MDX-i, a new subsidiary of MainOne that focuses on data centre and cloud computing services has announced the launch of its new cloud-based service offering in partnership with Microsoft.

The solution which is built on Microsoft Azure’s enterprise grade infrastructure provides flexible, highly available and fully secure private computing environments to companies on a Pay-as-you-Go basis.

Speaking at the press conference, MDX-i’s Business Development Executive, Rob Lever said the new cloud platform is a scalable and cost effective alternative to dedicated computing resources deployed in-house by companies and includes managed virtual data centers, virtual private servers, and virtual LANs to assure customers of high availability.

Businesses are beginning to embrace Cloud services because it promises increased agility in addition to savings in OPEX and CAPEX. Our Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) platform reduces complexity, interoperability, and security concerns of our customers. It provides them the benefit of leveraging our infrastructure and the expertise of MDX-I and Microsoft without their having to incur the substantial costs associated with deploying such solutions, he said.

Funke Opeke, the CEO of MainOne, stated that Cloud computing represents an evolution in how computing services are delivered. When asked how this new development will benefit the country’s economy, she said previously, if businesses need to run an application, they need to buy the computer, buy the software, hire engineers, set it up themselves in house and this takes a lot of time, capital and up front expenses to do that and also ongoing money in terms of the support infrastructure they need. What cloud computing does is make such ICT resources available to them on a service basis, so they pay for only what they use and they just subscribe to the service so they don’t have to build the services themselves. So essentially it starts delivering computing cheaper, faster and better because we can aggregate the critical skills that an individual might not be able to put in place to support its own environment and deploy that across the base of customers we have.

She added that although MainOne is starting Cloud services with larger businesses, Nigeria also has small businesses that are technology intensive businesses that can key into this. The environment we are providing can be used by smaller system integrators who work with those even smaller SMEs. So instead of them incurring costs of all the infrastructures, they can enjoy this service at a minimal cost by subscribing. In addition to that, SMEs who are building their IT department are investing in people education, training. When you go into cloud you are hitting expert levels of technical expertise.

Also speaking at the launch, Microsoft Nigeria’s Managing Director, Kabelo Makwane said that it is a very proud moment for Microsoft to have come this far with our partnership with MainOne in making cloud services available and more pervasive in Nigeria. We’ve had this partnership in the making for the past 2 years. We were working on the background to build a world class cloud computing infrastructure in Nigeria and for West Africa as well. This is a very unique partnership as it is the first of its kind in West Africa in terms of the types of services that can be rendered which are world class in provision of cloud services.

With this launch, MDX-i is positioned to meet the computing infrastructure needs of companies deploying private, public or hybrid clouds from its Tier III Data Center in Lagos. This ensures quick and agile provisioning of infrastructure for businesses and government agencies as required, thus improving their time to deliver on-demand applications and services. Enterprises have always had the fear of how to manage or run and manage cloud correctly, the cost of infrastructure and also the complexity involved but with this platform, all this has been addressed. Microsoft has worked together with MainOne to deliver a platform that enterprises can easily integrate with.