Why web Hosting Companies in Nigeria should reposition In 2006.

The sustained government economic reforms is putting many firms under intense pressure to reposition in 2006.It is said that Nigeria's economic competitiveness in the world stage is getting higher and higher and that soon we may begin to see the kind of mega firms seen only in developed ecnomies. With the advent of Transnational Corporation and others, it is envisaged that soon, any business that fails to imbibe virtues of good corperate image, realising the indispensability of the customer, emphasizing good corperate ethics, and clear commitment to ethical conduct, may have to be packing up soon.

Though the Nigerian economy is said to rank eleventh in competitiveness in Africa (behind Botswana and Tunisia-first and second respectively)despite about 5% growth in 2005, it is predicted that with the overall economic growth projected at 7%, the countries growth competitiveness index in 2006 will surge ahead most countries currently ranked ahead of it.

-Businessday newspaper Friday December 16 2005.

How does all these affect web hosting companies in nigeria?

Hear them. Due to this increasing attention on the Nigerian economy, "companies are realising the importance of analyzing customer behaviour, to plan and optimize marketing tactics and improve customer service programs using the advantages that technology provide.Today business decisions are increasingly technology driven. They are adapting technology to find, track and keep the customer. Many more have web presence, and Web presence has become the very first step to starting a business in Nigeria".

All these point to the fact that soon they may be a lacuna in web services provision as providers do not seem to be moving with the time. It is high time we had a web hosting company with it's own servers all managed here in Nigeria, with good uptime, and able to match the increasing needs of customers as their businesses grow. Nigerian web hosting companies should start catering for the needs of very big websites, like providing gigabyte hosting, with massive bandwith at affordable prices in anticipation of an impending boom.

Presently i know of only two web sites doing something, www.asorockhost.com and www.mcreal.com. While I do not deny that they maybe others, I think that the void should be filled. What www.asorockhost.com is doing is quite encouraging. Theirs is like an answered prayer. Nigerians who want to run portal web sites with 3000-6000 visitors daily now have where to run to.

Nevertheless, the services and prices can get better if more investment is channeled to this area, so that our websites can be hosted here at home.

I wonder what gave you the impression that Transcorp have something good in stock for you, if you think they are going into IT forget it.

Do you know what it takes to own and run a data center with 99.999% uptime? You are more or less talking like a novice bro.

Those that you said are here to librate the Nigerian web hosting scene website are not even working as at December 21, 2005.

mohammed, can you give us one good reason why Nigerian websites should be hosted in Nigeria rather than in the US which is where the Internet originated, bandwidth is extremely cheap, electricity supply is constant and companies can afford to have redundant Internet links, power supply and servers?

See also: When will Nigeria's Internet Exchange Take off?

Maybe a list of web hosting companies with data centres within Nigeria should be compiled.

People think web hosting is cheap business because they imagine a web server and internet connection, sorry more and more web hosting companies are closing shops, only the reliable ones will last.

US remains my choice until such data centres can be setup cost effectively here in Nigeria.

I think you misunderstood me joftech, i never meant that Transcorp has come to Liberate IT in Nigeria. If you look beyong the iron Curtains,bearing the statistics i have quoted in mind, among other facts, you would easily deduce that the Nigerian economy definately has something in the offing.

If anyone thinks it is unnecessary to begin to get ready to be in charge of our cyber destiny, then should wonder why the recent agitation by some countries to reduce US overwhelming control of the internet. Brazil for instance, has been in the forefront of efforts to develope alternative OS to reduce microsoft, in extension US influnce. I do not need to delve into the politics surrounding
TLDs. Technology is about adoption, adaptation, and innovation.

So Seun, it is true that the internet originated from the US but so was Television. Today it is almost an all-Japanese affair. We can sieze this opportunity to kick-start our Technological emancipation. We do not have to start from Galilleo Galilleo.

Hosting websites overseas does not make a country to be backward ITwise. What's important is the level of IT awareness in a country. If the market and resources are here am sure people will try to setup data centers here. Let me ask you do you know how much it will cost to get a 1MB full duplex bandwidth on SAT-3 & VSAT here? Do you also know how much it will cost to get people to man these centers 24/7. Man if after putting all these in place and what you get is like 100 clients, i think you should be able to deduce the end of that venture.

The best link for hooking up a data center to the Internet is fibre optics, but how many of us have access to it. We can't even host our TLD talkless of running DNS servers, these oyinbo people will never allow people to hook up flapping routers to their networks. Right now i doubt if we have competent hands that can setup a data center with 99.999% uptime in this country.

What comes first is IT awareness, next we can start talking about data centers.

Hosting in naija won't catch on until bandwidth, power and infrastructure are cheaply available.

Not one company in nigeria has an OC1 grade connection and you are talking of hosting. Even the naija hosting companies have their servers in the US. And most of them are are actually resellers.

I host some applications in Nigeria (the server used to be under my desk) but I know how much it cost to provide 24/7 power and bandwidth.

i feel you deji, most of the webhost firms only buy bulk resellers, like the sign-on-africa's and co. i think ipnx and naira.com do hostings in house am not to sure about m-web and 21 century but they are reliable guys. at least so far..but one company that should not venture hosting is accelon (those guys are crappy )

In actual fact, as of now, it makes absolutely no economic sense as a webhost company, to run a web farm in Nigeria. If I had a such a company now, I will just sign a decent reseller deal with another host in US, get some decent website and try to see how I could do online payments using eTranzact/InterSwitch/Credit Cards.

I will try so much to provide as many options as possible from PHP to ColdFusion to .NET 2.0. I think my customers here in Nigeria are probably more interested in the quality of service provided than if the server was located in Ajegunle.

Another option one should seriously capitalize on is how .NG domains could be sold easily online like other domains.

Can you believe that .NG domains are actually free? It is the DNS requirements that is so damn expensive. It is one Destiny Amama that is providing the DNS service.

yeah they are, and i think all it requires is just for you to have two differents dns servers (unique)
and NITDA handles it..

i Don't know what to add. We all at www.asorockhost.com are glad to know that our efforts are appreciated.
Thanks Mohammed for the "honourary mention"

hi, i think there are better service providers popping-up all over. I am presently hosting my websites with www.domains4pick.com, they are also based in Nigeria, though their data center is situated in the USA. who cares? This is the New global economy, which Nigeria is part of, and in which Robert Coarse law is the rule.

I got my domain Names registered there too.

My opinion on the need for webhosting companies to reposition is just that the should all leverage information technology to reach their customers - Local and abroad - and they should forget where their servers is located. The bottom line? Efficiency!! Productivity!! and Reduced Transaction.

Its the Information Economy.......

what do you guys think about mcreal hosting and reseller plans?. I think they are currently the best hosting company in naija.

Mohammed - you have a point but at the moment and in the near future, it will not make any business sense to setup a data center in Nigeria soley for web hosting, you just wouldn't make any profit and the overhead cost will just be too much. I suggest another alternative, I suggest two alternatives.

1. I think this is the first and fastest way to go about it - All ISPs in Nigeria should an association i.e Nigerian Internet Exchange that will have a central facility that will be online 24/7 with electricity. Every ISP will have a direct link to this facility via fibre, copper cable or radio broadband link. Every ISP will have equipments at this facility that will connect their network to a central switch which every other ISP will be connected to. With this in place - local traffic will be a breeze and providing we hosting in the central facility by any ISP will provide very fast access to any user on any ISP that is a member of the exchange. The only think you have to think about is international traffic but if you want to get innovative, you can set it up so that only traffic in Nigeria can access the NIX and international traffic gets routed to servers in the US or europe. If you have this in place - online businesses that are targeting Nigerian consumers will have business modules to host in Nigeria and since all ISPs are responsible for the facility - the scheme will work.

2. Presently - the SAT3 projects around africa are terminated at 2 ends, one in europe and another in Asia via South Africa. If NITEL decides to sell last mile solutions to Nigerians or other ISPs, we will still have to pass through these routes to get to the Internet and if there is a fibre break (we occurs), you are screwed. Nigeria and America can decide to build a multi-billion $$ fibre network from Nigeria directly to the US tapping directly to the Internet. If this happens, then you can afford to set up big and large data centers in Nigeria but until then, I think step 1 is the only solution for now.

Hosting in the US is very affordable - I am presently running a small-scale reseller hosting solution in Ghana with the view of extending it to Nigeria, if any one is interested, please visit http://www.cybergraphixgh.com

There is no reason why Nigeria cannot do it. A substantial percentage of websites in Egypt and South Africa are hosted locally.
We just need to get our act right.

NB: Too bad some of the "web hosts" mentioned earlier in this thread have closed shop.

niyyie:

There is no reason why Nigeria cannot do it. A substantial percentage of websites in Egypt and South Africa are hosted locally.
We just need to get our act right.

NB: Too bad some of the "web hosts" mentioned earlier in this thread have closed shop.

Why won't they close shop when they fail to face reality and talk as if they are in control of people that should spend money for their services.

The same thing is happening to a lot of web designers and developers who after bragging about doing big projects disappear completely.

A lot of Nigerians are talented but again until reality is faced many will continue to misfire.

There are a 1001 reasons why web enterprises close shop. I am convinced however that entering the business with the wrong motivation/reason is one of the main reasons why such people go under. Also, many fail to learn thoroughly about what they are getting into. I'd write extensively about this on my blog in future.

It's nice information, I got the web hosting here http://www.thewebpole.com/ and also i got the hosting,domain name register, domain appraisal, online file folder, ssl certificate etc,

mcreal hosting is expensive

ok