The General Manager of the MainOne Data Center subsidiary, MDXI, Mr. Gbenga Adegbiji has debunked the perception that power hungry industries such as data centers cannot successfully operate in Nigeria.
Adegbiji, who was reacting to media reports that power is the key challenge of the Data center operation in Nigeria, disclosed that the MDXi Data Center has enjoyed over 90 per cent power uptime since 2015 and is poised to achieve 95 percent availability in 2018, based on a growing partnership with a local power distribution company.
“We recognized the crippling impact of downtimes, the peculiarities of the Nigerian power environment as an albatross that had forced many companies to relocate outside Nigeria, and so we ensured MDXI was established with the most robust electricity power and back-up arrangements, in line with the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) ANSI/TIA-942, the leading Telecommunications Infrastructure Standard for Data Centers,” he said.
Adegbiji added that though MDXi made provision for the full complement of generators and diesel tanks with capacity of over 100,000 liters to secure the data center’s operations and guarantee 99.995% availability, it also partnered with Eko Disco and co-invested in a dedicated 33KV feeder and line connection to the National Grid through the Ajah sub-station. “Connecting directly to the grid provides us access to multiple power generating plants and guarantees backup in the event that one power plant goes down. This was a capital investment of hundreds of millions in substation equipment and dedicated power lines which bypass all ‘last-mile’ challenges encountered in electricity distribution. This has guaranteed an increase in power availability at the data center from 50% average commercial power availability to between 95% and 98%,” Adegbiji said.
The MDXI facility was purpose-built to mitigate all challenges that global businesses may have in a Nigerian data center. Before constructing the data center, the company realized 24×7 power supply was a critical challenge for businesses requiring high availability colocation infrastructure within Nigeria and invested in a direct private connection to the National grid through newly privatized Eko Electricity Distribution Plc.
Aside the steady state of operation and the attendant reliability of equipment and systems that the public power provides, MDXI has been able to guarantee a significant cost savings which is passed on to its numerous customers which include Banks, Government parastatals, international financial organizations and the large over-the-top operators.The data center’s performance and service delivery has earned the company an Impact Award during the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council (PEBEC) Impact Awards for its contribution to improving Nigeria’s rank in the “Ease of Doing Business” index through its colocation of critical server infrastructure for the Federal Government.