Nigerians like foreign things’, a cliché used to describe the appetite for goods manufactured outside the country, and preferably in the western world, appears to be playing out even in data hosting.
Unlike purchase of goods, where an individual can take delivery and actually assert ownership, it gets tricky when it comes to data hosting. Where data is hosted abroad, such data resides on the servers of the foreign entity, and is subject to laws and regulations of that host country.
Recently, the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) warned Ministries, Departments and Agencies to desist from hosting government data abroad or face sanctions. In a statement by Isa Ibrahim, Director General of NITDA, the agency noted “that prior to the operation and full implementation of the Regulatory Guidelines for Nigerian Content Development in ICT, a sizeable component of government data was hosted outside Nigeria.”
“The situation has now changed as NITDA’s compliance monitoring activity revealed that substantial data assets of the Federal Government are already hosted in Nigeria.
“These include the Government Integrated and Financial Management Information System, Integrated Tax System, Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System, and more recently the Treasury Single Account,” the statement read.
However, while the government is more concerned about hosting of its data abroad, as it rightly should, millions of Nigerians as individuals, and thousands of businesses rely on foreign hosts to meet their webhosting needs. This market is possibly bigger, than even the hosting of data that is not necessarily associated with websites.
Sunday Folayan, President of Nigeria Internet Registration Association (NiRA), was in 2016, reported to have said Nigeria loses up to N60 billion annually on some forms of domain hosting abroad, noting it would have been a significant revenue boost to the country had those domain names been hosted locally.
Previous interviews with stakeholders in the industry, appear to give credence to the position of NITDA, that local providers now have the ability to host data in Nigeria.
Olusola Teniola, president, Association of Telecommunication Companies of Nigeria (ATCON), had told BusinessDay. “The issue of cost versus trust in hosting websites locally as opposed to the general trend of resorting to foreign based hosting sites was one that had strong merits about five to seven years ago when there were very low numbers of neutral data centres present in the country.”
As at 2017, he said there were at least four neutral data centers based in Nigeria that are very similar to what one gets in South Africa at Tier-3 level grade. These are internationally certified and fully connected to the undersea fibre network that feeds into London and thus into the WWW.
On his part, Ayotunde Coker, Managing Director, Rack Centre, had also told BusinessDay, that in the past, when the quality of Tier III hosting and providers of high quality, high availability websites in high connected environments did not exist in Nigeria, people resorted to hosting with foreign web hosting companies. This was due to quality of functionality, availability, the global connectivity and customer service offered by those foreign providers. “It was understandable that people would resort to this as there was no comparable capability in Nigeria,” he said.
However, according to him, Nigeria now has a “globally acclaimed Tier III facility such as Rack Centre, so this is no longer the case.” He described Rack Centre as the most connected carrier neutral Tier III data centre in West Africa, with high levels of reliable connectivity to Africa and the world.
“The Internet Exchange Point of Nigeria is hosted in Rack Centre and we provide a Cloud on Ground offering that provides high quality web hosting and domain registration services here. Now we have these services here, at equal to or higher in quality than foreign services, there are no longer reasons to resort to hosting abroad,” said Coker.
Companies providing data hosting services in Nigeria according to Datacentremap.com include; Medallion Communication Limited; Excelsimo Networks Limited; MTN Nigeria; ipNX Nigeria Limited; MainOne; IS Nigeria Data Centre; and Rack Centre.
The NITDA statement ended with a charge, asking data centres and cloud service providers operating in Nigeria to “comply with requirements of information security management, global best practices, standards and NITDA’s directives on quality customer service.” If indigenous providers of data hosting services take this seriously, it could usher in a new era in the industry, with not only government but businesses and individuals, having the confidence to host data locally.
CALEB OJEWALE
