Talking to the Managing Director of Rack Centre, Mr. Ayotunde Coker, on any issue relating to technology, particularly on data centre, is more or less pushing him to his comfort zone. At the end of the day, it will turn out to be a lecture offered free of charge. The reason is not far-fetched. Coker is a highly accomplished, commercially astute technology executive with over 25 years experience at company, board and executive committee levels.

He has international experience across Europe, USA, Asia and Africa with global blue chip organisations, such as GSK, ABN Amro, UBS, JP Morgan, Merrill Lynch and The Prudential. He has held the position of Global Applications Director at BP the global oil and gas company, and prior to returning to Nigeria, was Chief Technology Officer for the United Kingdom Criminal Justice System. So technology is home turf for him.

In this interview, Coker expressed so much excitement that a Nigerian firm achieved the prestigious TCCF certification which has never been awarded to any African company. Enjoy the excerpts:

By Prince Osuagwu (Hi-Tech Editor)

RECENTLY Rack Centre got the Tier Certification for Constructed Facility, TCCF certificate. What is it all about?

It’s simply an assessment required to obtain the certification that your fundamental is built as designed to be able to deliver 99.99 per cent of uptime. It is a rigorous assessment to validate that every inch of an acclaimed design is built on approved standards. Although, since launch, Rack Centre has operated 100 per cent uptime, because we operated as a Tier III facility, constructed as designed.

What does it mean to Rack Centre?

First, authenticity is important to us at Rack Centre. We want to always do what we say and say what we do; do things right through the right means. So, having TCCF for Tier III has confirmed how eligible this facility is to perform the functions we allude to.

Global profile

There is no smoke screens like ‘oh, we are Tier III’ data centre, but all ends at design; some even cut corners and some sorts. These guys will actually find you out when you go ahead to construct your data centre cutting corners. They are so detailed- a forensic analysis of the facility. Secondly, it fully demonstrated to our customers, indisputably, we are at that level of quality. Thirdly, this is a data centre in Africa that says it is Tier III. Now, it has global profile, but is it the profile that we just go by? We can beat our chest and say this Tier III certificated facility in Nigeria meets the standard in any part of the world as certified by highly distinguished body- Uptime Institute.

So, our customers know they are coming to high quality facility. Secondly, the world is changing: we keep talking about Big Data. If you look at the number of Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Twitter, Amazon users, in Nigeria, it is significantly growing. It gives international players- banks and other companies that serve African market, such comfort that the footprint/facility they are going to in Africa is certified.

So, with Rack Centre, there is no reason people should host data abroad?

If you are still hosting abroad you have to transverse through the connectivity to someone else’s space and you will have issues around latency. But, if you are here, the services are totally seamless. We now host cloud services in Nigeria via cloud-on-ground sub-brand. It’s a heterogeneous marketplace, a cloud exchange with different cloud providers available. So, with TCCF these providers are at rest with the quality of the facility to deliver their services within Africa to Africans. Rack Centre is the most connected Tier III data centre in Africa; constructed facility.

We have all the telcos and most of the carriers of note and ISPs. This allows our customers have universal connectivity. We also have other wholesale carriers that deliver services across Africa. If you are a hosting company, Bank, then, host your services here for low latency while connecting to your offices in other African countries, at the highest quality. So, these are some of the edges the certification has accorded us.

How does this add value to local content?

First, in terms of investment, the facility is sited in Nigeria. We have sophisticated facilities because we want to attract international investors to the country. All our technical staff are Nigerians. There are parts of the technology we had to source experts from the United States, South Africa, but we always make sure there is technical-knowledge transfer as means to build our capabilities.

You have said so much about a proudly Nigerian data centre with global standard. Is the country’s business climate favourable to you?

One of the things we have done is building to meet local needs while complying with the global standards. We have such environment that at times not too conducive for a data centre. The humidity around March period could be 90-95 per cent, sometimes 97 per cent. The temperature can be at 37 degree centigrade; that is very high. We are seemingly a power company because we generate our power. Of recent, we entered into discussions with Ikeja Electric for a dedicated line. We are working with them as engineers, not a hook and switch-on sort of, because we need industrial power. We are creating Power Utilization Effectiveness (PUE) in West Africa. We have built something that is conducive to the Nigerian environment. Nowhere is better than home.

Considering what you have invested, would you be open to co-location?

 We will be delighted to co-locate telcos. We can expand the capacity to co-locate with them as certified Tier III constructed facility. We are carriers’ neutral, therefore, any telco can come here knowing they are not in the competitor’s environment. Already, we have some of them here; rather than building data centre, expanding same, they can just worry about the quality of their facility or switching, customer management, and scale up their service delivery at the front-end. We can provide the shared facility that will allow telcos expand.

Has Rack center experienced challenges of economic recession?

We saw a slow down last year, just like every other company. No doubt, we will continue to grow, but it wasn’t at the level we expected. It only required circumspective actions in spending; in the contest of the shift in the economy. However, we are tuning into the easy of doing business through our facility. Government is doing a lot too, which is reliant on e-Government and e-Governance.

There are efforts to get the situation improved by latest end of the year, which speaks volumes to the international community. So, strategically, for us and what we have seen in Government, things will shift in the right direction. However, companies have realized they have to invest at the right point in time. Instead of deploying resources to build a data centre, you could co-locate in a standard facility. Then, you can focus on the growth of your business.

There are things we say about small and medium enterprises (SMEs); there are 20 million of them. They are going to power the economy. 20 million SMEs exceed the population of Belgium- adult, children, young people put together. What we are bringing to Nigeria through Cloud-On-Ground is a high quality environment that accords these small businesses the opportunity to lower the threshold on the entry point to technology as means to break even in their businesses; even with small financial capacity. You pay as you grow/pay as you go. What we have built is key in the automation of the SMEs and will impact the economy.