’s Tier III, carrier-neutral data centre in Lagos, the commercial nerve centre of the country.

An Internet Exchange Point (IXP) is an infrastructure designed to keep local internet traffic in-country, providing the much-needed platform for the country’s growing number of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to exchange internet traffic at a lower cost, resulting in an improvement in quality of service through lower latency, hence higher performance.

The platform is designed to support the new information technology age in Nigeria, by building local technical expertise, encouraging local content hosting, local business creation and help speed up connections. It will provide a platform that supports the governments wish to hasten and lessen the costs for the national broadband roll out – supporting education, Nigerian businesses and home users. The aim of this initiative, according to both firms, is to encourage local solutions that bring global impact, to provide a platform that enables Nigerian businesses currently hosting their content overseas to bring it back into the country and encourage the large international internet content providers to establish a presence in Nigeria.

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Ayotunde Coker, managing director of Rack Centre, says Nigeria has one of the largest internet user bases in the world, and driving local content hosting will complement the country’s desire to embrace the internet. “Nigerians are avid users of the internet, be it via tablet, PC’s or mobile devices. This new initiative enhances IXPN’s vision for online development in the country.

Rack Centre is a quality carrier neutral facility that intends to keep raising the bar for data centre providers in Nigeria with a string of firsts – first to be Tier III design certified, first carrier neutral Tier III site, and now the first Tier III data centre to sponsor and establish an Internet Exchange Point.

This initiative, sponsored by Rack Centre, enhances its offering as the leading carrier neutral facility in the country by offering operators and content providers the ability to directly peer at Rack Centre and also offer Rack Centre’s rapidly growing customer base the widest possible choice in service providers.

Information Communications Technology (ICT) has grown significantly in Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy by GDP, and currently contributes 9.58 percent to the economy as stated by the minister of Communications Technology.

IXPN and Rack Centre provide the platform that underpins the continued growth of ICT contribution to GDP.

Businesses now do not have to go abroad for data centre services that are provided at world-class in Nigeria. Muhammad Rudman, CEO of IXPN, expressed delight on the signing of the MoU, saying “we are excited to partner with Rack Centre towards providing an additional point of presence to our members within the Ikeja axis.

“This would make it easier for our members within the mainland to connect to IXPN. It equally fulfills our contingency planning strategy which ensures business continuity if there is an outage in our other locations within the island.”

IXPN is striving to add value to their members, which prompted this partnership with Rack Centre, a carrier and vendor neural and certified Tier III data centre that guarantees high uptime/availability, he said, saying “we therefore anticipate that prospective members, especially on the Lagos Mainland, will leverage on this collaboration and connect to the exchange point.”