MainOne, which is behind the subsea fibre-optic cable connecting West Africa to Europe and the construction of West Africa’s largest commercial Tier III+ data centre, MDXi, selected Minkels after observing strong market demand in 2012 for a carrier-neutral colocation data centre in Nigeria.
“The market demand rapidly outstripped the colocation space in our landing station and necessitated the construction of a purpose built Tier III facility with 600 rack capacity. We developed the Lekki data centre (MDXi) over 24 months and launched in January 2015 to keep up with customer demand,” according to Funke Opeke, CEO of MainOne.
“We considered manufacturing in China to meet our specifications and also direct purchase from various OEMS. Minkels met our requirement to provide a Cold Aisle Containment solution: flexible concerning rack width and height, able to accommodate a free standing 47U solution, and lend itself to caging.”
Minkels was selected after MainOne conducted a global search for a “more flexible Cold Aisle Containment System (CAC) to accommodate the various needs of their global customers with racks of varying widths and heights”.
Christiaan van Terheijden, CEO of Minkels, added: “We are very proud that MainOne has selected Minkels as their data center supplier. We see MainOne as a company that knows how to drive Internet use across the West African region. MainOne invests heavily in growing the broadband ecosystem in West Africa. This benefits both inhabitants as Internet enabled business models across the region. We are more than happy to be part of that development.”
MainOne’s Opeke added that the company is in “early discussions exploring the possibility to partner in the further deployment of Minkels solutions across MainOne’s MDXi data centers to ensure we remain very competitive in a dynamic and growing market”.