Digital Realty launches third data center in Lagos to power Nigeria's digital future - ITREALMS

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Premier global provider of data center, colocation, and interconnection solutions, the Digital Realty, has launched its third data center in Lagos, South West Nigeria, reports ITREALMS.

The latest data centre, ITREALMS gathered will not only shape the country’s digital future but also the social and economic fabric of its communities.

NITMA'24 gets November 21st date, expands nominations - ITREALMS

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The 2024 edition of the National Information Technology Merit Awards (NITMA), hosted by the Nigeria Computer Society (NCS) would hold on Thursday, November 21, with expanded nominations, reports ITREALMS.

NCS president, Dr. Muhammad Sirajo Aliyu, disclosed this at the national secretariat, Alausa Ikeja on Tuesday during a hybrid press conference, told ITREALMS that NITMA would hold at Muson Center, Onikan-Lagos.

Nnamani: Nigeria deserves deliberate actions on AI regulation, data center growth - ITREALMS

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The Chief Executive Officer of Digital Realty, Nigeria, Engr. Ikechukwu Nnamani has declared that Nigeria deserves deliberate actions on Artificial Intelligence (AI) regulation with potential to grow data centres, reports ITREALMS.

He made this call during a courtesy visit by the Executive Committee of the Nigeria Information Technology Reporters’ Association (NITRA) as a fall out of its recently held ICT Growth Conference with the theme “Impact of AI On National Development: Prospects, Policies, and Challenges in Nigeria”, Nnamani noted that people developing ethical solutions for AI are few compared to people producing non-ethical solutions, but have come to take advantage and make money.

AXA MANSARD introduces four new contact center numbers - ITREALMS

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AXA MANSARD has introduced four new contact center numbers which are now active, reports ITREALMS.

The company, which prides itself as one-stop financial services platform for life Insurance, motor Insurance, travel Insurance, health insurance and investment in Nigeria, made this disclosure at the weekend, saying that the new contact center lines are now active.

Tiwa's 'Water and Garri' movie premier: TECNO booth takes center stage - ITREALMS

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The recent premiere of the highly anticipated film Water and Garri was nothing short of a star-studded affair. Its compelling storyline and stellar performances captured audiences. Held at the Livesport Event Center, the event drew A-list celebrities, industry insiders, and eager fans, all eager to witness the cinematic spectacle unfold.

One of the most memorable aspects of the evening was the irresistible allure of the TECNO booth, where celebrities couldn't get enough of the state-of-the-art devices on display. From snapping selfies with the latest TECNO smartphones to exploring the myriad features and functionalities, it was clear that TECNO had struck a chord with its audience.

Kaspersky opens first African Transparency Center - ITREALMS

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As part of the Africa Cyber Defense Forum (ACDF), Kaspersky (www.Kaspersky.co.za) has opened its first Transparency Center in the African region, reports ITREALMS.

The new center, located in Kigali, Rwanda, is opening as part of Kaspersky’s Global Transparency Initiative, established to highlight the reliability of the company's solutions and advocate for greater transparency throughout the cybersecurity industry. The new center offers its visitors a comprehensive overview of Kaspersky's engineering and data processing practices, and a live demonstration of the source code for its products and services.

Financial inclusion: Nigeria’s RecyclePoints in top 10 @MIT Legatum Center African Startups prize - ITREALMS

ITREALMS:

RecyclePoints a Nigerian startup has emerged in the top 10 at the MIT Legatum Center and Mastercard Foundation finalists of the 2018 Zambezi Prize for Innovation in Financial Inclusion, reports ITRealms.

The Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), in collaboration with the Mastercard Foundation, announced the finalists of the 2018 edition of the Zambezi Prize.

ITRealms gathered that the Grand Prize Winner and  Runners-Up will be announced during the Open Mic Africa Summit in Nairobi on August 29th, 2018.

RecyclePoints  pride itself as a waste recycling and social benefit venture which commenced its beta edition in Lagos, operating an incentive-based scheme which collects recyclable materials from post consumers and in turn rewards them with “Points” which they could accumulate and use to redeem/shop for household items offered through our iRecycle store.

The prestigious competition, awarding a total of $200,000 in prizes, was established in 2015 to discover Africa’s most promising and innovative early-stage start-ups that promote and advance financial inclusion on the continent.

The selected companies are Apollo Agriculture (Kenya), Bidhaa Sasa (Kenya), FarmDrive (Kenya), Farmerline (Ghana), LanteOTC (South Africa)(https://LanteOTC.com/), MaTontine (Senegal) (ControlRisks.com), OZE (Ghana)(www.OZE.guru/), RecyclePoints (Nigeria), Tulaa (Kenya)( www.Tulaa.io), and Wala (South Africa) (https://getWala.com/).

“We are pleased to welcome the 2018 finalists into the MIT Zambezi family”, said Georgina Campbell Flatter, the Executive Director of the MIT Legatum Center. “They represent some of the world’s most innovative change agents.”

“The finalists demonstrated strong leadership and innovation in the way they are solving financial inclusion challenges”, said Ali Diallo, the Global Programs Manager of the MIT Legatum Center. “We also want to thank the hundreds of great startups that applied to this competition and shared with us their inspiring ventures, visions, and insights for advancing financial inclusion. We hope to keep them all engaged through our upcoming initiatives”.

The finalists will join leaders from the MIT and African tech ecosystems on August 28th and 29th at the 2018 MIT Open Mic Africa Summit in Nairobi, Kenya. The two-day event will include a VIP reception followed by the award ceremony at Strathmore University where the Grand Prize Winner will be awarded $100,000. Two runners-up will each receive $30,000 while the seven remaining finalists will each receive $5,000 in cash prizes. Additionally, the Legatum Center will award $5,000 to an African entrepreneur who demonstrated great leadership qualities to unify Africa’s tech ecosystem. All finalists will participate in cohort-building and mentoring activities with MIT leaders and Zambezi alumni companies during the event.

The winners will be invited to attend the Zambezi boot camp during the MIT Inclusive Innovation Challenge (IIC) (www.MITInclusiveInnovation.com) gala on the MIT campus in Boston on November 5th-9th, 2018. They also will be fast-tracked to the IIC global grand prize with up to $1 million available in funding for the winner. The IIC event is part of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy(http://ide.mit.edu/) and, along with the MIT Legatum Center’s initiatives, exemplifies MIT’s global commitment to the future of work(https://goo.gl/t6QRFb).

Chuks Egbune/ED, ops

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MDXI achieves TCCF becomes most certified data center in Nigeria - ITREALMS Online

ITREALMS:

MDXI’s 600 rack facility in Lekki is the premier commercial Data Center in West Africa built to meet the rapidly growing demand for colocation, managed hosting and cloud services within the region, reports ITRealms.

MDXI is MainOne’s  data centre subsidiary, which ITRealms reported, recently received its Tier III Constructed Facility certification (TCCF) from the Uptime Institute.

With this new milestone, MDXI becomes the leading Data center in West Africa with the top 5 certifications in the industry, being the Tier III Constructed Facility certification, TCCF, the PCI-DSS certification which certifies the Data center to process payment card information, the SAP Infrastructure Services license which certifies the Data Center as ideal for running SAP applications and infrastructure, and ISO 27001 and 9001 certifications.

This TCCF certification is awarded by the Uptime Institute as a performance-based evaluation of a data centre’s concurrently maintainable site infrastructure. Tier Certification of Constructed Facility is a progression from Tier Certification of Design Documents (TCDD) and goes beyond the review of paper designs to rigorous on-site testing to root out discrepancies between the actual installation and design.

The multiple certifications of MainOne’s MDXI demonstrate compliance to globally accepted standards on high availability, commitment towards the security and protection of the information assets of the company and its customers, and provides assurance of the quality of the Data Centre’s infrastructure and ability to react to disruptions due to unplanned activities.

MDXI’s 600 rack facility in Lekki is the premier commercial Data Center in West Africa built to meet the rapidly growing demand for Colocation, Managed Hosting and Cloud services within the region. General Manager of MDXI, Gbenga Adegbiji announced that the certification further validates the company’s investment in critical infrastructure to grow West Africa’s Digital Economy.

“With the increased recognition of Africa as home of fast growing economies, it is important that we have the infrastructure required to establish, enhance and sustain effective business performance in today’s global digital economy. Outsourcing of Data Center services to a reputable provider such as MDXI ensures businesses can adopt more cost effective models of consuming technology to allow increased focus on business development and growth. As we build a data centre ecosystem spanning facilities across West Africa, we plan to launch new Tier III data centres in Sagamu, by Q4 2018, Ghana in 2019 and Cote I’voire in 2020.”

On presentation of the Tier III Constructed Facility certification (TCCF) award, President of Uptime Institute, Lee Kirby said “We congratulate MainOne’s Data Centre Company, MDXI on receiving their Tier III Constructed Facility Certification Documents. This is indeed a significant step for the region and we look forward to working with them as they build multiple facilities across West Africa”.

MDXI is West Africa’s largest full scale data centre provider offering colocation, interconnection and cloud services to OTTs and major network, content and financial providers, as well as access to multiple Internet exchange points in Nigeria, Ghana, Amsterdam, and London.

Nenye Dom/GEE


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Dell EMC makes data center modernization simpler

ITREALMS:

Dell EMC has expanded its market-leading converged infrastructure (CI) system with the addition of the next generation Dell EMC VxBlock System 1000, reports ITRealms.

The new system breaks the physical boundaries of traditional CI and offers enterprises even greater simplicity and flexibility to help accelerate their IT and digital transformation efforts.

The latest addition of the next generation Dell EMC VxBlock System 1000 designed to further simplifies data center operations and offers new options of storage and data protection from Dell EMC and compute and networking from Cisco–in one pre-integrated, turnkey system.

The cutting-edge VxBlock 1000 is designed to support workloads of all types and includes a substantially broader choice of world class storage arrays, data protection and compute than previous-generation VxBlock Systems. This new system’s all-in-one, multiple-technology design expands upon CI’s promise by further simplifying IT infrastructure lifecycle management through extensive pre-validation. This enables IT staff to be freed from time-consuming administrative tasks, so they can focus on higher-value, business innovation projects.

According to Jeff Boudreau, President, Dell EMC Storage Division, “Our role is to deliver CI innovation that has the right mix and capacity of IT resources and data services that evolving applications require, but with pooled resources, so the data center is more efficient even as workload requirements change. We offer this with a focus on reducing administrative burden for IT teams under constant pressure to deliver more with less.” He stated further that “When customers deploy CI, what they are really looking to do is invest in technology that removes data center cost while, ultimately, improving outcomes.”

The VxBlock 1000 builds on Dell EMC’s industry leadership in CI with a host of new capabilities. These help enterprises reap greater benefits than ever before from a wider breadth of technologies than previously supported. These are in addition to traditional CI advantages such as lower operating expenses and a five-year return on investment of up to 640%.3 Compared to previous generation Dell EMC VxBlock Systems, the VxBlock 1000 offers improved Business agility, Data center efficiency and Operational simplicity.

Nonye Dom/GEE

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Data Center Infrastructure: MDXi to spend N2.5bn in 2018

ITRWALMS:

Acclaimed eco-friendly data center in West Africa, the MDXi has voted to spend the sum of N2.5 billion for the 2018 financial year on infrastructure development, reports ITRealms.

Disclosing this to ITRealms at the weekend, during a media tour of MDXi by the Nigeria Information Technology Reporters Association (NITRA) in Lagos, the General Manager, MDXi, Mr. Gbenga Adegbiji, said, this would enable the fortification of the data centre and create room for expansion, mostly at its Lekki office.

Adegbiji also declared that MDXi has assumed the West Africa’s largest data center facility offering colocation, wholesale deployments, interconnection and cloud services.

The latest investment inflow, he said, would facilitate the anticipated expansion of the data centre to 600 racks from its current 300 racks; having invested some $35 million, about N12,635,000,000.00 till date, just as they planned to increase this to $40 million.

He further disclosed plans to create facilities in Sagamu, another suburb of Lagos, Accra in Ghana, Cote D’Ivoire in Abdijan as well as in Senegal, as Adegbiji showed the media practitioners some newly purchased rack cooling system ready for installation.

Currently, he said, MDXi is best in class infrastructure, built to TIA 942 and Uptime Institute Tier III standards, thus remain the West Africa’s only Tier III facility with Payment Card Industry-Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS) in addition to the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO 27001 and 9001) certifications.

“As a matter of fact, PCI-DSS ensures MDXi is the natural choice for financial institutions who must guarantee secure card infrastructure,” he declared, revealing that 90 per cent of financial institutions in the country are linked and hosted with MDXi.

He insisted that MDXi has been rated as the West Africa’s premier resilient, vendor-neutral data center; maintaining that it’s the only data center with direct connections to 4 submarine cables within 10 kilometer (km) namely the African Coast to Europe (ACE), West Africa Cable System (WACS), Glo 1, and MainOne.

Reiterating that MDXi is the most environmentally, friendly data centre in West Africa determined to save environment approximately 18 tonnes of Carbon dioxide (chemical formula CO 2) and other dangerous gas emissions per annum, therefore, most Eco-friendly data centre in Nigeria.

“Policy-friendly and fully aligned with power sector privatization efforts in Nigeria,” he said.

Chuks Egbune/GEE

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Communal efforts pay off as Imode Digital Literacy Center debuts

ITRealms:

The typical Nigerian communal efforts recently paid off as the Imode Community Digital Literacy Center (ICDiLiCe) was launched at Oke-Ero Local Government Area of Kwara State, reports ITRealms.

Disclosing this at the commissioning of the centre, powered by solar and equipped with state-of-the-art Information and Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure, recently, the President, Imode Development Association (IDA), Pastor Joseph Babatunde, said it would assist the education and curiosity of every citizen within and around the community,

The project, which involves a modern Information Technology (IT) centre and a school bus, he said, were to assist the students absorb the IT culture at this digital era.

Babatunde, in the company of his vice, Rev. Sunday Folayan, and Onimode of Imode, Oba Joseph Dada, recalled with joy that the idea of provision of a modern IT Centre for the school came to him, a couple of years ago when one of his children did the post-JAMB exam in University of Ilorin (Unilorin).

“The students were all given computers to do the exams. While she breezed through the exams, most of the other children were just starring at the device until the time was over. I felt challenged there and then, to give every child that needed opportunity,” he revealed.

In addition, Babatunde said, IDA has done the little it could by providing the facilities, stressing that “We want to see the impact through improved performances in all the exams of our students/pupils.”

Equally speaking, IDA Vice President, Reverend Sunday Folayan, noted that the Imode ICT Vision encompasses bringing the community, the resident and especially the students closer to attaining a digitally smart community.

“This will be achieved by reliance on technology, carefully backed up with traditional methods that are functional. A significant number of indigenes will continue to live outside the community or the country, and their needs and requirements to stay connected to their roots will continue to inform the community’s development policies,” he said.

Folayan expounded that ICT will be used to solve practical problems, such as educational deficiency as well as the security of lives and properties.

“Most aspects of the Community engagement activities will be conducted electronically towards widening access and participation especially with its citizens in the diaspora, using appropriate technologies,” he said.

Members of the Imode community, he further said, will come to accept a high standard of up-to-date facilities, ease-of-use and reliability, richness of information, integrated services and excellent support”, he explained.

Folayan pointed out that the Centre will serve as a launch-pad for making the community an ICT model in the state as well as the country by developing local software and systems that preserves the language and culture of Imode people providing technical support for the repair and maintenance of communications equipment such as phones, tablets and computers within Imode community and providing Internet access for both DiLiCe and the community.

ITRealms gathered that the Paradigm Initiative (PI) is working with IDA for training and capacity building, while the equipment in the centre were sourced entirely online through Konga.

As said by the Executive Director at Paradigm Initiative and content partners on the project, Mr. Gbenga Sesan, said the initiative will be of huge impact if well managed.

Represented by Programme Manager at PI, Mr. Tosin Abolaji,  the Executive Director said, the facility is primarily setup for the youth in the community, assuring they would not be denied the use of it.

“We will encourage the Association (IDA) to have a committee that will look into the management of the facility, design a program that will ensure that the youth are regularly/constantly trained, even use the facility as a source of generating fund for the school and community by making it a resource centre. Neighboring communities can subscribe to the usage of the facility and pay stipends. The list of possibilities goes on and on but what is very important is a strong management,” he said.

Uj. N. Dominic/ED, Ops

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Pix: (L-r): President, Imode Development Association (IDA), Pastor Joseph Babatunde; IDA’s Vice President, Reverend Sunday Folayan observing as the royal father, Onimode of Imode, Oba Joseph Dada, cuts the tape to commission the Digital Literacy Centre donated by Imode Development Association to the Community’s Secondary School, Oke-Ero L.G.A, Kwara State on Saturday, September 30, 2017… 

iSON extends African reach with call center revolution

ITRealms:

African emerging Information Technology (IT) leader, iSON Group is extending its reach with build out of call centers across Africa countries, ITRealms reports.

Currently, iSON boost of presence in 29 countries spanning 4 continents including Africa, Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the Middle East, iSON Group is inarguably a market leader in its niche.

ITRealms gathered that iSON Group consists of three operating companies, namely the iSON BPO which provides outsourcing services specifically in customer service experience management, iSON Technologies the systems integrator arm and iSON Innovation and Investment (i3), which is a recent initiative launched by the Group to drive consumer internet business in Africa.

The Chairman of iSON Group, Mr Ramesh Awtaney, was quoted in a press statement made available to ITRealms by Ope Alebiosu, as saying that in Africa alone, iSON operates in 25 countries with over 10,000 employees operating in its call centers including Nigeria, Zambia, Ghana, South Sudan, Liberia, Uganda and Tanzania, with plans to build more facilities in the coming years.

“With the global awakening to more cost effective solutions, Business Process Outsourcing, with specific regard to call center management has become a cost effective solution to most customer centric organizations with the twin benefit of this being a ready-made platform for employment generation for the rising number of employable youths, with basic IT training to steer them onto a gainful career path.  

“We are responding simply to the law of demand and supply but in such a way that ‘supply’  in turn organically grows macro economies rapidly in all our host communities,” Chairman and Founder of iSON groups asserts.

“This of course has a ripple effect on not just providing a much needed service to our clients and engendering youth development and capacity but also building and sustaining our communities while encouraging urban to semi urban job shift,” he concludes.

As of 2016, Nigeria accounts for over half the call center staff working for iSON across Africa. Due to the rigorous training the company offers its staff, they are highly valuable in other verticals they migrate to, thus reinforcing iSON as a strong platform for capacity engagement and building.

iSON Group services a growing list of market leaders in their various niches i.e. Banking, Insurance Financial Services (BFSI), Telecom, Hospitality, Retail, Government, Health care, FMCG and DTH, Media and Entertainment.

  

The company offers its teeming customers all over the world various services such as analytics, customer experience management, voice process solution and CRM process solution.

Since its inception, iSON Group has amassed numerous awards for its BPO efforts some of which include the 2016 Great Place to Work award for ‘Best Practices’ and ‘CSR’, CIO top 100 Companies, Champions of Governance award, World Class Cup Team award from Standard Chartered Kenya, Distinguished Achievement in IT & ITES, Best Technology Vendor Top 100 Organizations Supplier Award – Zimbabwe Customer Service Week and the Global Business Excellence Awards - Outstanding IT Team.

The company continues to expand its services around Africa with new call center facilities recently launched in Ilorin and Abeokuta in Nigeria.

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Lenovo takes $87bn data center to TechWorld 2016

ITRealms:

Lenovo has strengthened its focus on the $87 billion data center technology market  by unveiling an expanded array of Information Technology (IT) solutions, reports ITRealms.

The showcase, ITRealms gathered comprised of next-generation software defined storage, enterprise networking offerings and capabilities, the latest high-performance servers and an enhanced suite of hyper-converged appliances. 

The annual Lenovo TechWorld event in San Francisco bill for June 9, ITRealms gathered offers a broader portfolio into next-generation IT and strengthens the company’s ability to help customers transform their data centers by embracing emerging data consumption and delivery models such as cloud-based infrastructure, big data and analytics solutions. 

Also, the company would be showcasing many of these new solutions publicly for the first time at its TechWorld which are the latest demonstration of Lenovo’s ability to leverage partnerships with industry leaders, as well as leading-edge startup firms, to orchestrate delivery of best-of-breed solutions free of legacy technologies and investment burdens.

The company also said this would give customers even greater flexibility to deploy the right solutions for their evolving IT environments and business scenarios without being locked in to rigid technology stacks.

In addition, ITRealms gathered that Lenovo launched a new and innovative Software Defined Storage (SDS) appliance program, called StorSelect, collaborating with leading Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) to integrate their SDS software with Lenovo hardware in turnkey appliances. 

The factory-integrated appliances, ITRealms reports comes with end-to-end Lenovo support enable simple and confident deployment of scalable storage solutions. 

ITRealms further gathered that the first offerings in this programme on the Lenovo Storage DX8200N and DX8200C would integrate SDS software from Nexenta Systems, Inc. and Cloudian, Inc., respectively, to deliver breakthrough return on investment for storage solutions.

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