By Emma Okonji
The Managing Director, BCX Nigeria, Mr. Ayo Adegboye, has said current global realities, occasioned by the global economic lockdown has necessitated the need to for information technology (IT) managers to modernise their approach to maintaining, protecting and optimising their network systems.
Adegboye, in a statement, said by adapting and leveraging remote technology solutions, IT managers would be in a better position to proactively manage their organisation’s IT infrastructure.
“They will be able to reduce downtime by taking care of issues before they become problems. With the power of cloud-based computing, they will also be able to improve performance by assessing how to improve hardware based on the experience of similar systems at thousands of other sites,” Adegboye said.
According to him, the most exciting would be the potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI) comparing data sets from tens or hundreds of thousands of other data centres and then sharing results on how to optimise hardware and software performance with the IT team.
He said all of these tasks could be done remotely to save time that could be put to other tasks, such as anticipating the needs of internal customers, researching new trends in the technology and data centre space, and looking at how to implement these new solutions.
He explained that BCX Nigeria in conjunction with its partner, Schneider Electric, would be taking the lead to drive the new trend, when it hosts its webinar on Wednesday this week, where participants would have the opportunity to understand more about the trends by joining the webinar conference.
Citing current statistics, Adegboye said Nigeria currently has about seven functional Data Centres, yet not many of them depend on a specific PC, with a VPN login, in order to access a data centre monitoring system.
Therefore, this year has been a wake-up call for business and decisions makers in the area of technology. Few were ready for the sudden emergency we were all faced with and the lockdown precautions that we have had to follow to preserve our health and safety. We have all had to adapt to working from home and remote learning. But how have IT professionals adapted and what have they done to shift online, Adegboye asked.
According to him, “There is one technology trend that people are used to as consumers. Given its simplicity and convenience, most people in Nigeria access their bank accounts through an app. We are increasingly turning to apps to order food and groceries, stream videos and even study. Technology has transformed services for consumers. It’s about time we did the same for businesses and governments, by using remote maintenance.
“One could even argue that the most resilient businesses in Nigeria, be they the banks, the telcos, and e-commerce retailers, have been able to operate and function effectively during lockdown due to their use of technology. They have embraced online channels such as mobile applications, which have been built on cloud technologies and software defined data centers.
“Technology has always been an enabler; it’s never been easier to manage IT systems, both hardware and software, remotely, even through an application on your smart phone.”
He listed the reasons why remote monitoring could dramatically support any organisation’s productivity and growth to include: Embedded Systems, Big Data, Mobile Computing, Health and Safety.
Describing embedded system Adegboye said there were more sensors, notifications, and alarms available on data centre systems today than there were a decade ago. “With this much data, we are able to run our data centres much more efficiently, provided we have the right monitoring systems and technology in place,” Adegboye added.
