By Nnamdi Ojiego

Vodacom Business Nigeria, a leading provider of total communication solutions says it is partnering with Rack Centre Africa, a data centre service provider, to provide a neutral data facility in Nigerian.

Rack Center will provide Vodacom with carrier neutral data center infrastructure enabling the first premium collocation facilities in Nigeria. The Tier3 colocation data center will have a fully redundant system, provide 99.995% uptime and 96 hours Power Outage Protection.

According to Vodacom, a neutral data center is integral in growing the Nigerian ICT industry, stating that the partnership will not only create a cost effective platform for network operators to interconnect in a neutral facility through collocation, but will also encourage competition and diversity in the industry.

Speaking on the partnership, the Managing Director of Vodacom Business Nigeria, Mr. Guy Clarke said, “as an organization, we continuously seek out innovations that will impact positively on the industry. By teaming up with Rack Centre Africa to build Nigeria’s first Carrier Neutral data centre, we are recognizing the power of shared infrastructure which is key to supporting the growth of broadband and the adoption of cloud services in Nigeria.

“This initiative will benefit multiple service providers and operators and I am excited about the advantages our customers in Nigeria and West Africa will experience as a result. Corporate organizations can now take advantage of the opportunity to warehouse their data in a premium facility that guarantees the highest levels of security and connectivity,” Guy said.

Also speaking, the Group Executive Director of Jagal Group, Mr. Maher Jarmakani said, “Vodacom has been very instrumental in bringing this great innovation to the Nigerian market and we are pleased to have Vodacom as the anchor tenant in this facility.”

He reiterated that Rack Center would continuously seek new avenues to enable its customers’ gain access to the most sophisticated ICT and data centre service tools for their businesses.

“Maximum protection, cooling systems, power supply for mission critical systems and ensuring adherence to increasingly stringent policies regarding data protection and environmental impacts are only a few of the ways in which we can help grow our customers business”.

Vodacom Business Nigeria’s existing Managed Hosting Services which includes, dedicated and virtual hosting services, will be migrated to the new Rack Centre Africa data center once fully commissioned in the first quarter of 2013.