Firm expands domestic cloud capacity

FILE: The Chief Executive Officer of CloudVantage, Muhideen Ashiru

With the Central Bank of Nigeria’s January 2027 data localisation deadline approaching, Cloudvantage Limited said on Tuesday that it is expanding domestic cloud computing capacity to help financial institutions store sensitive information and run critical applications within the country.

The new infrastructure, developed through a partnership with Rack Centre, a data centre operator, is designed to enable businesses to store sensitive information and run critical applications on servers located within Nigeria, potentially reducing their reliance on overseas cloud providers.

The launch comes as the CBN’s data localisation directive puts pressure on financial institutions to review where their data is stored and how their technology infrastructure supports regulatory compliance.

Speaking at Nigeria’s first Cloud Independence Day Summit, organised by Cloudvantage under the theme, “Securing Nigeria’s Data, Enabling Innovation and Building a Resilient Digital Economy”, the Managing Director of Cloudvantage Limited, Muhideen Ashiru, said the availability of local infrastructure was necessary to make data localisation practical for businesses.

“The CBN’s new rule is a major step towards taking control of Nigeria’s digital future. However, telling companies to keep data local without providing high-quality domestic technology would give businesses major challenges,” Ashiru said in a statement.

He noted that the partnership with Rack Centre and the planned Abuja facility would support the development of a locally hosted cloud platform designed to meet businesses’ computing, storage and networking needs.

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The company said a second region in Abuja would be launched in November to provide an additional layer of backup protection against system failures and improve the resilience of customers’ operations.

According to the company, the Lagos region is hosted in a high-security facility and backed by a 99.9 per cent service availability service-level agreement. It also features automated failover systems intended to maintain operations when technical failures occur.

“Our goal is to make sure no Nigerian business faces operational shutdowns or regulatory penalties when the CBN rule takes full effect on January 1. Keeping data inside Nigeria should not feel like a costly burden; it should be a smart business decision that speeds up connection times, removes dollar exchange fees, and protects our nation’s business information,” Ashiru said.

Ashiru said compliance required more than securing physical space in a data centre, pointing to the need for secure data transfers, effective system integration, continuous monitoring and reliable backup arrangements.

“Most corporate IT teams worry about data safety during transfer, complicated system setups, and the daily hassle of tracking scattered records. Cloudvantage solves these exact problems using our automated workload managers, live data copying tools, and localised backup software,” he said.

Also speaking at the summit, the Head of Business Development at Digital Realty, Kelechukwu Nsofor, urged organisations using foreign hyperscale cloud providers to engage domestic infrastructure companies as they assess their compliance options.