MainOne has continued to push the boundaries for IT
professionals in Nigeria from its inception with a 7000km private submarine
cable which changed the face of the Internet in West Africa, to the opening of
a Tier III data center in 2015. The leadership the company provides in changing
the technology landscape is providing the fuel for digital disruption in
Nigeria. MainOne is building an arsenal of
solutions to address the needs of business customers including Internet
connectivity, private line connectivity, data center collocation services,
Cloud computing and Managed security services and during the past year, the
company turned its focus to the small business segment as well with its SME-in
a-Box solution.
For the third year, MainOne has
organized the Nerds Unite IT conference, Nigeria’s biggest customer event for
networking and data center professionals. The
2017 edition witnessed a convergence of IT professionals in Lagos, from the United
States of America, South Korea, Israel, South Africa and Kenya, to network and
share ideas on the latest technology trends. The event also provided a platform
for the company’s leading OEM partners such as Microsoft, Cisco and SAP to
showcase their futuristic innovations and solutions.
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The one-day program delivered a wealth of content on best
practices in Connectivity, Cloud, Managed Security, and Small and Medium
Enterprise solutions and also had leading experts from MainOne and its
partners, including Microsoft, Cisco, Radware, Signal Alliance, SAP, Huawei,
and Samsung facilitate sessions to further enlighten the audience on these
latest developments.
Delivering the keynote address on the future of content
in Africa, Michuki Mwangi, Regional Development Manager at the Internet Society
(ISOC), emphasized the role of locally relevant content as the key to
disruption and stimulating the demand for online services. Mwangi shared ISOC’s
80/20 vision for the internet in Africa, stressing that by 2020, 80% of the
African Internet traffic must be locally accessible, while 20% is international
traffic. According to him, this will significantly increase participation of
local operators, improve local content, increase value for Africa, and expedite
internet penetration on the continent.
Speaking during his presentation, Principal Group Manager
at Microsoft, Roberto Di Bennedetto shared the company’s vision for a fully
connected world enabled via Cloud Technology, describing it as a big shift from
the traditional infrastructure-dependent IT approach. He demonstrated
Microsoft’s Hololens and Internet of Things with different examples of how such
technologies could be applied in a mobile-first cloud world, in industries as
varied as healthcare, technology, Oil and Gas, among others.
Other highlights included the Executive panel session
where leading technology executives from Nigeria discussed how their companies
were adopting disruptive solutions to grow their business. Speaking on disruption
for customer-facing businesses, Vice President at Konga, Adeyinka Aderombi said
businesses need solutions to be optimized for mobile phones and highlighted his
company’s use of Progressive Web Apps which has improved the performance of
their web site across devices and enables customer’s access content on the
Konga marketplace without incurring heavy data costs. According to him,
mobile-first technologies are driven by cost-effective cloud and reliable
connectivity, and these have enabled Konga’s work in app development and
ePayment deployment in Nigeria.
Drawn from MainOne’s customer base, Nerds Unite
participants were visibly excited to try out various product demos and engage
the experts from MainOne and its partner companies on how they could apply
these solutions to their business. For Aniedi Udobong, Managing Developer
Ecosystem, Sub-Sahara Africa, Google, MainOne’s Nerds Unite has remained West
Africa’s flagship IT conference given its rich and stimulating content. Michuki
Mwangi, Regional Development Manager at the Internet Society (ISOC) also said
he had been to a lot of IT events across the continent and observed that Nerds
Unite was easily the biggest IT event he had seen, sponsored by a single
company. He remarked that the Nigerian Internet ecosystem was proving stronger
than most on the continent and he was impressed at MainOne’s ability to gather
such momentum in only a few years of existence.
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