The Cloud Exchange West Africa Limited says it has entered into partnership deal with Huawei Technologies Company Nigeria Limited to offer superior Internet Data Centre services.
The partnership, according to a statement made available to Financial Street on Friday, will enable the company provide faster response times to requirements, more flexible capacity expansion as well as reliable data centres.
It takes about two years to build a traditional data centre in Nigeria — far too slow to keep up with the rapid growth of IDC services, the statement added.
“To accelerate the process, CloudExchange chose a Huawei prefabricated modular data centre solution: with most devices pre-installed and pre-tested in the factory, the data centre simply has to be hoisted onsite. As a result, the construction period of the entire project was reduced to just seven months, meeting CloudExchange’s need for accelerated deployment without compromising quality nor impacting the convenience of services that end-users receive,” Huawei stated.
In a traditional data centre, several buildings were constructed to form a data centre campus, this it said means a high initial investment, a low initial load rate, and high overall energy consumption.
Financial Street gathered that after deploying Huawei’s prefabricated modular FusionDC solution, the data centre supports online capacity expansion, with each layer able to function as an independent data centre.
“Capacity can now be quickly expanded as needed, without any interruption to live services, reducing the initial outlay required as well as energy costs, all the while increasing the data centre load rate.
“In addition, FusionDC is configured with an intelligent management system, which provides intelligent visualisation, intelligent Operations and Maintenance (O&M), and intelligent optimisation to improve O&M efficiency and data centre reliability by implementing proactive prevention,” CloudExchange stated.
Most existing data centres in Nigeria are only Uptime Institute Tier III certified, but a growing number of financial and government customers are demanding higher reliability for their services, it noted.
“To fill this gap in the market, CloudExchange built the first Uptime Institute Tier IV prefabricated data centre in Africa. CloudExchange worked closely with Huawei to deploy dual-socket diesel generators, dual-fuel tanks, and equipment rooms in a limited space, maximising space utilisation and ultimately gaining Uptime Institute Tier IV certification in a process that was significantly streamlined,” it added.
As a new IDC entrant, the Chief Executive Officer of CloudExchange, Glad Dibetso, said, “Our cooperation with Huawei has been very fruitful. The project has quickly obtained market recognition and certification from the Uptime Institute, which is a key step for us to enter the IDC market.
“In the future, we will continue to provide reliable and convenient services for our customers. Our hope now is that this project — Africa’s first Uptime Institute Tier IV prefabricated data centre — will continue to boost the Information and Communication Technology industry in West Africa and propel the ongoing rise of the entire continent.”
CloudExchange is a leading system integrator in West Africa, a provider of end-to-end Information Technology system solutions.
