Nigeria Communications Week, February 4, 2015, by Bankole Orija
Rack Centre and the Internet Exchange Point of Nigeria (IXPN) are delighted to announce the establishment of an Internet Exchange Point at Rack Centre’s Tier III, carrier neutral data centre in Lagos.
Rack Centre, wholly owned subsidiary of the Jagal Group, is a state-of-the-art, Tier III Certified data Centre offering vendor-neutral collocation services while IXPN is the leading Internet Exchange Point in Nigeria and is a not for profit organization.
An Internet Exchange Point (IXP) is designed to keep local internet traffic local, providing a platform for Nigerian Internet Service Providers (ISP’s) to exchange traffic at a lower cost, resulting in an improvement in quality of service through lower latency, hence higher performance.
The platform is designed to support the new information technology age in Nigeria, help to build local technical expertise, encourage local content hosting, local business creation and help speed up connections.
It will provide a platform that supports the governments wish to hasten and lessen the costs for the national broadband roll out; supporting education, Nigerian businesses and home users.
The aim is to encourage local solutions that bring global impact, to provide a platform that enables Nigerian businesses currently hosting their content overseas to bring it back in country and encourage the large international internet content providers to establish a presence in Nigeria.
Ayotunde Coker, managing director of Rack Centre commented that Nigeria has one of the largest internet user bases in the world and driving local content hosting will compliment Nigerians desire to embrace the internet.
“Nigerians are avid users of the internet, be it via tablet, PC’s or mobile devices. This new initiative enhances IXPN’s vision for online development in the country. Rack Centre are a quality, carrier neutral facility that intends to keep raising the bar for data centre providers in Nigeria with a string of firsts; first to be Tier III design certified, first carrier neutral Tier III site and now the first Tier III data centre to sponsor and establish an Internet Exchange Point.
This initiative, sponsored by Rack Centre enhances its offering as the leading carrier neutral facility in the country by offering operators and content providers the ability to directly peer at Rack Centre and also offer Rack Centre’s rapidly growing customer base the widest possible choice in service providers.
ICT has grown significantly in Nigeria and now contributes 9.58% to the economy as stated by the Minister of Communications Technology. IXPN and Rack Centre provide the platform that underpins the continued growth of ICT contribution to GDP.
Businesses now do not have to go abroad for data centre services that are provided at world class in Nigeria.
Muhammed Rudman, chief executive officer of IXPN expressed delight on the signing of the MOU, “ We are excited to partner with Rack Centre towards providing an additional point of presence to our members within the Ikeja axis. This would make it easier for our members within the mainland to connect to IXPN. It equally fulfills our contingency planning strategy which ensure business continuity if there is an outage in our other locations within the island”. He further said that IXPN is striving to add value to their members, which prompted this partnership with Rack Centre, a carrier and vendor neural and certified Tier III data centre that guarantees high uptime/availability. “We therefore, anticipate that prospective members, especially on the Lagos mainland will leverage on this collaboration and connect to the exchange point”.
