MainOne chooses Minkels to enhance position in West-African Data Center Market

Minkels, part of the publicly traded company Legrand, has been chosen as data center supplier for premier West African connectivity and data center solutions company, MainOne. MainOne blazed a trail in Africa with its undersea fibre optic cable connecting West Africa to Europe and the construction of West Africa’s largest commercial Tier III+ Data Center, MDXi.

MainOne observed a strong market demand for a world class, carrier-neutral co-location data center in Nigeria in 2012. According to Ms. Funke Opeke, CEO of MainOne: “The market demand rapidly outstripped the co-location 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 center (MDXi) over 24 months and launched in January 2015 to keep up with customer demand.”

MainOne, in search of best of breed solutions, 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.


“We considered manufacturing in China to meet our specifications and also direct purchase from various OEMS. A global evaluation followed: all top industry players, custom CAC vendors and local manufacturers were evaluated to provide racks, Cold Aisle Containment, PDUs and accessories for customers at our data center. 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. In addition, Minkels has the technical ability to understand our requirements and quickly make custom engineering modifications based on experience with many of our global customers.”

MainOne has successfully deployed the Cold Aisle Containment solution and custom support frames to meet the requirements of their international co-location customers who will be deploying their server racks shortly.

“As the premier Data Center in West Africa, it is important we lead in innovation, professionalism and delivery of world-class solutions. Our partnership with Minkels ensures our ability to respond to customers with different technical requirements and volumes. Feedback from our customers is that they are impressed with the Minkels CAC and it makes the decision and process of co-locating with us easier. Given the success of this first-of-its-kind custom CAC deployment, we are 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.”

Christiaan van Terheijden, CEO of Minkels, is also delighted with the partnership with MainOne: "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."