Firm Leverages Foreign Partnership to Boost Local Cloud Service 

LabakeFasogbon

Indigenous technology company, Unitellas Edge Cloud, has reaffirmed its commitment to a strengthened digital infrastructure in Nigeria with its latest efforts perfecting deployment of edge cloud innovation within the country.

This move supports the ‘Nigeria First Policy’ focus on data sovereignty, which prioritises domestic storage of sensitive government and citizen data.

Unitellas is leveraging its age-long relationship with foremost U.S.-based edge cloud provider, Zadara to build edge cloud infrastructure within the country, thus empowering Nigeria’s digital transformation agenda.

Speaking on this development at a press conference in Lagos, recently, Chief Executive Officer of the firm, Smith Osemeke, justified local cloud infrastructure, arguing that traditional public cloud services, hosted in faraway data centers in Europe or the United States are ill-suited for real time applications, such as Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI).

He stressed that beyond enhancing national security, localised cloud offers greater efficiency and cost savings for enterprises, supported by its ultra-low latency and high-volume data processing crucial for real-time monitoring in oil and gas drilling and financial transactions.

“With data centers situated within the country, users experience faster and more reliable service delivery, which is essential for maintaining business continuity and customer satisfaction. Partnering with Zadara, we aim to address common enterprises and public sector challenges which will ultimately boost their bottom end.

“By allowing clients to pay in naira, we have been able to eliminate forex issues, making cloud services more affordable and improve performance for Nigerian businesses.”

Osemeke maintained that adoption of local cloud would expedite national mandates for Nigeria Data Protection and Sovereignty, stressing the need to embrace homegrown digital solutions for national prosperity.

 “Locating our cloud services in Nigeria, we are generating significant cost savings for the nation and assisting businesses in reducing expenses through our cloud-native operational cost model.  By partnering with major data center providers, we are able to provide services on a subscription basis, allowing clients to pay only for what they use, in addition to our auto-scaling features  that enable  customers to dynamically adjust their resource usage based on demand,” he said.

Addressing  concerns on power and cooling limiting adoption of local infrastructure,  Osemeke said  the company  facilities are of term with global uptime standards, while  its alliance with carrier-neutral data centres ensures fair marketplace exposure and referral opportunities from the data center itself.