MainOne, an Equinix Company, the leading provider of wholesale connectivity and data center services in West Africa hosted the 7th edition of its flagship event, Nerds Unite on Thursday, June 23, 2022 through a virtual session.
Themed, ‘The Power of Global Interconnection’, the high attended session featured a keynote address and two panel session.
Delivering the welcome address, Funke Opeke, CEO, MainOne opened the floor by expressing her appreciation to all MainOne’s customers, and partners who have stayed with the company both through the pandemic period and online NerdsUnite 2021 as well as various other webinars and events.
“The paradigm shift that we have witnessed in how we do business is not something we anticipated when we last held this event physically in February 2020.
NerdsUnite 2022 is special for MainOne because this is our first Nerds Unite event as an Equinix company. As many of you already know, MainOne was acquired by Equinix, the world’s digital infrastructure company on
April 1, 2022, and I am delighted that we have strong Equinix representation in this event today.
Judith Gardiner is Vice President Growth and Emerging markets for Equinix and she has been instrumental in the acquisition of MainOne and is with us today to deliver a keynote speech on the power of interconnection.
We are delighted that Equinix entered Africa for the first time through the MainOne platform, with the objective of integrating our facilities into their global Ëquinix Fabric platform that is already connecting over 10,000 enterprises, 65 cities, and over 200 data centers globally.
We think the possibilities are endless and we intend to continue to drive the tech-fuelled growth we have witnessed in our economies with these expanded Equinix capabilities.
We need the growth because the past few years of pandemic-induced recession and now high inflation have not been easy on businesses or our tech professionals who are increasingly seeking greener pastures offshore and we will do more here.
I trust that our engagement over the next few hours will be useful as you continue totransform our continent digitally. Welcome once again to NerdsUnite 2022.” Funke concluded
Delivering the keynote address, Judith Gardiner, VP, Growth & Emerging Markets, Equinix, discussed the topic, ‘Interconnection and the power of the global Equinix Platform to grow Pan-African conglomerates:
Experience from other markets (Asia,North America, Eastern Europe)’.
Accoridng to Judith, Africa is experiencing signifcant growth in internet demand and content consumption through the fast-expanding use of mobile technologies such as 4G LTE/5G and smart phones owing to it being the second largest and second most populous continent worldwide.
“Supporting this growth are digital corridors that run along the East and West coasts, North to Europe and South to South Africa and increasing terrestrial Fiber deployment.
The Digital Corridors concept explores the rapidly expanding interconnection between major metros in and across regions.
The resulting affordability of access and improved end-user experience promotes internet use and traffic growth, which raises revenues of broadband ISPs and mobile network operators in a virtuous cycle.
In this context, it is important to highlight that Equinix is the world’s largest interconnection and data center provider. Our goal is tobe the interconnection platform for the world’s leading businesses.
The mission is to protect, connect and power the digital economy through our data centers and network
connectivity, colocation and professional services, and portfolio of advanced interconnection solutions.
Equinix will be a prime mover in interconnecting Africa with the rest of the world on its global digital infrastructure platform, Platform Equinix. Equinix Fabric, Equinix Metal and Network Edge will offer greater interconnection, compute and storage capacity, and access to virtual network services through the
acquisition of MainOne.
The completion of the acquisition of MainOne, furthers Equinix’s long-term strategy to become a leading African carrier-neutral digital infrastructure company by being able to bring a full range of transformative technologies and connectivity directly to Nigeria, Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire and other countries across West Africa.
Globally, this Platform Equinix comprised of 240 data centers is providing data center and interconnection services to 10,000+ companies including more than 50% of Fortune 500 companies.
Some of these global multinationals are represented in this audience today, but many of MainOne’s existing customers are not and that indicates the value addition we expect from this entry into Africa.
As we grow our infrastructure platforms and partnerships in region, start-ups in Nigeria will have the same access to the power of the entire date center network of Platform Equinix in the same manner the most sophisticated multinational operating from Singapore does.
And not only will Lagos, Accra or Abidjan FinTech’s have this global access, they will also continue to enjoy access to the rich ecosystem that MainOne has already built-in region within its data centers through peering with both global and local players to ensure that 40 percent of its Internet traffic is terminated in country and growing.
Equinix today is powering the Financial sector with interconnections in 30 countries and six continents. We provide access to global services providers and network service providers.
Our platform includes on-ramps to Cloud services including AWS, Microsoft, Google, Oracle. We peer with these companies in 69 metro locations.
These are some of the benefits Equinix brings to the region as we continue to build out the infrastructure of MainOne and Platform Equinix across West Africa and we trust that in years to come we will look back on this milestone event as a game-change in the digital transformation fortunes of many of the businesses represented here today.”, Judith concluded
The first panel discussion was on “Unlocking Growth through an Interconnected Global Digital Infrastructure” discussing the challenges and opportunities a global digital infrastructure offers to Pan-African focused organizations that want to deliver their services and solutions to a global market. See the full panel discussion here.
While the second panel session talked about, “Maximizing Business Efficiency and Minimizing Talent Drain and Rising CAPEX through IT Outsourcing” and it showcased how organizations can leverage IT outsourcing to increase cost efficiency, productivity, and operational performance. See the full panel discussion here.
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