The Relevance of Data-Centres in Corporate Ghana

In today’s business environment, companies globally are faced with a number of risks. Aside from competition, companies face risks in the form of natural disasters, fire, theft etc. When unfortunate events such as these occur, business continuity becomes critical. Insurance may cover the office building, equipments and furniture, but what about the business critical data? The customer records, product catalogue, invoices, and stock guide; how do you insure them? How safe is your business data?

Data-centres provide the industry standard environment for other companies to put their servers and other electronic equipment in operation and back-up their mission critical data and other processes and also host other platforms upon which their company’s systems run. This is what is normally referred to as colocation.
Until recently such an infrastructure did not exist unless it was built by a company exclusively for its own use. Ghana has landed such a data-centre known as RACKAFRICA.
RACKAFRICA is Ghana’s premier state-of-the-art carrier neutral, commercially operated data-centre, providing colocation services to businesses in Ghana and West Africa.

Redeemer Kwame, Chief Executive Officer RACKAFRICA, in an explanation said: “Business continuity and resiliency solutions keep your business running in the event of an internal or external risk, and allow your IT experts to devote more time to innovation. Even if IT is your core business, setting up your own data-centre or computer room is an expensive proposition in terms of money, time and deployment of human resources. Apart from the high capital costs, there are the high day-to-day management costs. Routinely adding new services or upgrading to the latest technology is also expensive. It makes business sense to outsource this
service to a colocation, carrier-neutral data centre.”

RACKAFRICA’s value proposition

RACKAFRICA provides a value proposition based on cost savings, security and business continuity that will positively influence your bottom line.
Mr. Kwame describes a data-centre as a physical facility that allows firms to store and manage servers, networks and other computer equipment in a controlled environment. A data-centre guarantees uninterrupted power supply, a high bandwidth Internet connection, physical and network security, 24x7 monitoring and full technical support.

“RACKAFRICA’s investment in building a robust infrastructure - power, network and personnel affords businesses the convenience of colocating their IT systems in a professionally managed environment without the risks, responsibilities and inconveniences.”

Benefits - RACKAFRICA provides significant benefits for businesses when they colocate with us:

Carrier neutrality

RACKAFRICA is the first carrier-neutral Data-Centre in Ghana. Its clients have complete freedom of choice in carrier and ISP, so can optimise cost and service availability with physical diversity, providing additional resilience.

Security

Its data-centre is monitored 24/7/365 and has multiple levels of security including biometric access and surveillance cameras. State-of-the-art firewalls provide industry strength security for your servers. Only authorised personnel with approved credentials are allowed into the data-centre. All employees have undergone a thorough background security check before being hired. Your sensitive business data is very safe with us.

Flexibility

It provides colocation in a variety of different configurations and can tailor the service to specific business needs.

Cost savings

Its data-centre allows clients to utilise the features of a large IT department without the high cost associated with housing servers. Cutting consumption translates into cost savings and helps the bottom line. Reducing your overall square footage reduces your electrical consumption; sharing the cost of power, network, climate and personnel results in lower costs.

Efficiency

RACKAFRICA bases its entire business offering on the fact that it is flexible and quickly scalable when responding to client needs.

“Here’s what you lose when you use our service: equipment, utility bills, high bandwidth connections, climate controls and consultant fees - all can go! What do you gain? First you have turned an unpredictable expense into a budgetable monthly one that even comes with projected increases so you know in advance how the cost will increase as your business grows. You gain lack of downtime, increased productive time, no data-centre monitoring time and numerous other benefits tied to the efficiency of collocation,” he said.

Scalability

Mr. Kwame added: “As your business grows and your IT requirements increase, RACKAFRICA helps you to scale your infrastructure. With us, that's one less thing to worry about. We provide the most scalable data-centre environment for start-ups to small- to mid-size to international businesses. How big do you want to be? We are here to support you.”

Reliability

RACKAFRICA ensures that the electrical power to your colocated equipment is always clean, always there and always working. “We have Uninterruptible Power Supplies (UPS) and diesel generators to ensure that your power never goes down as well as sophisticated cooling systems in multiple redundant configurations. Your colocated equipment will always be operating within the environmental conditions for which it was designed.”

Service Level Agreement

All customers’ contracts include a service level agreement (SLA), which provides a contractual guarantee of availability and compliance of the data-centre environment, climate, power supply, physical interconnects and support team.

These SLAs ensure that RACKAFRICA’s commitments are contractually reinforced. SLA metrics are measured according to global best practice.

Metrics guaranteed include: Power availability to cabinet, Environmental Temperature, Relative Humidity, Physical Interconnect Availability, Support availability, escalation procedures and resolution

Resilient Physical Interconnect

RACKAFRICA is located on the connection path of the major licenced carriers in Ghana, some of who have fibre nodes within the building. RACKAFRICA is home to major ISPs and other leading technology providers.

Service offering: colocation
RACKAFRICA colocation service provides clients with a secure, climate-controlled facility that they cannot readily or inexpensively create in their own place of business.

Locating servers and networking operations in RACKAFRICA provides clients with the highest level of security and optimal operating conditions for their equipment, with enough scope to grow. All cabinet locations are engineered with direct access to a cable distribution system to allow any number of interconnections at one Gbs/s speed.
Cabinets are 19″ racks and 42U high. Conventional cabling difficulties and heat dissipation are overcome by the implementation of a cold containment system. All cabinets have locks, ensuring that only approved personnel have access.

“Our collocation services can be tailored to fit company requirements. Whether you are a small business or an international corporation, we have the right offer for you,” Mr. Kwame stated.

Different Solutions for Different Businesses

Small Businesses

As a small business you may wonder why you would need to colocate with RACKAFRICA as your business grows and your IT requirements increase,
RACKAFRICA has been established and dedicated to help scale firms infrastructure in a cost-effective way. A small business can never predict when it will succeed to become a midsized business, or even a large business.
RACKAFRICA provides the most scalable data-centre environment for start-ups to small businesses. Firms need not to worry about recurring capital costs as it is possible to rent more space when business grows.

Medium to Large Businesses

Data-centres allow organisations to utilise the features of a large IT department without the high cost associated with housing servers. Cutting consumption and sharing the cost of the infrastructure translates into cost savings and helps firms’ bottom line.

As a medium to large business, organisations expect service partners to be more than experts. They need to be highly accountable, responsive and agile in responding to the needs of business.

Medium and large companies need a colocation service that is customised to its business needs with 100% uptime guarantee - and this is what RACKAFRICA offers.