IXCELLERATE
DIGITAL REPORT 2021
IXcellerate: ENABLING RUSSIA’S DIGITAL REVOLUTION
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FEBRUARY 2021
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IXcellerate: ENABLING RUSSIA’S DIGITAL REVOLUTION WRITTEN BY
JOHN O’HANLON PRODUCED BY
LEWIS VAUGHAN
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IXCELLERATE
IXcellerate, one of the leading Russian Tier III commercial data centre operators in Moscow, is attracting global hypercloud operators into Europe's largest internet market
W
hat are the prerequisites for a successful entrepreneur? The ability to gain the confidence of investors is up there. Before
he ventured into the Russian market in 1998, Guy Willner had already raised seed capital and sub333
sequent funding for his first data centre company IXEurope, floating it on the LSE, surviving the burst of the dotcom bubble and eventually selling to Equinix for £555m. That’s a story in itself, however by 2008, having walked away from the job of European President for Equinix, he was looking for a new challenge. Another characteristic common among entrepreneurs is drive, ambition. Willner comes over more laid back than driven – in his case the driver is creativity. Both his parents were artists, and though their four sons all chose engineering, he says that in his case the creative gene has been a major asset, giving him the imagination to think differently and not to be daunted by entering uncharted territory. The founding of IXcellerate certainly required these qualities. Already on the board of a number FEBRUARY 2021
2011
Year founded
100
Number of employees
334
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“ PEOPLE DON’T REALISE THIS IS A COUNTRY TWICE THE SIZE OF THE USA OR CHINA, WITH HUGE DIVERSITY, DOZENS OF NATIONALITIES, ETHNICITIES AND CULTURES” 01
— Guy Willner, CEO, IXcellerate
of companies including Teraco in South Africa, he was approached by the European Bank to chair a Russian data centre company. Thanks to the GFC that funding fell through but the opportunities presented by Russia, clearly an underserved market, had taken his interest. He teamed up with Clifford Gauntlett – a Russian speaker with 25 years’ experience working with tech companies there – to found IXcellerate and raise the capital required to build out some serious data centre capacity in Moscow. It wasn’t easy to find the right location, and they looked at at least 100 sites; however they now have a prime position inside Moscow’s equivalent of London’s M25 and were able to secure first-rate partners such as Arup and Mercury Engineering to execute the project. There were many reasons why Moscow remained an underinvested market despite Russia’s evident global importance. Foremost among these was a perception among western players that the country is a country with alien customs, philosophy and unreliable business practices. “People
FEBRUARY 2021
E X E C U T I V E P R O FILE :
Guy Willner Title: CEO
Company: Information Technology & Services
Guy Willner, co-founder and CEO of IXcellerate, is one of the leading international experts in the field of building and operating data centers. He is regularly named among top-50 most influential people in the data center, cloud computing and big data industry within EMEA ( Europe, Middle East and Africa). Guy has been holding senior positions in high-tech and big data companies for over 20 years. In 1998, he founded IXEurope, starting with the construction of a data center in the suburbs of London and after nine years running a network of 14 data centers in Western Europe. In 2007, IX Europe was acquired for $ 555 million by Equinix, the undisputed market leader in data centers around the world. After gaining industry experience Guy started to explore Emerging Markets and created IXcellerate. Known for his charisma, “out of the box” thinking and deep understanding of the market, Guy’s influence over the data centre market continues to grow, holding Non- Executive Board position with Lambda Helix in Greece and co-founding IXAfrica in Kenya. With IDC-G group chair Guy is frequently asked to advise newcomers and investors on market trends and data centre global development. Guy graduated in 1986 from Oxford Brookes University with a BSc in Engineering. When time allows, he enjoys sailing and playing guitar.
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03 are frightened of Russia,” says Willner.
does not mean relinquishing control
“People are happy enough to invest in
of a customer’s IT systems, and it’s
Singapore and the Middle East where
also his job to explain to IT people
democracy is not much in evidence.
that they still retain control of their
They may say: ‘Russians look like us so
systems, which will be more effectively
why don’t they behave like us?’ They
and securely located than they ever
don’t realise this is a country twice
could be by keeping them close. But
the size of the USA or China, with
Russia is now not merely catching up
huge diversity, dozens of nationalities,
but leapfrogging in many ways, with
ethnicities and cultures.” Like many
interesting e-banking innovations, very
emerging economies, he adds, Russia
fast technological development and
has been wary of outsourcing with a
even self-driving taxis being trialled
strong inclination to keep its data in-
on its streets. All this is inexorably
house. His team has been explaining
driving a new data centre revolution,
why outsourcing makes sense, that it
Willner believes.
FEBRUARY 2021
“ EURASIA PEERING IS A THE BEATING HEART OF THE DATA CENTRE” — Guy Willner, CEO, IXcellerate
by Sumitomo Corporation, which had been investing in Russia for more than 60 years. “It was a fight as it always is
That’s now, but against this back-
in Russia,” he admits. "But that draws
ground it was quite an achievement
the best out of you, just as creative art-
to get serious backers for his project.
ists are often at their best when they
Nevertheless after talking fruitlessly to
are swimming against the tide of fash-
the European Bank for Reconstruction
ion or even perceived common sense.”
and Development (EBRD), in 2012 the
There have been setbacks, for
World Bank through its subsidiary the
example when his co-founder and
International Finance Corporation
business partner Cliff Gauntlett died
(IFC) came on board, soon followed
in 2014, of a heart attack at the age
IXcellerate Campus - 3D Overview CLICK TO WATCH
|
1:30
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“ IN NINE YEARS WE HAVE COME FROM BEING THE OUTSIDER, THE FOREIGN INCOMER, TO BEING THE NUMBER TWO DATA CENTRE PLAYER IN THE WHOLE OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION” — Guy Willner, CEO, IXcellerate FEBRUARY 2021
six years has been impressive. “Goldman Sachs came in as an investor in 2017, so now we are a very big business with over $100m invested, I00 staff on our books and more than 150 customers. In nine years we have come from being the outsider, the foreign incomer, to being the number two data centre player in the whole of the Russian Federation.” Since 2016 Guy Willner has also been CEO of Eurasia Peering IX, which enables telecom operators, cloud solution providers, system integrators, content delivery networks (CDNs), ISPs, hosting companies, social networks and the like to exchange traffic seamlessly and optimise traffic routes. “Eurasia Peering is the beating heart of the data centre. Peering is like a market place but instead of goods you bring content to the marketplace and of just 53. “Cliff knew everyone in the
connect it to users who may be on six
business so I felt very much on my own
or seven different mobile or broad-
when he died so unexpectedly.” It was
band networks, all connected to that
providential though that at the time the
internet exchange (IX), which is basi-
company was hiring a Russian CFO,
cally a collection of networks, network
Dmitry Fokin who was able to take over
operators and content providers - so
the reins of management. The build-up
Google, Apple, Microsoft, Alibaba and
of the business over the intervening
Tencent which are all on our Eurasia busi ne ssc h ief . eu
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Peering platform and a host of content providers like Wildberries ('Russia's Amazon') are present on the Eurasia Peering platform and able to exchange information with one another.” The first data centre, Moscow One, was housed in a 6,000 sq m warehouse, on a leased site, he explains. “We fitted a small part of it out as a data centre, started putting customers in there, raised more equity and fitted out more till the entire warehouse was full.” Today Moscow One 07
has 1,835 rack spaces and a power capacity of 13.7 MW. Soon an adjacent site also with a warehouse on it became Moscow Two, with 1,580 rack spaces and an additional 13,5 MW power. Moscow Two was inaugurated on October 3, 2019 by HRH Prince Michael of Kent, someone who is well known in Russia as Chairman of the Russo-British Chamber of
and chatting to everyone, insisting
Commerce. “Our Russian guests
on spending more time with the junior
were dumbfounded. Prince Michael
staff than with the leadership!”
is a Romanov by descent, a fluent
The first ten percent of building a
Russian speaker who is very popu-
business in an emerging market takes
lar in Russia – he gave a speech in
five years, Willner estimates. It then
Russian and then spent over an hour
takes two years to build up the next
and a half walking round the facility
40% and maybe 18 months to achieve
FEBRUARY 2021
“WE ARE POSITIONED VERY MUCH AS THE MAJOR WESTERN PLAYER IN RUSSIA, THOUGH WE ARE INDEED A LOCAL RUSSIAN BUSINESS” — Guy Willner, CEO, IXcellerate
the remaining 50%. “We started with
USA; after that the market began to
a little data centre. Then we found we
really take off so we had to build out
were getting customers colocating
five times that capacity and complete
with us, customers such as Bloomberg,
Moscow One. Suddenly we had
Refinitiv, Orange Business Services,
some big Asian hypercloud clients
Rackspace, NTT and many other
like Tencent and Huawei asking for
e-commerce and financial services
all the capacity we could provide. Our
companies from Europe and the
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campus is now 26.5 MW. “It's like
to put another 15MW of IT load, that
expanding an airport, you try to build
equates to about 25 MW of grid power,
close to where you are: with all the
so the power capacity just on that
infrastructure already there it makes
Moscow North campus will grow from
sense to build your third runway along-
about 26 to 50 MW.�
side the others. Likewise if you have
The final push will start early in
all the networks coming in and upward
2021 with the acquisition of a site in
of 150 customers in your data centre it
the south of the city, a leap ahead
makes sense to build more capacity on
for this fast growing company. Here
that site. We have signed for another
he expects to end up with a further
parcel of land where we are going
potential of 150 MW, which should be
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sufficient for the next 5 to 10 years
reference player, with the regulatory
allowing IXcellerate to remain at an
and sanctions compliance, anti corrup-
optimum scale for the market. “We
tion verification and other security they
are positioned very much as the major
need – and they trust me too because I
western player in Russia, though we
have been in the industry since 1998!
are indeed a local Russian business so any new international customer of the nature of Booking.com, Apple or Nvidia with their new AI platforms, wishing to come into Russia will need to come to us because because we are the busi ne ssc h ief . eu
IXCELLERATE 53 DAVIES STREET W1K 5JH, LONDON ALTUFIEVSKOE SHOSSE 33G MOSCOW, 127410 T +7-495-8000-911 E INFO@IXCELLERATE.RU ixcellerate.com
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