Africa Data Centres extends edge cloud capability through Unitellas partnership

Africa Data Centres  is pleased to announce that enterprise cloud services provider Unitellas will be bringing Zadara’s global federated edge service to its new facility in Lagos, Nigeria. Unitellas is a Nigerian-based full-stack managed infrastructure-as-a-service provider and distributor of “Zadara” - a renowned global leader of Edge cloud services.

According to Tesh Durvasula, CEO of Africa Data Centres: “West African enterprises are looking at cloud technology, but it will be vital to build trust to mitigate concerns around data sovereignty, security, and privacy. Addressing these issues will be vital if we are to onboard new cloud providers. Enterprises can take advantage of the cost, flexibility and scalability of cloud while local data centres provide the unique ability to control, localise and secure physical access to data. Through our ecosystem of partners, customers have access to multiple cloud onramps and connectivity options. Data centres and cloud technology provide a platform for effective disaster recovery, cloud migrations and hybrid solutions. Increasing the richness of the ecosystem by adding solutions like Zadara through Unitellas, makes our Lagos-based offering even more attractive to West African players.”

The move into Nigeria follows the announcement in July 2021 when Africa Data Centres (www.AfricaDataCentres.com) added edge cloud services to its Midrand marketplace in South Africa. However, where the Midrand deployment involved service provider Global Sense, in West Africa Zadara is distributed through Unitellas (www.Unitellas.com.ng).

Africa Data Centres has facilities across Africa’s major regional business and trade hubs and aims to help drive Africa’s digital transformation using that network. Both multinationals and large African enterprises are being attracted to these growing hubs of cloud-based business operation—all provided in highly connected, physically secure and efficient facilities that are designed, built and operated to the standards demanded by leading global cloud providers, carriers and enterprises.

“Providing local access to world-class cloud technology aligns with our strategy of digitally transforming Africa,” continues Durvasula. “The partnership between Africa Data Centres and Unitellas means that West African customers have at their disposal fully-managed IT infrastructure-on-demand, can flexibly scale their solutions as business needs change, simplifying potentially complex IT deployments so that they can focus on their core business. We value our continued growing partnership with Zadara through our secure, cloud and carrier-neutral facilities.”

“With the African data centre market expected to experience a CAGR of 15% over the coming years, the time is now to bring these benefits to the continent,” says Smith Osemeke, MD and CEO of Unitellas. "This means enterprises can now take advantage of the cost, flexibility and scalability of the cloud, because having this presence in a local data centre provides the unique ability to control, localise and secure physical access to data, enabling data sovereignty, security and privacy.”

According to Osemeke, Zadara delivers superior turnkey solutions with the benefits of on-demand compute and storage services anywhere, in an existing on-premises data centre, in a private colocation facility, or in the cloud. This flexibility enables customers to develop, deploy, run and virtualise any application on a true 100% opex consumption-based model. Africa Data Centres owns and operates Africa’s largest network of interconnected, carrier- and cloud-neutral data centre facilities.

When critical data of businesses and citizens of Nigeria are stored locally, the risk of leaks or access by foreign agents or foreign nation will be eliminated thus promoting greater confidence in local technology and a boom in domestic tech ecosystems and economic growth for Nigeria, adds Osemeke. “Our presence in Africa Data Centres brings computing power and storage closer to the source of data generation and enterprises requiring data to make data driven decisions can effectively utilise real-time applications because latency associated with processing and analysing data is reduced.”

With this strategic partnership, Osemeke says major regional businesses and trade hubs are now empowered to drive Africa’s digital transformation using the network of Africa Data centre across Africa.

“We are proud to work with Africa Data Centres – their state-of-the-art data centres combined with Zadara technology will allow African organisations access to advanced, localised compute network and storage cloud services.  Together, we are enabling customers to reduce cost, increase agility and drive productivity within their businesses,” ends Osemeke.