Mainone Company on Monday, reminded information technology managers that a Data Center is not just a data Center hence it shared five (5) considerations before choosing one.
In its quarterly clients and marketing guide tagged, “MainOne WIRED” and for the first quarter 2014, the Company said, to the average IT Manager, data center services may be an undifferentiated commodity: a data center is a data center.
However, what appears to be minor differences between providers can have a major impact on the overall performance of a particular business.
MainOne explained that organizations requiring improved customer experience, 100% uptime for your critical applications or better alignment of IT with their business priorities, cannot afford to leave the critical data in the wrong hands.
Thus, a more rigorous scrutiny of a data center service provider will impact an organisation’s ability to achieve these goals.
MainOne, therefore shared a checklist comprising of five (5) parameters to choosing a data center provider to include:
“Connectivity Solutions
Never think of subscribing to data center services in isolation.
It is better to consider your selection of a data center provider in terms of how your IT infrastructure impacts your business and contributes to the bottom line.
With a Tier III, 600 Rack Space facility, touted as the biggest in West Africa and pending certification by the Uptime Institute, the MainOne Data Center ensures redundancy for all critical data center equipment with no single point of failure guaranteeing 99.982% uptime.
In addition, MainOne offers a one service provider solution for all your communication needs for hosting and connectivity, leveraging its submarine and terrestrial cable infrastructure across West Africa and partnership with Tier 1 infrastructure giants such as Level 3, Tata Communications, among others.
Proximity to Office Requirement
Proximity to your offices is a standard requirement in the search for an outsource data center service provider.
Benefits of this go beyond access for your staff; they include better performance of your IT infrastructure (when sending large data volume) and minimized latency delay, especially for real-time chatty applications.
MainOne’s Data Center is located in Lekki-Ajah, where it is easily accessible but geographically separated from the Central Business Hub of Lagos, Victoria Island/Ikoyi/Lekki axis. MainOne also has Colocation facilities in its Accra offices, and will complete another Tier III Data Center in Shagamu by Q2 2015.
High Availability
Colocation is more than stacking your equipment in a data center and adding a network connection.
Without highly reliable and redundant network connectivity, your IT performance will suffer. You need a provider with a full range of connectivity options to ensure all your locations get the access they need to your colocation environment and can provide networking between all of your company’s locations.
We have proven operation capability of running our facility at 99.99% uptime for 4 years, hosting major institutions in the region.
Our clients are supported by highly trained professional engineers, who are available round the clock to provide remote support, and standard SLAs.
In addition, MainOne operates its network end-to-end, to provide full visibility and integration across the network, allowing you greater control to optimize infrastructure performance. This ensures we deliver integrated network and colocation solutions, which enable a superior IT environment for your applications.
Power & Cooling Options
The importance of Power as a critical data center requirement cannot be understated, so it is necessary to look for a provider that has a 100% uptime SLA for power and redundant power systems.
With its 4x 1.5MVA generators fueled by 3 diesel storage tanks with 35,000 litres capacity in an N+N configuration, public power supply directly from national grid at 33KVA stepped down to 11KVA, power distribution into individual racks at 2.5KW to 5KW each, 30 minutes UPS backup power provider by UPS, and true parallel dual A+B power distribution to each collocated rack, there can be no man-made blackout with MainOne.
Our cooling facility also includes Direct Expansion cooling with 4x618KW chiller system, In-row cooling solutions for racks in excess of 10kW, and a humidity controlled at 50%+/-5%
Security
The compliance of your data center provider to global security is critical to your business solutions.
Unauthorized access to Data Center facilities should be prevented by current physical security technologies, such as Biometric scanners, video monitors, 24/7 armed security.
MainOne deploys in-building and perimeter surveillance systems, Biometric access to all colocation areas with air-lock doors to prevent unauthorized access, and CCTV cameras at all exit points.
As a connectivity supporter of Nigerian e-commerce sites such as Konga and Jumia, we are also working towards meeting PCI security standards”.