Determined to expand its service offerings to high end customers, Cloud Exchange, a provider of end-to-end Information Technology (IT) system solutions has partnered with Huawei Technologies to unveil Africa’s first uptime institute tier IV modular prefabricated data centre.
The launch of the state-of-the-art data centre is in line with Cloud Exchange’s expansion of its service offerings from systems integration, hybrid cloud infrastructure to Tier IV data centre collocation, interconnects and cross-connects, managed network and security, private and public cloud services
Glad Dibetso, chief executive officer of Cloud Exchange, said Nigeria’s growing digital economy drove the development of the data centre.
Dibetso, while speaking during the launch of the data centre in Lagos, said Infrastructure, especially in ICT has continued to hold the Africa continent back. Adding that for African to fully participate in the future, there is a need to improve ICT infrastructure as it is the bedrock of digitalisation.
According to him, “The tier IV data centre vision was born from the burning platform we were on in 2016. We had an audacious vision to build the first African Tier IV Prefabricated data centre certified by Uptime Institute. We wanted to be part of the solution by finding tailor-made solutions fit for purpose and pragmatic for the continent.
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He further said that the company not only achieved the best Data Centre internationally but also made sure it’s good for the environment. “We have built the very first tier IV Data Centre in West Africa, the first green one free of air and noise pollution and one that is also free of the effects of FM200 contamination,” he said.
Eric Yang, deputy managing director of Huawei Technologies Company Nigeria Limited, said for the past 20 years, Huawei has been providing and supporting our Partners, Customers and Industries with our unique solutions to build the best practices like Cloud Exchange Data Centre
Yang added: “Huawei will keep innovating on our Data Centre solutions, especially the prefab modular solution with the concept of one layer one DC, one rack one DC. Along the lines of electrical and electronic together with digital and AI technologies, we do believe the prefab modular solution is going to be well accepted by our clients. We also believe this solution is going to benefit businesses more because it enables: capacity follows network planning; Investment follows business growth”.
On his part, Adetoyese Oyerinde, head, Data Centre and Operation at Cloud Exchange West Africa said that as a customer-centric company, Cloud Exchange realized that the only guarantee for its operation was to go for the highest level of availability threshold obtainable in the world of Data Centers: A tier IV Data Centre, the facility that promises a minimum of 99.995percent availability.
According to him, “This translates into total redundancy, continuous cooling, fault tolerance and unmatchable reliability that has not been witnessed before in sub–Saharan Africa”.
Oyerinde further said that the difference between Tier III and Tier IV Data Centre has always been under-emphasised.
“It is all in numbers, a downtime of 96 minutes compared to 26.3 minutes, a lot can happen in 70 minutes, a lot can be lost in 70 minutes and a lot of money can be made in 70 minutes. Tier IV also promises just more than availability, it promises reliability, it promises excellence, it promises adaptability, and all these have been built into the very first Uptime Institute Tier IV Data Centre in West Africa,” he said.
