The Minister of Science and Technology, Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu, was at the Nigerian Stock Exchange, NSE, to launch a state-of-the art Data Centre.

The Honourable Minister of Science and Technology commended the Exchange for achieving the milestone of a Tier III data centre which is not common in Nigeria.

Dr. Only said he is  pleased with the strides the Exchange is taking in ensuring it is the best in Africa especially through technological innovations. Technology remains one of the drivers of growth for any economy and am impressed that the Exchange is at the forefront of adoption while partnering with other Nigerian companies.

According to the exchange, the Data Centre has been built to Uptime Institute’s TIER III design standards and is consistent with NSE’s tradition of pioneering far-reaching innovations within the Nigerian Capital Market.

With this implementation, the NSE can now offer state of the art and secure cloud services to both market operators and any firm interested in having a low-cost, highly available service for their customer base.

According to The Executive Director, Market Operations and Technology, NSE, Ade Bajomo, the Data Center provides a secure, reliable and advanced physical and technical environment for the Exchange.

 “It comes with real time monitoring of active devices, n+1 resistance of all critical components, 99.982% availability, uninterrupted power supply and market leading cloud hosting capabilities. Data is replicated in real time offsite to a Tier III partner data Centre that is 25km away from the production site. These features place  serviceswith the best exchanges globally,’’ Bajomo said

He said that the new Tier III Data centre re-affirms NSE’s ongoing commitment to transform the Nigerian Capital Market and enable financial inclusion.

“The NSE Data Centre allows the Exchange to strengthen the adoption of digital techniques within its ecosystem and provides our stockbroking firms with the option of hosting their infrastructure in a 24×7 highly available and efficient platform. At the Exchange, we strive to maintain 100% availability of all market platforms and have been very successful in this quest. Currently, 90% of all trades are also done outside the Exchange in an automated manner and the criticality of the data centre is key for market confidence and growth. Our Data Centre can currently host 50 clients but can scale up rapidly with demand.

 “Data centres are one of the highest energy consuming operations in the world and consume around 2% of the total power generated globally. A significant aspect of data centre operating expenses is also related to power usage and the need to be power efficient is critical. At the Exchange, we have chosen our components and cooling strategy carefully to conserve energy,’’ He said

The Nigerian Stock Exchange continues to take huge strides in the digitization journey and position itself as a world class Exchange with best-in-class technology. In 2013, the exchange launched X-GEN which is the fastest trading platform in Africa with low latency capabilities.

Also, the NSE implemented TradeSmart to assist Dealing Member firms in achieving a broader reach, leveraging mobile phone penetration in the country adding that they have a number of market aligned innovative initiatives in the pipeline.