Rack Centre delivers robust collocation services of world class standard – Coker

Tunde Coker is Managing Director Rack Centre in Nigeria with over 25 years’ international experience across Europe, USA, Asia and Africa. He spoke to Tony Nwakaegho on the Rack Centre, issues and challenges in the hosting of data both at home, abroad and other sundry issues. Excerpts:

.Briefly explain what Rack Centre does in the ICT ecosystem in Nigeria?

We provide collocation services for hosting IT assets which means you don’t need to go to any data centre you can have it immediately available here. We operate on the highest global standard of reliability and sophistication and that is why you have to offer here in Nigeria so you don’t need to go abroad to host your IT assets. You can come to Rack Centre and collocate and get assets immediately to high quality services on as pay as you go basic and avoid all capex you have to pay as a company.

What is your assessment of the ICT environment in Nigeria?

I think there is a lot of opportunity now and there is a significant amount of energy being put in now actually with the youth in creating capacity and creating capability. We still have a lot of challenges creating the capacity locally, but it’s an opportunity because as we do that we are developing the younger people. You will see other benefits coming out from five to 10 years in terms of impart from all these entrepreneurs and also impart in the GDP.In terms of other infrastructure capability, even what we are doing at the Rack Centre, we know there is a great super market for the collocation businesses is significantly more than the capability right now. But the key thing we have to do is unlock that address super market and build our capacity to deliver up to that address super market. There is a lot of opportunity to develop that capacity which by and large we don’t have yet, that is fine, but in the Rack Centre we were showing that with the right lead ship investment and so on we can start to build that core capacity and skill. It’s a progressive thing.

What can the centre do to help the SMEs in the country?

What we can do is to provide them with services that are affordable so that they can get their businesses going quickly on pay as you go basics and also as scale businesses they pay as a scale. And when it come to the IT services and asset that they have, so these are the kind of services that we are able to provide the SMEs. In the IT space we look at the CSR that they can do with respect to helping the smaller companies understand how they develop and how they can scale their own businesses.

You talked about SMEs that with improve internet they can grow. Can you expatiate on that?

Data from around the world has shown that internet access drives successful SMEs ecosystem, so with more internet asset we can deliver here in Nigeria the more it assist  SMEs in growing because the access they have to the internet give some access to other resources like websites whether cloud services, access to the internet, consumers and so on. You need that as a base to transform your SMEs ecosystem.

Some companies have their own physical servers. What is the advantage of such servers?

If you privileged to buy your own physical server and so on, that is fine, we have a lot of companies that do that, Top and Medium enterprises that bring their servers and their racks and so on but some don’t need a whole rack, they need less than a rack, we provide that and some of these services through partners. But some don’t want that amount of scale they only want a little amount slice of IT, that we can also provide. It means therefore that you don’t need to have all of that income that can buy big expensive servers you can start your business at the level of scale that works best for you.

Now there is paucity of energy supply in Nigeria, how are you powering the Rack Centre?

Right now we empower solely on diesel and we have very sophisticated power delivery architecture. By the end of this year we are bringing in utility and it gives us another choice because right now utility is a lot more reliable, previously it wasn’t when we went to diesel. And over the next 12 to 18 months we are also looking at gas because where we are located they have gas capability, availability locally, so you will see us increasingly generating power through gas. So we have three choices, diesel, utility and gas.

Please explain what you refer to as utility and how reliable is such infrastructure?

By utility, I mean the public electricity supply. I won’t get technical, but if you go for the regular availability in public, the availability isn’t as high as when you have a dedicated high capacity line. It is a significant capital investment in getting our own capacity line coming directly into the Rack Centre; in that case it is much more reliable as we are talking of 80 percent rather than much lower percentage for the normal public supply.

How will smart phone and feature phone thrive in the IT ecosystem?

You know smart phone now have significant amount of functionalities they connect to the internet they call it TFA and the interaction is much higher for browsing and they have apps that you can use to control a whole range of things. As you have all these new disruptive technology innovations coming, the core of being able to control and interact with us will be the smart phone. Either the smart phone or other awearable technologies like the smart watch, but by and large it has to be the anchor point of the internet of things controlling new technology because that is the user interaction with the internet. It is a highly sophisticated powerful device that allows you to use as an anchor for creating all the other technologies that will be coming up and other innovations that are also coming in.

Is there anything government is doing to assist the Rack Centre get the needed infrastructure that will stimulate hosting of assets in Nigeria?

We had the Minister of Communications, Barr. Adebayo Shittu around a couple of months ago and he stated that he was amazed that the quality that we are able to provide is world class and added that he will ensure that he support that type of infrastructure locally. They are aware of what we do as we are getting all the supports from them, and we are already working on how government will locate its own data here in Nigeria.

Briefly speak on the percentage of those hosting their data abroad and those that have hosted with the Rack Centre?

By and large there is higher percentage abroad, but we are creating the awareness here, because if people don’t know it’s here they will not come back here. So if we create the awareness of what we have got here, they will start to reassess their own reason of hosting abroad. We don’t have that data; all we have is the feeling that there is a significant amount of hosting abroad and we see that being brought back here.

What is the experience of consumers who are using the centre?

They are happy, and have very high consumers’ satisfaction and we monitor it regularly and any little bleak on that we deal with it passionately because we are very passionate about our consumers that are with us and our consumers satisfaction rating is very high.

How would cloud services help to accelerate a smarter society?

As you are able to get into business quicker either as a corporate and so on, you see the contribution of technology is not just technology on its own, it also has to do with how technology enables the other industries, the banks for instance and it enables the banks to operate much more efficiently. Banks don’t have to build their own data centre but being able to host with the Rack Centre with other companies, the telcos, industries and manufacturing needing technology being able to leverage the services we have and grow so you find the impact on the economy and based on the fact that we are growing the IT contribution to the GDP on it own. It is enhancing through the IT contribution other part of the economy to GDP. You see this is an important part of the core infrastructure for the industrial Nigeria.