By Tare Youdeowei

Ezekiel Egboye is the Director of Operations, Rack Centre, saddled with the responsibility of ensuring the short and long term strategies of the business are achieved and possibly surpassed.

He has been around infrastructure, implementation, delivery and also running an operations department in several companies in Europe and North America.

Ezekiel Egboye

As a result of this, he says he has been able to build a strong understanding of how to manage people and technology and how to create value for the customers.

In an interview with HiTech, Egboye revealed that Nigeria has unique problems that affect data centre operations but from a Nigerian perspective there are key issues that Rack Centre is well positioned to deal with as they come.

Excerpts:

What are the issues specific to Nigeria’s Data centre market?

When I look at the challenges in Nigeria compared to the global market, they are not really unique to Nigeria so to say, however, they are more pronounced. Power for example, is always a problem and it is the key problem, not just in Nigeria but in Africa as a whole. But is it also important for us to highlight that power is not only  a challenge in Nigeria but as well in other parts of the world.

Though Nigeria’s power issues are on a larger scale and more constant, these issues are not particularly unique to this country.

Another major issue in Nigeria is that we tend to have fibre cuts, but the good thing is that in Rack Center, we have positioned ourselves to deal with normal issues that we face in Nigeria. Our power architecture is very robust and detailed, also, from a connectivity standpoint; we currently host almost all local and even some international carriers. This gives our clients the luxury of having multiple connectivity providers, and should they have any issue, they can easily switch over to another provider.

How has Rack Centre been able to weather the challenges in Nigeria?

Rack Centre is built primarily on international best practice. So, from the start, we ensure that our facility is operated in line with international best practice; from the construction of the facility, to the operational delivery.

We believe very strongly in four core principles in operations; the people, processes, control and the technology. Without any of these four processes, the probability of having a downtime is very high. 70 percent of downtime globally is caused by human error, so if you don’t have the right processes in place, you are bound to have human error.

What do you think Nigeria can do to attract and retain personnel to control the said processes?

Data centre process is really a new service in Nigeria. 10 years ago, you probably would not find any collocation data centres or any Tier III designed data centre. With the fact that it is quite new in Nigeria, we tend to find issues around having the right skill set.

But what we have done in Rack Centre since inception is to build credible and highly talented resources by providing them with the right platform, the right business organization and also the right leadership. With that, we have been able to ensure that there is continuous training and innovation.

We have also ensured that the business provides these people with the right tools to successfully carry out their duties and continuously motivate them to do more. We focus on local talents and train them locally and abroad when needed. We also ensure that the trainings provided are relevant technical trainings which are specific to the industry and to our technology, not generic technology.

What is the advantage of a Tier III certification?

Uptime is a very important institution when we look at the data centre large scale, so it is very important for us to acknowledge the Tier III certification. Currently, there is no other collocation data centre in Africa that has achieved a Tier III constructed facility. Rack Centre is the first and only collocation data centre to achieve this.

However, there are other data centres in Africa that have gone through the design certification which is great and is the first step in the process of the Tier III certification, but the core of the certification is around the TCCF as a constructed facility, and I would urge other data centres in the country to go through that process of actually becoming constructed certified because it gives Nigeria a better place in the global industry.

The key thing is that this certification has brought credibility to what we do. It also brings investor confidence for global businesses that are looking to invest in Africa. Because we are Tier III certified, we are comparable with any facility in the world, so foreign businesses feel comfortable and confident to host their infrastructure with us.

What is the relationship between Rack Centre and the Internet Exchange Point of Nigeria (IXPN)?

The IXPN is pretty much the connectivity service where members within that service come together and provide connectivity which reduces latency. Rack Centre is the first collocation data centre to have the internet exchange point reside here. Also we were recently given a mandate in conjunction with the IXPN to become the regional exchange. What this means is that from Rack Centre, you are able to interconnect and change packets seamlessly with other regional exchanges.

Another key thing is the carrier neutrality of Rack Centre, which makes us unique because it is not owned by a telco. If you look at global collocation services, you will find that they don’t have any affiliation to, or are not owned by, or have stake in any of the telco providers. This is important because as a true carrier neutral data centre, you are able to attract almost all the telecoms operators and internet service providers (ISPs) to your facility and provide connectivity to clients.

Today, in Rack Centre we have over 25 ISPs and carriers in Nigeria, as well as other Pan African carriers.

Our neutrality also gives the service providers the comfort to know that we are not chasing the same business as  them and we are able to provide connectivity through all the five undersea cables landed in Nigeria which gives our clients the ability to have redundancy through cross connection if there is an issue with any of the submarine cables.

Nigeria’s government has been clamouring for hosting of data in the country for a while now, but most private companies still host abroad, how is Rack Centre responding to this?

It is a great thing that the government is requesting that data be hosted in the country, and that is what is done globally. For us, it has been a blessing because it has increased our footprint and has increased the enquiries we get and our customer base. The key value proposition that Rack Centre places at the fore front as a business resonates with clients who are looking for reliability. As it stands, since inception of Rack Centre in October 2013, we have not had a single down time. We are also able to aggregate multiple carrier requests and do a deal with the ISP or the carrier provider then share the bulk deals amongst our clients. That is a key thing for all the banks, as it reduces about 30 to 35 percent of their back haul cost.

Do you think the country has enough capacity to host all data locally?

I believe that we do because data centres are able to expand. Rack Centre for instance, is a very agile business in the sense that we always adapt and look for ways to innovate. As a modular system, we are able to scale based on demand.

We have doubled our capacity since inception and that is based on growth, and we have got a very great trajectory that clearly shows that at full build, we will be providing 3,000 racks in this location. We have a land space of 20,000 square meters, which is able to build additional 3,000 racks and over eight mega watts of IT power. In terms of scalability, we are able to support that growth in the country, and I believe that other data centres should be able to expand as well.

What do you think is the future of data centre operations in Nigeria?

There is definitely room for more players and we do encourage other players to come in and provide service. From an operational standpoint, I think Nigerian customers are becoming very tech savvy so there is going to be a lot of pressure for operations to ensure  they meet international best standards.

I believe that it will actually up the game and make the data centres in the country focus a lot on ensuring operational efficiency and having the right team.