Digital Infrastructure in Africa to Witness Boost Post Pandemic – Coker

COVID-19 pandemic has opened doors to new ways of communications in the face of lockdown of cities. As a result organisations have embrace working remotely which before now were used by few. Today, workplace software providers such as Microsoft, Google and Zoom witness increased demand for their work-from-home services.

According to Microsoft’s Work Trend Index, Microsoft Teams reached a new daily record of 2.7 billion minutes of use in one day, representing a 200% increase from 900 million minutes on 16 March.

Against this backdrop that Ayotunde Coker, managing director, Rack Centre, a data centre service provider explores the lockdown situation and the benefits it provides for the growth technology infrastructure in Nigeria and Africa as a whole.

Looking at how the world will look like post-COVID-19, Coker said: “One thing is clear, global technology has shown the capacity to be elastic and to scale.

“Working from home will be more accepted. But I don’t think it is just going to be working from home. There is something I call Semi-flex office locations. Imagine someone traveling from Agege to a contact centre somewhere on the Island which is about three hours traveling (due to traffic situations), you will find semi-flex office locations about half an hour into the journey and walk in, put your laptop down and with your headphone you connect to the contact centre and perform some routine due to the exigencies of your assignment. So, you are kind of working from home but from a semi-flex location.”

He said that outsourcing will ensure business sustenance. “Over the years we have been explaining to companies the need to focus on their core-business areas and outsource the none-core areas. Lessons learnt now will reinforce and deliver that value.

“EduTech will gain momentum. Children are working and studying at home now because they have been sent home due to COVID-19. What they require now is the data to follow their lectures online. Universities in the UK and US have been doing this for ages.

“In-country, we have the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) where most of the courses are online. So, we are going to see a change in the way we interact with our educational institutions.

On healthcare technologies, Coker said it will receive massive attention.  “We now have high quality video augmented reality interaction with experts anywhere in the world; remote key control non-intrusive technologies are now being done by interaction through technology with our doctors in Nigeria.

“Quick consultation of experts will become normal; you can consult with all your patients before you travel to a place. So, by the time you see the patients they have been pre-consulted. This will save significant amount in health tourism.

“We are moving to an era where digital conferencing becomes normal; you don’t have to travel thousands of miles to attend a conference. You start to use augmented reality (AR) for you to virtual visit a stand of a company and interact.

“Docusign digital and blockchain technology will reach a new level of acceptability and use where contracts, agreements, real estate businesses, etc., will be enabled through technology.

“Internet Exchange volume will grow significantly and the world will become more digitally connected on the information super-highway.

“Data centre and technologies will now move to the Edge because businesses will not tolerate latency; the volume of data will be such that you will have to be on the Edge to get closer to the point of use.

“One of the things we have been doing is ensuring that customers with us continue to operate and I am glad that we are able to ensure that. Secondly, we are moving and doing our bit of making sure that Nigeria and our location is supporting the digital technology for West Africa. It is certainly a leading point for digital infrastructure in Africa.”

According to him, “global supply chain will change and it is a benefit for Africa. Most countries will embrace changes; enabling digital process and key changes that support ease-of-doing business. We have a good geo-physical location. For us it is not just going digital but how we optimize how we plug in to the global supply chain. And I think it is a great opportunity for us to embrace”.

He noted that it will be interesting to see how the new normal changes how we bring the information super-highway to the good old super-highway. “How we optimize relationship of the new technology with the established technologies, because we have to strike a good balance. And I believe that the balance we strike will be much more optimal in the way we drive things forward.

Speaking on the operations of his firm, Coker disclosed that Rack Centre had since doubled its capacity and had put infrastructure in place that would help organizations host their data locally to have access to their data from a remote location, without physically appearing at the data centre, a situation, he said, would boost efficiency and reduce costs of operation.

He said the innovation from Rack Centre has helped it to engage and have connections to over 35 of its major carriers and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in Nigeria, Tier 1 networks, pan African international carriers, and direct connection to all five undersea cables serving the South Atlantic Coast of Africa, and that every country on the Atlantic coast of Africa is directly connected to Rack Centre. He claimed that despite the lockdown, Rack Centre business is still up and running.