Internet Solution spends N1.6bn on data center

Internet Solutions (IS) West Africa has said it invested $11 million, about N1,672,550,033.57 billion in the past two years of its operation in Nigeria in building data centres.

IS is a joint venture between Nigerian shareholders BSML and Dimension Data.

Making this disclosure in Lagos, the Managing Director, Internet Solutions for Africa, Mr. Derek Wilcocks, in the main time, the company has invested an estimated 11m in Nigeria in effort to build out data centres for corporate Nigeria.

He noted that Internet Solutions, a leading internet and communications service provider said they are gearing up for more investment into the Nigeria’s Information and Communications industry.

Wilcocks also said that for public and private sector organisations a new technology tagged ‘S-curve’ is on the table.

“From 2010 and beyond we will really begin to see rapid and simultaneous incremental developments coming and businesses have to adjust to take advantage of these,” he said.

Wilcocks stressed that key dimensions effective businesses manage their information are areas like content where the sheer volume and incredible richness of information is changing the shape of the Internet itself, forcing organisations to rethink everything.

These, he said, comprised five Cs, namely content, carrier, collaboration, community and commerce.

Wilcocks noted that collaboration and community involves blogging and social media, companies have to take online communities more seriously.

On commerce on the internet, he said, this has exploded with Africa and Nigeria leading the world in areas like mobile banking and cloud providing infrastructures, platforms and applications in a flexible and on-demand manner is at the heart of the future business strategies of giants and start-ups alike.

Equally speaking, Managing Director, Internet Solutions West Africa, Mr. Steve Herridge, said his firm is already responding to these trends in order to more effectively meet clients’ requirements by investing even more in the Nigerian and West African market.

“We are very keen to introduce innovative and relevant services to the Nigerian market that are already being deployed in other parts of the world. Our MPLS VPN (Virtual Private Network) service using our cloud capabilities are already available to the Nigerian business and other services like WebEx a unified conferencing and content sharing collaboration tool are already well on their way to being deployed later this year.’

Mr. Herridge further said that all of these investments demonstrate Internet Solutions commitment to the West African market and especially Nigeria.

According to him, most importantly is for IS assist local clients to take advantage of the global trends stemming from digital content, online collaboration, online communities, electronic commerce, and cloud computing.

“It is our belief that the Nigerian market offers a lot of value to the investor looking to operate within the African telecommunications market. We know that the market penetration of Internet Access in Nigeria will continue to grow and we are positioning ourselves to be prepared for the world beyond just mere connectivity,” he said.

Internet Solutions prides itself with over 27 years experience as an independent company, culminating in operations in over 50 countries worldwide and with more than 11,000 staff, ITRealms Online recalls that Dimension Data was acquired in the last quarter of 2010 by NTT Docomo of Japan for US$ 3.2 billion and delisted from the London Stock Exchange.

NTT is the second largest telecommunications operator worldwide, employs more than 200,000 people and has revenues exceeding US$ 110 Billion per annum. NTT’s investment in Dimension Data represents a major capital inflow for Africa and demonstrates a strong commitment to the future of the information and communication technology market in Africa.

ITREALMS Online ... delivering news for ICT4D