The General Manager, MDXi Data Centre, Mr Gbenga Adegbiji has disclosed that the company is presently investing additional N2.5 billion into its facility in Lekki-Lagos to raise its present investment stake from N10.7 billion in phase one to N12.2 billion in the current phase two.
Adegbiji, who disclosed this during a media tour of the MDXi Data Centre facilities in Lagos last week, said the fresh investment will strengthen its operations in Nigeria to enhance and raise its capacity in local data hosting from 300 to 600 racks.
He stated that the need for expansion was based on customer’s demand, having occupied almost all the available space lefty in the existing 300 rack space that was built in 2015, during the first phase construction of its data centre located in Lekki axis of Lagos.
In a passionate message to the Federal Government, the GM said the time has come for government to make stronger policies to ensure that private sector and organs of state host very important critical national data for security and economic reasons.
“Government must know the importance of data domestication in Nigeria. When data is hosted abroad the outside world gets our data before us because they have access to it,” he said, adding that Nigerian Banks now know the value of local data hosting.
“Over 70% of Nigerian Banks host data at MDXi and out of the 22 banks in Nigeria, 21 among them have something to do with MDXi data centre. MDXi expansion from 300 racks to 600 racks is as a result of increasing customer needs,” he stated.
Adegbiji said, more than 70 percent of current capacity of 300 racks is already occupied and the rest are already paid for. “By march this years, our current capacity will be exhausted. That is why we have embarked on expansion for another 300 racks. In fact, some companies are already booking for space in the new space.
He admitted that data centre business is capital intensive, therefore called on federal government to support data centre operations in Nigeria. He said there was need for proper regulation of data centre in the country and called on government to declare data centre operation as critical national infrastructure that needs government attention because of the critical role it plays in the economy of any country.
Giving details of MDXi operations in Nigeria, Adegbiji said, “MDXi is West Africa’s largest full-scale data centre provider offering colocation, wholesale deployments, interconnection and cloud services. MDXi is the gold standard for data centre real estate in the region as it develops a data centre eco-system spanning facilities in Lagos, Sagamu, Accra and Code D’Ivoire and Senegal.”
According to Adegbiji, MDXi is best in class infrastructure, built to TIA 942 and Uptime Institute as serves as West Africa’s Tier III Standards, which as serves as West Africa’s Tier III facility with PCI DSS, ISO 27001 and 9001 certifications.
MDXi customers have direct access to all major telecom carrier and Internet Service Provider (ISP) networks in West Africa, multiple peering exchanges in Nigeria, Ghana, Amsterdam, and London, offering cloud services in addition to data hosting.
Speaking further on why Government must intervene, he explained that “60% of all operation cost is power. Because of our peculiar environment. We use more power to evacuate heat from the sensitive areas of the data centre. We have extremes of temperature and humidity here and that cost reflect on the unit cost customers pay per rack.”
He further said that “Government of Nigerian need to come up with regulations to ensure that companies and government agencies host data locally because Increase in local data hosting will further drive down the cost,” adding that some government agencies patronize MDXi but more need to be done as good number of them still host data abroad.
According to him, Nigeria need massive investment in data centre across the country to bring about robust internet access and nationwide connectivity. “The more players the more efficiency and this will mean more user experience and cost savings.”
He said, MDXi is the only content aggregator hosting global OTTs in Nigeria. Only data centre with direct Access to 4 submarine cables within 10km: ACE, WACS, Glo 1, MainOne. Data centre fully compliant with financial sector 20km distance diversity between primary and secondary data centre and interconnects major network, content and financial providers.