MainOne subsidiary and Data Centre company, MDXi says it is injecting an additional N2. 5 billion investment to deepen its Nigerian operations.
MDXi, a fully owned unit of MainOne, owners of the MainOne intercontinental undersea cable says it is raising its investment stakes to become a major player in its space.
Under the plan, MDXi is throttling its data centre capacity-boosting spending from the previous N10. 7 billion to N12. 2 billion to step up its local data hosting from 300 to 600 racks.
Mr. Gbenga Adegbiji, General Manager, MDXi, says the need for expansion is based on customers’ demand as the company has occupied almost all the available space left in the existing 300 rack space that was built in 2015 at the first stage construction in Lekki, Lagos.
Since 2015 when MDXi data centre was launched, the management has spent $35 million —estimated at N10. 7 billion—on building capacity in the last years to create a world-class data service centre in the Nigerian commercial capital of Lagos.
“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 needs to know the importance of data domestication in Nigeria”, Adegbiji says.
“When data is hosted abroad the outside world gets our data before us because they have access to it. As it stands, over 70 percent of Nigerian banks host data at MDXi and out of the 22 banks in Nigeria, 21 of them have something to do with MDXi data centre, MDXi expansion from 300 racks to 600 is as a result of increasing customers needs”, the company GM says.
Adegbiji wants Federal Government to support data centre operations in Nigeria. In his words “there is need for proper regulation of data contents in the country and government should declare data centre operation as critical national infrastructure that needs attention because of the critical role it plays in the economy of any country.”
Sixty percent of all operation cost is power-related, he adds attributing that to “our peculiar environment.” According to him, “we use more power to evacuate heat from the sensitive areas of the data centre. We have extreme temperature and humidity and this will cost reflects on the unit cost customers pay per rack.”
He wants government to provide regulations that will ensure companies and government agencies host data locally as this will reduce the cost.
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