Vodacom thrills students on tour of data centre

COMPUTING

By Kokumo Goodie, Lagos, Nigeria

As part of its commitment to youth empowerment and development through ICT, Vodacom Business Nigeria hosted the ICT Club members of Grace High School on a one day ICT tour of its Lagos, Nigeria office.

Vodacom said the tour, which included a visit to the company’s data centre, was aimed at giving these tech-savvy students exposure to the technology behind the gadgets and applications they use on a daily basis.

“For these youngsters, devices like the iPad, smartphones and video games are fast becoming a way of life. Children are fascinated by pressing buttons and making things work. By taking them behind the scenes we’re giving them a better understanding of the industry, how it works and showing them where they can one day make a difference,” said Vernon Van Rooyen, Executive Head, Network Operations Vodacom Business Nigeria.

While the tour touched on a number of areas from the development of the Nigerian ICT industry to back up and security solutions, the students were particularly interested in Vodacom’s Cloud Services. Questions relating to this were around how Vodacom provides and manages its customers’ software and hardware without being physically present at customer locations. 

“The cloud is awesome. Today’s visit explained how I am able download music from iTunes without cables or an internet dongle. What I find most interesting is how credit card companies use the cloud to detect fraud faster and how energy companies monitor faraway pipelines  with cloud services” said the Grace School ICT Club Captain.

The ICT Coordinator of Grace High School, Funmilola Omojola, thanked the management of Vodacom Business Nigeria for the opportunity given to the students to gain more ICT knowledge from the organization. She said, “Children’s confidence to try new things increases as they gain new knowledge and skills; at Grace School we are now challenged to make better use of technologies across all areas of learning and really ensure ICT becomes embedded in everyday practice”

The tour of its facilities follows on the back of the Vodacom Business Nigeria three day ICT workshop for the Mathematics/Computer Science students of Benue State University in June this year.