A Nigeria based Information Technology service provider, Layer3, last week at the Transcorp Hilton Hotel, Abuja, hosted leading IT professionals from across Nigeria to discuss the country’s need to take charge of the data it generates, and drive the adoption of cloud technologies by Government, Security Agencies and Indigenous businesses.
Speaking at the event, which was hosted in collaboration with VMware, a global leader in cloud computing and virtualization, the Chief Executive Officer of Layer3, Oyaje Idoko explained that countries across the world were increasingly holding data generated by their citizens in data centers located within their borders.
“The whole notion about where your data resides is something we need to take very seriously. There’s been a lot of talk about data being the new oil. If we say that data is the new oil, why would we want someone else to be in custody of our oil?” he asked rhetorically at the event with the theme ‘The Benefits of Data Sovereignty and Harnessing the Power of Cloud.’
Mr. Idoko believes that Nigeria is disadvantaged in many respects because of its failure to locate vital IT infrastructure locally, stressing that the local economy could make significant gains by leveraging homegrown IT facilities instead of relying on foreign cloud service providers.
“We see the impact of this on the amount of foreign exchange leaving the country as payment for these services. But we have the infrastructure to provide these services locally. We think it’s important to take charge of what is our own,” he advised.
Layer3 is a Nigerian company, which understands the complexities of the technology of cloud adoption. According to the company, it is available to help its clients through the decision-making process so they can get more out of their CAPEX spend.
Meanwhile, the Chief Executive Officer of the Internet Exchange Point of Nigeria, Mr. Muhammad Rudman, has explained the savings that could be made by Nigeria if the country utilizes local datacenters. He linked the high cost of internet service provisioning and user experience in Nigeria to the limited number of such supporting infrastructure within the country.
“We pay so much for internet because the cloud that supports it is not within Nigeria, but in some other country. The farther away we are from the cloud, the more it costs to access the services it supports. We can avoid these costs by hosting data locally,” he explained.
On his part, Niyi Osibeluwo, Head Cloud Solutions at Layer3, said that the company was tackling the issues raised at the event. He revealed that Layer3Cloud, Layer3’s innovative cloud services, which runs out of multiple data centers within the country, was designed and built to help private and public sector organizations benefit from cloud services.
“Our infrastructure was designed using best-in-class technology from Vmware. Our cloud services allow organizations to manage their virtual estates at the touch of a button. Configuration, real-time changes, capacity and pooling of resources can all be done on-demand via our secure self-management portal,” he said.