Over the last few years, we‘ve seen the implementation of countless sustainability initiatives, targets and innovations. But, while these achievements certainly merit celebration, are they truly reflective of industry-wide progress?
‘Carbon neutral by 2050’ is a pledge that’s pretty ubiquitous – spanning a huge proportion of the world’s companies, industries and sectors.
Sustainability is big news, and the globe’s data centres certainly don’t plan on being left behind.
Green initiatives dominate the headlines, and companies throughout every element of the industry are working to implement pioneering, future-proof environmental strategies.
According to a recent Schneider Electric report, though, 73% of data centre companies surveyed ranked sustainability as their second-most important business priority. Yet, critically, just 33% say they have created a strategic sustainability plan in place.
What’s more, “the maturity evaluations of nearly half of respondents (48%) did not match a previous answer”.
Obviously, this raises a number of disconcerting questions. Are we still stuck in the planning phase? In reality, are these positive news stories a true indication of the progress that’s being made on the ground, right now?
It seems that, although the industry is aiming to improve, there’s a need for actionable targets and more sophisticated strategies to bridge the gap between our current efforts and our future aspirations.
But, on a positive note, it is clear that sustainability remains a firm, universally high priority.
josephine.walbank@bizclikmedia.com
“Although almost three quarters of data centre companies rank sustainability as their second-most priority, just a third have successfully created a strategic sustainability plan”
Is
as sustainable as we’d like to believe?JOSEPHINE
Data centres that get things right stand to reap some monumental rewards. The big question providers are asking themselves is how do I get it right?
The Internet of Things, 4K video, social media, and cloud services are all helping to drive demand for data centre infrastructure and data centre interconnection.
In 2020 64.2ZB of data was created or replicated according to IDC
According to Arizton Advisory and Intelligence, there were around 515 data centre building or expansion projects in 2021. The analyst forecasts the worldwide data centre industry will increase from $215.8 billion in 2021 to $288.3 billion by 2027.
Businesses that stay in a traditional ecosystem will miss out on commercial prospects because they are unable to adapt to changing circumstances. An organisation that remains confined to a private-only environment or a single data centre may find it difficult to expand in markets where it lacks a point of presence or the appropriate alliances.
The data centre industry has changed a lot over the past 10 years. One of the biggest changes in the industry has been the arrival of Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) platforms, such as Console Connect NaaS provides the ability to communicate with other data centres, public clouds, and SaaS instances rather than being restricted to a single ecosystem. It accomplishes this using an on-demand, self-service architecture that enables users to adjust bandwidth to suit their needs while only paying for what they use.
Data centres can fully benefit from Console Connect Software Defined Interconnection® technology and the underlying PCCW Global network. Console Connect broadens access to hundreds of cloud on-ramps around the world and helps data centre providers and their enterprise customers get closer to the cloud.
Software defined fabrics mean it is not as costly or complex to interconnect data centres and manage network connectivity. Customers can establish a global connection fabric that expands to meet their changing demands by utilising a flexible, fluid, and intelligent network rather than being constrained to a single data centre environment.
When new partners, customers or sites need to be connected, the organisation can turn up services ondemand, connecting data centres, public clouds, Internet Exchange Points and their own various networks.
Console Connect’s user interface also provides realtime visibility into network performance throughout the whole data centre ecosystem. An intuitive and intelligent network enables users to continuously adapt and optimise network connectivity with granular and real-time control over bandwidth.
As data centre providers expand their footprints globally, either organically by building new facilities or through acquisition, Console Connect can connect any new points of presence to an existing network quickly and efficiently in all corners of the globe.
With Console Connect, users can quickly establish private, high-speed connections across a high-performance network that is today accessible from 800+ data centres in 50+ countries worldwide. Through a straightforward, user-friendly online application, businesses can instantly and effortlessly interconnect with a global ecosystem of data centres, clouds, applications and other business partners.
Michael Glynn SVP Digital Automation Innovation Console Connect
In the pursuit of sustainable data centres, Verne Global demonstrates just how valuable an opportune location can be.
A data centre underneath Iceland’s northern lights might sound like the start of an unconventional Christmas story, but Verne has used the Icelandic climate
to bolster its 100% sustainable energy commitment.
Their flagship campus, located in the municipality of Reykjanesbær, utilises hydroelectric and geothermal energy in conjunction with the region’s low temperatures to reduce the site’s environmental impact to an absolute minimum.
When I look at JK five years from now, I'm confident that we will double the current size of our organisation
Chuck Kuhn CEO JK Moving ServicesEdgeConneX has secured US$150mn in sustainability-linked financing for Latin America, which is designed to be used as a financing platform for the company’s future activity in Chile and Colombia.
Together, the two companies will help customers apply AI and data modernisation techniques across their environments.
The two facilities currently in development, DXB2 and DXB3, are located in Dubai Design District and Ibn Battuta. The DXB3 facility will be an extension of an existing facility transferred to Khazna following the strategic partnership between G42 and e&.
Meta is continuing to grow its presence in Utah, with a new expansion of its Eagle Mountain data centre bringing the company’s investment to US$1.5bn.
In the past year, NetSuite has opened 11 data centres in five new cities, including Amsterdam, Newport, Osaka, San Jose, and Tokyo.
Schneider Electric’s sustainability research paper – Sustainability at the Edge –revealed a stark disconnect between intent and action, indicating that, worryingly, most of the industry is still in the beginning stages of the sustainability journey.
73% of data centres rank sustainability as their second-most important business priority
73% 33%
The Alphabet Workers Union-Communications Workers of America has filed two labour complaints against Google, claiming that data centre staff are being discriminated against.
Schneider’s recent sustainability report revealed there was a clear ‘perceptionversus-reality’ dilemma across much of the industry, in terms of companies’ perceived progress towards sustainability.
From pioneering sustainability standards to driving the deployment of the cloud across the world, Google has been at the forefront of the world’s data centre industry for the
last two decades. Now, with its 35-strong network of cloud regions and DC sites spanning the world, Google’s data centres are growing from strength to strength.
Back in 1999, Google launched its first data centre in Santa Clara. But the start of this journey was surprisingly unassertive.
In fact, Google’s first, small cage of equipment was based in an Exodus Communications’ facility in Santa Clara – the cage itself was just 2.5 sqm.
On April 7th, the Google Cloud Platform was launched – before use, or even knowledge, of the cloud was ubiquitous.
Today, the platform has a revenue of $19.2bn, which represents around 7% of the company’s total revenue. And, in Q4 2021, its share of the global market stood at 9%.
Then, 10 years after it achieved its landmark carbon neutrality status, Google became the first major company in the world to successfully match its energy use with 100% renewables.
In 2018, Google announced plans to make its stake in Virginia, the location with the world’s largest concentration of data centres.
They revealed that they would be constructing a data centre complex in Loudoun County. Then, in 2019, Google completed the first phase of construction for two data centres in the county, representing an initial investment of $1.2bn.
Earlier this year, Google announced its intent to establish a Google Cloud region in South Africa – the first on the continent.
According to AlphaBeta Economics research, this will contribute more than a cumulative US$2.1bn to the country’s GDP, supporting the creation of more than 40,000 jobs by 2030.
for two data centres in the county, representing an initial investment of $1.2bn.
As the Chief Operating Officer of SpaceDC, Harrington drives the company’s business strategy at large, overseeing the maintenance, operation, security and overall operations at the company’s data centre sites.
Within her role, Harrington also manages SpaceDC’s broad, go-tomarket operations, which include marketing, sales, legal, customer service delivery, and customer account management. Without a doubt, her job description is uniquely broad, representing the extent of her industry experience and acting as a testament to the diversity of her skillset.
She has over two decades’ worth of management experience, and a background in growing and establishing companies. In fact, very few in the industry have her unique level of experience in launching, directing and fuelling the growth of startups.
Harrington launched the Singaporebased data centre start-up, SpaceDC, in 2019, when the region’s data centre market was just on the cusp of a rapid period of growth.
In the three years since its foundation, she has built up SpaceDC’s brand reputation – to the point where it is now recognised across the industry as a sustainability pioneer, at the forefront of data centre technologies.
Harrington
“It was a really exciting time, because you could see that the growth was really just about to take off, even before COVID-19”
“Asia, including India, is where the money is to be made over the next 20 to 50 years”
SpaceDC delivers dependable, high quality and sustainable cloud storage solutions to its global client network. All of its data centres operate in a fully secure and customisable Tier 4 facility, with bespoke services that can be tailored to best meet the specific demands of their clients.
Prior to joining SpaceDC, Harrington co-founded Moco Insight, where she currently holds the role of Chief Executive Officer.
Moco Insight is a data analytics start-up company, which Harrington has built up into a market-leading e-commerce reporting solution for online agencies and retailers.
This is just one of many enterprises that have had Harrington at the helm as, during her diverse career, she has developed and taken to market numerous software, educational and social media products across Europe, Asia, America and Australia.
“This is my fourth start-up – apparently, I’m a glutton for punishment and don’t want a job where I just go home at night and see my family,” Harrington jokes.
“I am highly motivated by challenges. I think there is a solution to every problem. Also, there is no such thing as failure. You just end up with a different ending, which you have learnt from. Very rarely, if ever, do I give up on a challenge, as I’m motivated by the task of breaking it down and then working out how to solve it.”
As a result of her prior experience founding Moco Insight, Harrington describes how she “understands data and the importance of it”, and could “see the growth in Asia”.
“I could see [SpaceDC] as a really good opportunity, a great way to move to Asia and use my skills in start-ups, as well as my knowledge of data and the growth of it. And it was a really exciting time, because you could see that the growth was really just about to take off, even before COVID-19.”
Under her guidance and managerial expertise, SpaceDC has built up an enviable brand reputation and created a name that is recognisable across the industry, both in Asia and beyond. But, for Harrington, it is the growth of her team that gives her the most pride.
“In growing SpaceDC, our greatest success has been the teams that we have built across multiple locations. Most importantly, it has been the open work environment we’ve created so the team is empowered to deliver on its KPIs and, in challenging times, know we are there and that we all learn, no matter the outcome.”
over a thousand customers across multiple continents.
» I left school not really knowing what I wanted to do. I was lucky enough to get a job in a 30-person consultancy firm working with IBM software, which thrust me into the IT industry.
The thing with consultancy firms is that they’re feast or famine – it’s either going really well or they end up being overstaffed and need to lay people off. This was a bit of a shock early in my career.
Then, at 18, I went to study Computer Science at Salford. Once I finished my degree, I went back to IBM consultancy, working there right up until 2011.
That’s when myself and Matthew Scullion set about founding Matillion. Since then, we’ve gone from two people in a new office to 700 employees and
Like a lot of businesses, we didn't necessarily start out doing exactly what we ended up doing. But, we started Matillion fairly early in the growth curve of cloud computing. Amazon Web Services had just become established, with Microsoft and Google scrambling to catch up. It meant there was an opportunity to combine well-established ideas, business intelligence and data integration with lots of emerging cloud technology. We could begin to do things better, faster, more efficiently and target a wider audience than the industry was able to serve.
That's why we started, initially, doing business intelligence in the cloud and data integration laterally in the cloud.
Ed Thompson is the Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder of Matillion. Alongside his team, he follows developments in future technologies, both identifying opportunities to improve Matillion’s current product and identifying the next steps for the company’s advancement.
THE MANTRA ALL SOFTWARE COMPANIES NEED TO LIVE BY IS: ‘PERFECTION IS THE ENEMY OF GOOD ENOUGH’
Ed Thompson, CTO, Matillion
Matillion was founded by CTO Ed Thompson (left) and CEO Matthew Scullion (right)
» One big challenge is keeping our product as current and modern as possible, to be able to tackle three core customer issues: the complexity of cloud data; increasing resource pressure; and lack of data productivity. But this has become much more achievable as we deploy our technology as a full Software-asa-Service (SaaS) solution.
The greatest challenge, however, is transitioning to that full SaaS mindset and technology, which is a big business test. The technology is
the easiest bit to get right, and I expect Matillion will be very successful in doing that. But I think we'll have to work very hard on achieving the necessary mindset, throughout this year and next.
» The mantra all software companies need to live by is: ‘perfection is the enemy of good enough’.
All the time, technology firms have something valuable, but they keep it in their back pocket because they don’t think it’s good enough yet. That’s the quickest route to failure.
In my eyes, if you have something that's useful to somebody, even if it's just one person, by taking it to market you can then draw feedback, learn about use cases and then iterate to make it more useful to more people.
» Once you’re in start-up mode and looking to grow, you get into this mindset of figuring out the next problem that’s been put in front of you.
Be it some minute technical problem or figuring out what your business strategy should be, solving the next important thing and moving on is what really drives me – and the deeper and
Matillion Data Loader | Free Data Migration, Simplified.
more technical the problem, the more fascinated I am.
» The exciting bit for me will be what happens as we deliver SaaS products. We’ll have a stronger foundation for iterating and building more quickly, which will ultimately allow us to improve the core things that the product does, and further outpace our competitors.
Then once the transition is complete, that will bring the opportunity to introduce plenty of other innovative ideas. I'm really energised by that challenge.
THE
Belgium has its first TIER IV Data Center. Antwerp DC, one of the Data Centers of Datacenter United, has been officially certified as TIER IV by the UPTIME institute since February. The emergency power installations designed and supplied by Elinex are an essential component
Elinex designs, builds and maintains entire emergency power installations, brand independent, within the Benelux. With more than 35 years of experience, they a partner for many Data Centers. Together with Huawei, Elinex has been providing modular Data Center solutions to its customers since 2014. This goes beyond just emergency power solutions.
Jo Van Den Langenbergh, Operational Director DC United clarifies: "Maintenance can be carried out while maintaining all redundancies. In order to be Tier IV certified, the emergency power supply must also be designed to maintain redundancy during maintenance. Elinex created and implemented this design. They also supplied the racks and distributors, consisting of synchronization boards and main distribution. The UPS solution concerns the high
efficiency (+97%) modular Huawei 5000 UPS. As a result, expansion in power is easy to realize at any time.”
Jo states: "It's not just about the data, but also about the building itself. A Single Fault Tolerance applies to everything, including the BMS. Every error must come into the picture, even if that is a problem with the climate system, for example. So we have a double redundancy on everything.”
TIER IV important for specific sectors
Friso Haringsma, Managing Director DC United: "For the majority of customers, TIER III is sufficient, but for heavy e-commerce companies, governments, pharma companies and companies that handle privacy-sensitive data, TIER IV is almost a must. We are pleased with Elinex's efforts, which fit seamlessly with the requirements and wishes we had for Antwerp DC. In addition to their expertise that came in very handy in this project, they are of special value because they are 'independant', just like us. We have a maintenance contract with them based on response time of 4 hours. This not only benefits Datacenter United, but especially our customers." Learn more
WRITTEN BY: JOSEPHINE WALBANK
PRODUCED BY: LEWIS VAUGHAN
Clearly, sustainability is more than a low-level concern for Green. This Swiss data centre leader is rapidly expanding, going from a single site to a multi-site, multi-campus company in just a few years – and it plans to become pan-European in the near future.
All of this, while implementing sustainability standards as the cornerstone of its architecture.
Green’s monumental success demonstrates that sustainability doesn’t have to be a ‘necessary expense’ or a roadblock to data centre growth – in fact, it can be their differentiator.
While many industries are facing major, omnipresent challenges, it’s hard to compete with the extent and variety of the difficulties faced by the world’s data centres.
Firstly, there’s the longstanding impact that COVID-19 and global conflicts have had on supply chains. “Of course, now, most recently – when we thought that finally the pandemic had ended – we have the Russian Ukraine war, which has again impacted global supply chains and energy supply in particular,” explains Roger Sueess, the CEO of Green.
“Certainly, with our clients and customers, this has created a lot of
anxieties about how they navigate through those crises, while at the same time, needing to transform their businesses.”
Running parallel to energy and supply chain threats is the rate of expansion that global businesses are demanding of data centres. As digital transformation is being deployed at an immense scale, meeting global demand is no mean feat.
Then, amongst all of this, there’s the issue that there simply isn’t enough talent out there to navigate these hurdles.
“While it's an old topic, what’s still very much true for us as we expand is the war of talent and getting the right people who can actually support that growth,” Sueess comments.
As data centre sustainability transitions from an added cost to an MO, Green demonstrates how ESG can offer an invaluable market differentiator
“It's about more than just chasing one KPI. It’s a very holistic approach – and that's also something that's very hard to just copy, because it's a complete mindset change”
ROGER SUEESS CEO, GREENASHLEY DAVIS, EXECUTIVE BOARD MEMBER, GREEN
“I firmly believe that best-in-class operability is now in our DNA”
Yet, in the face of all of these challenges, Green has continued to thrive, achieving a rapid rate of expansion.
For Davis and Sueess, this success is predominantly down to the talent of its teams, Green’s partner ecosystem, the consistent prioritisation of sustainability, and its ‘Best-in-Class’ status.
“Both Roger and I have been with Green now for the last four years, and have gone through significant transformation during that period. And, frankly, I think that's because of the commitment, discipline, patience, and hard work of our teams,” said Ashley Davis, an Executive Board Member of Green.
C o u n t o n t h e e x p e r tis e o f o u r in t e r d is cip lin a r y t e a m w it h s t a c k e d e x p e rie n c e in t h e in d u s t r y a n d f a m ilia r w it h a ll r e le v a n t le g isla tio n .
t m m n t x
W e g e t y o u r S w is s D C d o n ef a s t, f o c u s e d , o u t sid e t h e b o x .
Y o u r c o n s t r u c t i o n p l a n n i n g p a r t n e r f r o m g r o u n d t o c l o u d . Learn more
more
Alongside this, Green’s growth has also been fuelled by an expansive, invaluable network of partners.
“On the one hand, we have a whole set of key partners involved in our delivery, as we build data centres and create the systems. Then what we've done – very much in the background – is create an ecosystem of partners supporting that transformation and that journey to cloud, making Green the place where everything comes together,” Sueess explains.
“As you look at our website, you’ll see the ecosystem described and a set of partners, starting from consultancy, across transformation, implementation, security, and then the infrastructure where our core assets are.”
‘Best in class’ in practice – achieving the highest standards of sustainable operability
Recently, Green was awarded the status of ISG’s Best in Class Switzerland Data Centre Leader, a feat the company has achieved for the third year in a row.
In practice, such a status comprises a wide variety of factors, in which operational excellence, sustainability and technological innovation are included.
For Davis, another contributing factor of Green’s success in this area has come from the fact that both he and Sueess have worked with data centres from every angle.
“Throughout our careers, both Roger and I have been demanding consumers of data centres, users of co-lo data centres, owners and operators of in-house data centres, and, now, we’re developers and operators of commercial data centres.
“We have a whole set of key partners involved in our delivery, as we build data centres and create the systems”
“For us, it was almost a given that we would invest in sustainability and differentiate ourselves there. But now, it’s actually become an advantage – in a lot of the discussions that we have – that we did this early on”
TITLE: CEO
INDUSTRY: DATA CENTRES
LOCATION: ZURICH, SWITZERLAND
Roger Sueess is CEO of the Green Group - consisting of Green Datacenter AG and Green.ch AG, an ISP for private and SME customers.
Roger has over 20 years’ experience in the financial services industry, where he was Managing Director and Fellow at UBS and Credit Suisse, responsible for cloud strategy and execution, IT infrastructure, IT architecture and IT innovation, acting as Head Cloud Business Office, CTO and Global Head Engineering, steering and forming the banks’ IT landscape and the industry as a whole.
Additionally, Roger was responsible for the Swiss and EMEA region and the banks’ representation at various boards, including the Swiss Banking Association. Prior to that, he worked as a consultant across the IT industry.
Roger Sueess has spent many years living abroad in the US, Asia and all over Europe, providing him with a wealth of international experience and a broad network.
He holds a Master’s in Engineering and a Bachelor’s in Electrical Engineering and Information Technologies from the University of Rapperswil (HSR).
When you've been on the other side as a consumer, you recognise what's important in terms of maintaining the brand and the entity that you work for. Our being able to influence how Green has grown, with that lens across service, availability, consumption and development, certainly brings a unique differentiation for Green.”
“I've always said that best in class is a process, not just an event. The commitment and hard work behind the scenes, which goes into operating our sites, maintaining our sites, etc. is evident in our recognition as best in class,” adds Davis.
Utilising their perspective as former consumers – and thereby understanding the priorities of their consumers first-hand, as well as what their end-user experience expectations are – Green has taken its sustainability commitment several degrees further than its competitors.
“I think we really went through a whole journey. Of course, we chased the optimal PUE, which is something very much known in the industry, but then we went even further,” explains Sueess, outlining the approach and extra-mile-factor that set Green apart.
“When you've been on the other side as a consumer, you recognise what's important in terms of maintaining the brand and the entity that you work for”
“I've always said that best in class is a process, not just an event. The commitment and hard work behind the scenes, which goes into operating our sites, maintaining our sites, etc. is evident in our recognition as best in class”
ASHLEY DAVIS, EXECUTIVE BOARD MEMBER, GREEN
Pioneers in general planning MEP for high performance data centers –founded in Zurich, Switzerland, active throughout Europe.
For more than 15 years, the Swiss general planning and consulting company PBP AG engineering has been developing future-oriented customized infrastructure solutions in the field of hyperscale data centers with a load of up to 50MW. The specialists are highly competent in the conceptual development and plan ning of complex projects.
They accompany construction projects from the concept phase to the handover of the completed building to the client.
PBP plans and supervises conversions as well as new buildings and large-scale projects in hyperscale data centers, research, industry and pharmaceutical sectors.
click here to visit our homepage
PBP AG engineering has played a key role in the planning of the new Green Metro Campus Zurich. Three high-performance data centers for cloud providers, enterprises and system integrators are built on 46,000 m2 of space at the Metro Campus Zurich. Green is an important player for the future of cloud computing. PBP was selected as a suitable partner for the implementation of the campus. In collaboration with Green, PBP launched a future-oriented modular DC hyperscaler concept with an IT load of approximately 50MW on a greenfield site and accompanied the huge project in close cooperation with the client. The unique PUE performance makes the Metro Campus Zurich the most energyefficient data center in all of Europe.
Salvatore Baia is Co-Founder, Owner and Vice President of PBP AG engineering, a general planning, electrical engineer ing and consulting company operating throughout Europe.
Baia also acts as CTO for PBP as the tech nical leader in the Datacenter Green Metro Campus Zurich project. He has been in the industry for more than 30 years and has been involved in data center project planning from an early stage. Baia was involved in complex planning of cages, small DC conversions, followed by power upgrades to the largest hyperscale data centers in greater Europe.
“We are part of the Swiss Data Centre Association, making sure that some of the knowledge can be shared and that we can build on various ideas. We work together with hyperscalers to help them improve their architecture and evolve ours.”
“This includes actually working together with two universities in Switzerland, going further to lead a new standard to certify data centres that is more inclusive –not just in the PUE, but actually the whole front-to-back operation,” adds Sueess.
With regard to ecological footprint, Green is also taking new approaches. Not only does this pay off for Green, but it also aids the region’s climate protection drives. “We asked ourselves how we can use resources wisely and reuse them. For example, for the waste heat (which is lost in many data centres) we feed it into a heating network. We initiated this technology, using it to supply thousands of households and industries with climateneutral heating. This saves 20,000 tonnes of CO2 per year. We are convinced that sustainable data centres are a win-win for companies, operators and the environment," Sueess explains.
“It's about more than just chasing one KPI. It’s a very holistic approach, and that's something that's very hard to just copy, because it's a complete mindset chang.”
ROGER SUEESS CEO, GREENThese ESG initiatives, in turn, drive a greater diversity in the talent pool, as sustainability is becoming an increasing priority for talent, when choosing companies for which to work. And, for Green, this trend has been clearly reflected in their recruitment process.
“We found the purpose element that ESG brings particularly helpful when acquiring talent, and, more and more, I think that's where it starts to pay back”
From cost to profit: a new perspective on sustainability
“We are part of the Swiss Data Centre Association, making sure that some of the knowledge can be shared and that we can build on various ideas”
“We found the purpose element that ESG brings particularly helpful when acquiring talent, and, more and more, I think that's where it starts to pay back,” Sueess says. “That sense of purpose is something that resonates with literally all employees. I don't think it's about particular demographics necessarily, but certainly the young ones –Gen Z in particular.”
“I firmly believe that best-in-class operability is now in our DNA,” adds Davis. “We have a very purposeful agenda, in terms of talent development, and I know for certain the contribution from our teams – in terms of our growth, and more importantly, our efficiency, our reliability, and so on – is a significant differentiation in Switzerland.”
Setting sustainability as a differentiator
Countless data centres have included sustainability within their pledges and future growth plans. But, as the title of their entire operations, ‘Green’ has made its presence in their strategy clear.
“We have a deliberate roadmap towards continuous improvement. We ensure that we actually have all the telemetry and instrumentation necessary so that we can be fully transparent, and so we can get those KPIs, maintain those KPIs, trend them and report them,” Davis explains.
“Having that, I believe, has made a significant contribution to a number of threads, in terms of sustainability. And again, I think ESG means many different things, but from a sustainability perspective, we have a very purposeful transparency that we share. I think best in class is a process we've institutionalised in those processes from the outset”.
Far from this being a hindrance to their growth pace, for Davis and Sueess, it is actually the key factor that gives Green its best-in-class reputation.
“Initially, when you focus on some of the sustainability topics, particularly in data centres, they're always being viewed as a tradeoff. So, if you invest a lot in sustainability, then you're not as profitable.
“We are actually looking, every year, to see how we could push our new technologies”
In the meantime, though, our clients and customers are actively asking about ESG strategies,” Sueess continues.
“I see that as an opportunity to start monetising as, you know, we are the company Green.
“For us, it was almost a given that we would invest in sustainability and differentiate ourselves there. But now, it’s
actually become an advantage – in a lot of the discussions that we have – that we did this early on,” explains Sueess.
“For a data centre, you’re looking at a lifespan of 20 to 30 years. So, if you haven't already made those investments and if you don't keep improving, you'll have a stale asset, so to speak, and you have to innovate at another level.”
Thanks to its proactive approach, Green has set sustainability as its key differentiator, and a priority that marks it out from its competitors. As such, it has a marked competitive advantage over its rivals, who have only just begun to implement their ESG progress strategies.
“There's a tonne of competition out there that we consider ordinary. But very few that are extraordinary, and our achievement over the last three years is that we consider ourselves to be extraordinary on that basis,” says Davis.
“Sustainability is a differentiator that people are looking for, and I think more and more it is becoming an MO rather than something that you can choose to do,” Sueess elaborates.
“Having an advantage there, or being ahead of the rest, helps. It’s important that you keep working on it.
“That's a mindset that we were able to establish at Green – and that makes our customers very confident that they made the right choice, because they see us continuously improving.”
“It's not that we go, ‘Okay, now we put the ribbon on it, we're done’. No, we are actually looking, every year, to see how we could push our new technologies: can we improve processes, configurations and so on, to keep that advantage and to keep ahead?” concludes Sueess.
WRITTEN BY: JOSEPHINE WALBANK
Data Centre Magazine spoke to the CIO of the Sagrada Familia about the services, tools and opportunities that its on-prem data unlocked for the church
n many ways, data centres are the forgotten drivers of our increasingly data-driven society.
All too often, we marvel at the futuristic technologies that are in front of us, including digital twins and the Metaverse, but neglect to consider the tools and infrastructure that made them possible.
And, when we do consider them, data centres are presumed to be some external force, quietly doing their job hundreds of miles away. While we expect to see vast Matrix-esque data centres in the middle of nowhere, we rarely anticipate their presence in our cities, on site in our attractions, under the very ground we are walking on, even.
Data Centre Magazine spoke to Fernando Villa, the CIO of the Sagrada Familia, about the least tourist-attracting element of the Sagrada Familia.
He discussed the opportunities that an on-site modular data centre has created for the church, not only in terms of evolving the experience for its millions of visitors, but also in the ongoing build of this famously unfinished masterpiece.
The Sagrada Familia is one of the world’s most iconic Catholic churches, largely thanks to the exceptional design talent of its architect, Antoni Gaudi.
Today, it is visited by around three million people every year, has been awarded the status of UNESCO World Heritage Site, and holds the title of TripAdvisor’s most reviewed tourist attraction in the world.
As with many of the world’s leading tourist attractions, the Sagrada Familia is investing extensively in digital transformation, in order to stay relevant, keep up with the competition, and continue to adhere to
FERNANDO VILLA CIO, SAGRADA FAMILIA
visitors’ growing customer experience expectations.
Alongside this, tourist attractions have to quickly respond to changing business requirements. The increase in online traffic and data-driven solutions, where connectivity is required 24/7, means that the site requires a structure with a high degree of both reliability and flexibility.
“The reason why we added a data centre to the site was, mainly, to gain the capacity to manage a big amount of data, which
required us to avoid the latency as a factor of risk in the efficiency and availability of services such as video surveillance, design, engineering and ticketing,” Villa commented.
It was these challenges that led the Sagrada Familia to invest in its own on-prem, tailor-made data centre.
Working with Schneider Electric, the Sagrada Familia commissioned two 25’ prefabricated SmartShelter IT modules, on-prem data centres, to be positioned within the site of the church itself.
The fast-tracked project – which took just 16 weeks to complete – saw the implementation of a turn-key data centre infrastructure solution, complete with IT, racks, UPS, power distribution, precision cooling, environmental management and fire suppression system.
new solutions and services.
“We have the inherent advantages of owning a data centre but, for our one, we didn’t need to prepare a physical space for it. And we gained the capability to be able to move it according to construction needs,” Villa explained.
“We have a large volume of tickets daily and, as we almost have zero latency to our servers and systems, we can deal with such a high quantity without negatively impacting the quality of service”
What is the on-prem data centre enabling the Sagrada Familia to achieve?
Once deployed, the church’s data centre was used to more efficiently manage ticketing admissions, retail operations and video surveillance.
“We have a large volume of tickets daily and, as we almost have zero latency to our servers and systems, we can deal with such a high quantity without negatively impacting the quality of service,” Villa added.
Plus, by keeping the data centre on-site, the team could ensure that concerns surrounding both latency and security were fully managed.
Then, alongside the immediate practical applications, there’s the scope to implement data-driven technologies.
Futuristic technologies like the metaverse and augmented reality (AR) are still very much in their early days, and they are far from losing their novelty factor. As a result, many organisations in the world’s entertainment and tourism industries are investing in their adoption to give visitors an bonus element to the experience.
If we take AR as an example, this immersive technology has proven to be hugely popular within the global tourism and travel industry.
AR has huge potential scope for enhancing ‘smart tourism’ experiences, including everything from AR tours and tour guides, to immersive on-location experiences.
And many of the world’s leading travel and tourism companies are keen to get
FERNANDO VILLA CIO, SAGRADA FAMILIA
“We have the inherent advantages of owning a data centre but, for our one, we didn’t need to prepare a physical space for it. And we gained the capability to be able to move it according to construction needs”
on board, with big names including Airbnb, Delta Air Lines, easyJet, Kayak, Marriott, TUI and the Virgin Group all investing in the future of AR technologies.
Never one to fall behind on trends, the Sagrada Familia is also using data-driven technologies in a wide variety of exciting ways.
Villa said that the team is working to deploy technologies across a number of key customer relationship and customer experience areas. These include VR, AR, an external people counter, and a unified comms.
But these technologies are also equally beneficial to the maintenance of the historic site. In fact, they are proving to be instrumental in the next phase of its construction.
“There are technologies that we already have on agenda for their practical applications. One example is the application of AR for the maintenance of facilities and
deep learning in the security and tourism scopes,” said Villa.
The Sagrada Familia is one of the world’s most famous unfinished attractions. Since Gaudi died without completing his masterpiece, it was left to his successors to finish the church. Yet his notoriously elaborate and exceptionally distinctive design style meant that this was no mean feat.
However, in more recent years, this decades-long construction project has been able to use AR, VR and 3D printing to create designs that achieve a more authentic extension of Gaudi’s.
“We use 3D printing to see models and designs in volume. With VR, an architect can develop the 3D model on their computer and, in just a few minutes, after transferring the model to VR glasses, they can see the model from any point of view (including from inside) and experience the immersion in the vision of the space that is being developed,” Villa explained.
In this way, the data centre and the datadriven technologies that it enables are proving instrumental in the next phase of the Sagrada’s life.
JK Moving is the largest independently owned and operated provider of logistics, relocation and storage services in North America. A large part of this monumental growth is a result of its recent success in the data centre industry.
After the company built up an established presence and strong reputation in the commercial market, it made the move to specialising in data centres via its JK Technology Services division.
It was the combination of JK’s long-standing experience and its opportune positioning – nestled in the data centre metropolis that is Virginia – that made this transition hugely successful.
We spoke to Chuck Kuhn, CEO of JK Moving Services, about the company’s specialist data centre services and the initiatives that it’s adopting to support the industry-wide transition to sustainability.
From a single truck to the largest of its kind in America Kuhn founded JK Moving Services 40 years ago in May 1982, while he was still in high school. At just 16 years old, when he was in the 10th grade in Fairfax Virginia, he started the company.
“I had an introduction into the moving and storage industry through my uncle, who had a small local moving company nearby. I started by sweeping floors in his warehouse and cleaning trucks, so I got my first introduction to the industry through him. Then, when I turned 16 and got my driver's licence, I founded JK Moving Services,” Kuhn explained.
Operating at the heart of the
centre industry, JK Moving Services is one of America’s most trusted and sustainable relocation & logistics providers
Kuhn started out with one truck, assisting local residential moves in the Washington DC metropolitan area. Over time, this grew into larger fleets, and the company moved into residential, long distance moves and international relocations, before expanding into office moving, last-mile logistics and all forms of commercial moving, including technology-oriented relocations.
into the data
The company branched out into data centre servicing after establishing itself within the telecoms sector, just before the data centre industry really took off.
Obviously, being located in Virginia was a huge aid to this growth – and Kuhn used this location to its full advantage.
TITLE: CEO
LOCATION: STERLING, VIRGINIA
Chuck Kuhn founded JK Moving Services four decades ago, in 1982. Even then, at the age of 16, Kuhn saw that the moving industry was in need of change. Despite the lack of regulations or industry standards in place, the young entrepreneur set out to create a company that was committed to providing superior customer service.
His vision for JK included an ongoing investment in technology, facilities, and talent. This commitment to technology led to the launch of JK Technology Services, which provides the data centre market with logistics, relocation, and storage services and offers end-to-end life cycle management, including Smart Hands
“We’re moving with bestin-class standards, while adopting the latest and greatest technology”
CHUCK KUHN CEO,
“We're headquartered in Loudoun County, Virginia. This is really the data centre hub of the globe. There are more data centres based in Loudoun County and Prince William County than the rest of the world combined. In fact, approximately 88% of the world's internet comes through Loudoun County,” Kuhn explained.
“As our existing clients started transitioning into the data centre world, we entered the industry as a support mechanism for them. They needed help with the lifecycle management of their mission-critical assets, particularly with staff augmentation – from new deployment of production gear to end-of-life UPS batteries, the demand for trusted technology services partners called us to action. We are more than just moving the hardware.”
JK Moving’s evolution in the data centre industry came as a response to regional trends, alongside a combination of a high degree of company flexibility and an
exceptional example of ‘right place, right time’.
A specialist, dedicated relocation service for data centre clients
Now, the company provides specialist data centre logistics and relocation services to some of the largest providers operating in Virginia (and, as such, the world).
“We are already located in Loudoun County, and we did a lot of work in the telecom space when it was booming (prior to the data centre boom),” Kuhn outlined.
“As the telecom industry started to slow, the data centre industry started to pick up – it was a very natural transition for us. At that point, we recognised the need to bring logistics to the data centre market.”
We are assisting in writing the playbook for telecoms logistics within lifecycle management (TR 60.B), physical data centre management and cabling infrastructure (TIA-942, and TIA-42)) on behalf of the
Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) standards group.
“To ensure that each of our data centre clients received the logistics and relocation services they needed specifically, we launched JK Technology Services, which offers staff augmentation to ensure needed alignment. We will act as an extension of our clients’ staff, offering asset verification, Smart Hands, equipment migration, rack configuration design, AND port/patch matrix development.”
Serving as boots on the ground helps clients to ensure that they mitigate the risk of unnecessary downtime and maintain business continuity for mission-critical operations, while achieving full transparency and visibility into each step associated with the logistical and relocation needs of the data centre market.
And, as the growth of the data centre market shows no signs of slowing, this prime position will continue to give JK a phenomenal advantage.
“The growth of data centres in this marketplace is neverending,” Kuhn stated.
“When I look at JK five years from now, I'm confident that we will double the current size of our organisation; we’ll double the amount of warehouse bases we have in the area. A lot of that will be in order to properly support the data centre community.”
JK continues to expand in the data centre community, and Kuhn expects that to continue at the same pace. The company is currently serving a growing number of hyperscalers and co-location companies around the globe, and, alongside this, is adding to the footprint that it services.
“When I look at JK five years from now, I'm confident that we will double the current size of our organisation”
CHUCK KUHN CEO, JK MOVING SERVICES
EVs, reusing waste, and founding the JK Community Farm
As is instrumental in the industry’s futureproofing strategies, any service provider working in the data centre sphere has been pushed to improve its sustainability standards. A green mindset can be ‘make or break’ to a service provider’s success, as Kuhn well knows.
“Sustainability has been a real key focus area for JK, for quite some time,” Kuhn says.
In fact, in a bold demonstration of its sustainability commitment, the company recently ordered a dozen Tesla trucks.
“We’re moving with best-in-class standards, adopting the latest and greatest technology. We’re one of the pioneers, embracing electric vehicle technology – and we're excited to test these new vehicles to see how they work in our fleet.”
Alongside this major investment, Kuhn explains that the company currently reuses 100% of the waste oil from its trucks, with a portion put aside to heat its buildings.
In another pioneering sustainability initiative, the JK Community Farm was founded in 2018. This farm produces chemical-free vegetables, fruit, and meat proteins to help improve food security in the Washington DC area. It is almost entirely volunteer-run, and the farm sits on 150 acres of land that has been placed into conservation easement.
Partners in sustainable growth – the value of a green partner ecosystem JK has further reduced its waste by adopting a box-less move strategy, in which they use reusable plastic totes in lieu of conventional cardboard containers. As you can imagine, this prevents a huge amount of the waste that would usually go to landfill. Then, for any cardboard boxes that they do use, the containers are formed of completely recycled materials and are therefore entirely recyclable themselves.
“We're very proud of how much material we keep out of landfill. We actually measure annually how much we are reducing our waste,” added Kuhn.
A solid partner ecosystem has been instrumental in JK Moving’s waste management achievements. Most notably, JK Moving Services has been able to implement an exceptionally strong e-waste recycling programme, thanks to its partnership with C2 Management and Lifecycle Sherlock.
“C2 Management focuses on the backend management of reducing carbon footprint, which is important across the industry,” Kuhn stated.
As such, C2 Management disposes of any remaining assets by refurbishing or reducing
them down to their raw materials so that everything is reused and saved from landfill.
"Another group that we partner closely with is Lifecycle Sherlock. They provide us with ESG and sustainability services, design and manage net-zero journeys, track Scope 1-3 emissions, and secure and monetise carbon offsets. In these ways, Lifecycle Sherlock helps us to participate in the growing carbon economy."
For JK, these partnerships have enabled them to continue hitting best-in-class standards. Not only does this make them a market leader in their field, but it also allows them to deliver this top tier of sustainability across its entire client network.
“Partnership collaboration is imperative to our success; we cannot do it without our partners. We would be doing the data centre market a disservice if we didn't partner with groups like C2 Management and Lifecycle Sherlock – they've been critical to our ability to reduce the carbon footprint and to properly serve our clients.”
“We would be doing the data centre market a disservice if we didn't partner with groups like C2
We’re rounding the corner for a 5G future, and new technologies are being imagined faster than the infrastructure can keep up.
So, as our data demands show no signs of halting, could modular data centres be the solution that gets our data centre infrastructure 5G-ready?
We spoke to Elliott Turek and Joe Kramer from Schneider Electric to discuss the market benefits of modular data centres, how these solutions are rivalling the sustainability standards of their larger cousins, and Schneider’s predictions for the opportunities that will be unlocked by the future deployment of modular units.
As its name suggests, a modular data centre consists of modules and components that are purposeengineered and readily scalable. Usually, these components are prefabricated, as this allows for customised solutions that can be deployed at a fraction of the usual delivery schedule.
These units are portable and give the user the opportunity to choose their capacity, power source, and cooling solution. Plus, they can be designed and built at an impressive speed – usually within 3-6 months – and can be located wherever additional data capacity is required.
Can modular data centres solve the world’s growing edge demand? We speak to Schneider Electric about where modular prefabricated solutions are headingMODULAR SOLUTIONS, SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC
As a result, modular data centres are becoming increasingly adopted, particularly as AI, IoT, ML and 5G drive an even higher data demand.
Edge computing has been a big industry topic for a long period of time. But it’s actually application-based computing that has advanced the cloud’s – and so, edge data centres’ – evolution.
“Certainly, in the cases of driverless cars, Google maps, or any other application where it needs to be working 100% of the time, you can't have downtime or latency issues,” asserts Elliott Turek, the Global Offer Manager for Prefabricated Modular Solutions at Schneider Electric. “With the advent of this increased demand, you need a data centre to provide such a service.”
ELLIOTT TUREKGLOBAL OFFER MANAGER FOR PREFABRICATED MODULAR SOLUTIONS, SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC
“What I'm really interested in seeing is how we use this for efficiency and sustainability gains, and really start to build these data centres with a longer term purpose”
The speed and flexibility with which modular data centres are constructed gives these models a series of unique advantages.
Firstly, their small size means that modular data centres offer a very effective solution to the issue of space constraints. In fact, it’s not uncommon for modular data centres to be slotted into existing spaces in car parks or for mining companies to install a small, on-site data centre to support their operations.
“When you look at what we're working on, you think, ‘That could be deployed somewhere that's nearby my house or in New York City’,” Turek says.
The prefabricated building method offers greater predictability and consistency, which is a valuable trait for companies.
“For customers who are building up a consistent product for themselves – whether it's a distribution warehouse or a cloud
“There's been an assumption in our business that the deployment of 5G is going to be a big driver of the acceleration of more of these smaller data centres around the edge, and we've been waiting for that to happen for a while”
tier-one data centre – they want to have predictability across the board and be able to say that what is in Iowa in the US is the same thing that’s in the Netherlands’,” Turekexplains.
“Prefab offers that predictability. Plus you have more control of the overall process, as opposed to a conventional construction project, where you may have different labour in different countries and different zones, each of which may have their own practices for doing things.”
“For our customers, what they have at every site globally is cookie-cutter, so they know that, if there's some sort of firmware upgrade that they have to do, it's the same process each and every time.”
One critical element of this build process is the added flexibility, which applies to customers spanning a huge variety of industry use cases. These include everything from
logistics to food, manufacturing to maps –sectors that are increasingly reliant on 5G technologies and can use modular data centres to quickly achieve the necessary infrastructure.
Alongside this, the replicated building approach enables a significantly faster build speed than the standard new data centre.
“When you are building the whole data centre in the factory, everything that you would normally do on site can be done in parallel,” adds Joe Kramer, the Director of Sales and Marketing for EcoStruxure Modular Data Centres at Schneider Electric.
“Typically in a construction process, things have to follow a certain series of events. And with modular data centres, we turned that on its head and gave the customer different approaches, which manifest in being able to build faster.”
Alongside this, Schneider also deploys industry-leading sustainability standards across its modular data centres, ensuring its clients continue to meet their ESG targets, even with the adoption of a new data centre.
“Since we take a wide range of Schneider products and integrate them in the data centres, we have all the PEP (product environmental profile) documents ready,” Turek explains.
“We then do our due diligence when working with the vendors, to see how much we can get that's recycled, how much we can reuse from other projects and say, if we're building this for our customer in Sweden, determine what's the most effective way of shipping it to them.”
In data centre designing and construction, a lot of the consequent waste is caused by the making of one-off units. So, with the tried-and-tested approach of standardised, prefabricated modular data centres, waste is minimised and the manufacturer’s ability to recreate it in the same sustainable way becomes even more efficient over time.
Predictions for the growth and advancement of the modular data centre sector
So, what predictions does Schneider have for the growth of the modular sector?
“I think it’s really about being where the data is collected and processed. In this new world, edge data is going to have to be processed all over the place,” explains Kramer.
“We can't just centralise where all that processing is happening. And there's going to be so many applications that we haven't even dreamed of yet, which are going to drive the need for that.”
“But that's where I see the acceleration of modular data centres – when you think about all the new applications that are out
“We're seeing a lot of our bigger customers, which have been with us for a couple years now, expanding into other zones, because they're able to be that much faster at delivering their services”
“ I think really about being where the data is collected and processed. In this new world, edge data is going to have to be processed all over the place”
there that need to have something other than a very small processing device – having an impact,” Kramer adds.
Alongside this, modular data centre providers will be using edge-enabled technologies themselves to achieve greater efficiencies and capabilities within their units.
“I think Schneider's at the forefront of using AI and, with a lot of the things that we're working on, we can be really successful in using that type of methodology,” Turek says.
Alongside smaller independent sites, modular data centres are also set to drive some major changes across hyperscale locations. In fact, Schneider has traditionally
worked with hyperscalers, including many of the industry’s big cloud players.
“Modular data centres have already had a really large impact, I'd say, in the large hyperscale data centre market,” Kramer explains.
“There’s a sort of race to build data centre capacity, which is being driven by everything that's happening on the edge. The real advantage in the hyperscale space is being able to meet that fast-moving demand and manage parallel activity, so that you can do more in a shorter amount of time.”
“The next frontier is going to be focused around the edge and moving all that processing power from those big data centres to lots and lots of places.”
Within the tech sector, advancements in data-driven technologies are occurring at such a rapid pace that simply meeting demand is a challenge.
The world’s ever-hungry data consumers – the biggest culprits including the cloud, 5G, artificial intelligence (AI), internet of things (IoT) and machine learning (ML) – are certainly keeping data centres on their toes.
Edge data centres in particular are becoming an increasingly deployed solution, helping to lay the necessary infrastructure for these futuristic technologies.
Consequently, the edge data centre market is set to achieve a 21.4% CAGR,
As the industry anticipates rapid growth for edge data centres, we explore the specific efficiency strategies being devised for these small-scale sites
rising from its 2021 value of $7.2bn to $19.1bn by 2026 – a growth of 165% in just six years.
But, as edge providers navigate the dual (almost entirely conflicting) demands of high growth and sustainability, we explore how edge data centres are improving their operational efficiencies.
The USP of edge data centres is the fact that they are located as close to the population that they serve as possible.
In this way, edge computing enables reduced latency and improved customer experience.
Edge data centres can either operate in isolation, or be used connected to larger facilities – and sit within a complicated network of numerous data centre facilities – to support their operations. Thanks to their high performance, they are an invaluable support for mission-critical operations.
Indeed, edge data centres can transform the operations of numerous industries, including everyday entertainment like gaming, to vital applications like healthcare, manufacturing and surveillance. Indeed, edge computing will play a critical role in our transition towards smart cities, and the widespread deployment of AI.
Their impressive range of use cases, and the opportunities that they unlock, certainly haven’t gone unnoticed.
In fact, in 2020, around 10% of all data is created and processed outside of either centralised data centres or the cloud. But, predictions from Gartner outline a rapid rise for this figure, reaching 75% by 2025.
“It is worth taking into account that edge data centres represent net new IT loads –they will not, in general, be replacing loads elsewhere, but adding to the global energy consumption of the data centre industry,” explained Duncan Clubb, Head of Digital Infrastructure Advisory, Data Centre Solutions at CBRE.
“So, there is a responsibility to ensure that the edge is as energy efficient as possible.”
And, as we sit at the cusp of a rapid growth trajectory for edge data centres, addressing their efficiency is a challenge that needs to be undertaken right now.
“There are not that many edge data centres out there yet, but the numbers are predicted to grow exponentially, so energy efficiency will be as important at the edge as it is in the rest of the data centre industry. Importantly, it is essential for the economics of edge data centres –even before energy prices went mad, high efficiency was a vital part of the business model,” Clubb adds.
Alongside this, technology’s advancement comes hand-in-hand with growing consumer demand for sustainable solutions. Now, it’s no longer enough to offer a solution that can match users’ growth – it has to be environmentally conscious, utilise green energy, and operate in a way that is as efficient as possible.
“Sustainability at the edge can be more critical and time-sensitive than sustainability in hyperscale data centres. But, too often, edge sustainability seems to be put on the back burner due to a higher
“IN CONTRAST TO WHAT WE HAVE DONE IN THE PAST, THESE NEW EDGE DEPLOYMENTS OFFER A UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY FOR COMPANIES TO ALIGN BETTER WITH THEIR ESG GOALS”
priority for low-cost data centres,” warns Tony Grayson, General Manager, Quantum, Compass Datacenters.
“This mistake lays the groundwork for a sustainability nightmare that could require decades and countless capital to mitigate.”
Due to the singular nature of their scale and location, sites at the edge usually require their own separate, specific efficiency strategy.
“There could be tens to hundreds of thousands of edge facilities across the globe based on the increasing need to bring compute, storage, AI, ML, etc., closer to the endpoint or customer. Some of these facilities will most likely be in residential neighbourhoods – down the street from local schools, playgrounds, and the local market. The sheer number of these facilities and their sensitive location raises the stakes considerably,” Grayson explains.
Although this location advantage is intrinsic to their USPs, it brings with it a series of serious, specific sustainability challenges for edge data centres.
“You don’t have to search hard for examples of what can go wrong with networking/ computing facilities deployed at this scale and in these locations. The globe is covered with rusting, leaking, cracked, carbon-heavy edge telco huts from the last twenty years that were built as cheaply as possible with no focus on sustainability,” Grayson outlines.
“Today, many of these disintegrating hulks have environmental liabilities for the companies that own them and the neighbourhoods where they are located. And the cost of retrofitting and remediating those facilities is sky-high. Without the right approach to edge infrastructure sustainability, we are destined to repeat those mistakes on an even larger scale.”
Firstly – as with any other data centre –the chosen cooling solution is one of the primary targets for improving efficiency.
“It is likely that a lot of edge workloads will require high-performance hardware – AI/ ML, video processing and analytics, remote rendering and other applications will drive the use of GPUs and highspec CPUs, all of which are energy hungry. In terms of cooling, this can actually help by driving up the average energy density at the edge. It may also encourage the use of high-density cooling systems which are typically much more efficient per kW than traditional DX or chilled water systems,” Clubb explains.
“Many in the industry are looking at liquid immersion systems as being suitable for edge data centres – not only are immersion systems about as energy efficient as a cooling system can get, but they are also capable of reducing IT power consumption by 8-25% (mainly due to the removal of all the fans in the servers). “
Interestingly, this trend is applicable to the full scope of green technologies, as the emergence of edge data centres offers extensive opportunities for previously outlier sustainability solutions.
DUNCAN CLUBB HEAD OF DIGITAL INFRASTRUCTURE ADVISORY, DATA CENTRE SOLUTIONS, CBRE“Hyperscale customers often have design requirements that may not include any new sustainable technology because of the perceived risk of using untested technologies. Edge deployments are considerably smaller compared to their hyperscale counterparts. This means that, on a per unit basis, there is a much smaller capital investment, which can allow companies to address key sustainability factors such as green materials, minimising carbon footprint, optimising energy and water usage, using renewable energy sources like fuel cells and hydrogen, with much less risk or loss of capital than deploying in a large campus,” explains Grayson.
What’s more, the rapid growth of the edge data centre market represents a fantastic financial opportunity for sustainably-led cooling solutions providers.
“Liquid cooling is yet to hit the mass market, but edge data centres may help their wider adoption,” Clubb adds.
In this way, edge data centres could prove pivotal in the industry’s ongoing sustainability drive.
“So, edge deployments can enable companies to test sustainable solutions on a small scale, as a precursor to incorporating them into their existing facilities if the technology proves scalable and sustainable.”
“WITH CURRENT ENERGY PRICING AND AVAILABILITY OF POWER BEING STRETCHED IN MANY LOCATIONS, THE EFFORT TO REDUCE THE AMOUNT OF POWER CONSUMED BY THE IT ITSELF WILL BECOME MORE AND MORE IMPORTANT”
WRITTEN BY: JOSEPHINE WALBANK
t’s hard to overestimate the impact that artificial intelligence (AI) will likely have on our global industries. If its full capabilities are utilised, it has the power to transform the way the world manages manufacturing, transportation, healthcare, technology and countless other sectors.
And data centres are well within the transformational remit that AI developments promise.
So, as the world looks – with mixed feelings, in some cases – towards an AI-enabled future, we explore the future capabilities that AI can unlock for data centres.
Data Centre Magazine explores industry predictions for the expanded capabilities, new advancements and improved efficiencies that AI promises to unlock
Keeping data centers at optimal temperatures using U.S. sourced, inorganic materials with innovative technology. Durable and sustainable evaporative media designed to keep the cloud going.
The power of AI AI not only promises to aid the tasks that humans manually complete, but it has the power to open up entirely new capabilities that would otherwise be permanently out of our grasp.
“Powered by high-performance computing (HPC), AI and machine learning (ML) are helping researchers to deal with some of the biggest problems humanity faces. From discovering ways to feed the global population in the coming decades to diagnosing sight-threatening retinal disorders, HPC systems are offering universities and global companies the computing horsepower to drive cuttingedge AI and ML research,” explains Noam Rosen, the EMEA Director for HPC & AI at Lenovo.
For instance, if we take the healthcare sector as just one example, Rosen explains that “AI can open up a whole new way of treating illness, with AI delivering the insights required to tailor treatments genetically to each individual patient”.
“Lenovo’s GOAST (Genomics Optimisation and Scalability Tool), which relies on HPC, has accelerated the process of sequencing a human genome from more than 150 hours to just 18 minutes, bringing the dawn of personalised medicine within reach.”
However, before AI can reshape the way we treat illness, tackle the food crisis and
connect the world, an enormous amount of computing power is needed. That’s where data centres come in. And – no surprises – AI can help us here, too.
The symbiotic relationship of AI and data centres AI and data centres have an interesting relationship, one that can be summarised as a largely co-dependent cycle of growth.
“There is a convergence between AI and HPC; the two technologies work symbiotically a lot of the time,” Rosen says.
“One of the main drivers for HPC is training AI models, which has seen demand
for compute power soar. There’s also a crossover where AI is deployed in a traditional HPC workflow to make the research more productive.”
In short, the more data that we need to collect, manage and store, the more beneficial the processing power of AI becomes. And, the more AI is deployed across industries, the more we’ll need the aid of AI to improve data centre efficiency.
Despite common knowledge, however, this is not a new development. In fact, the use of AI technology in data centres goes as far back as 2014, when Google announced that it was using DeepMind’s AI technology to enhance the way that it managed its data centre equipment.
What advantages can AI technologies bring to data centres?
As the global data demand continues to soar, the pressure that’s being placed on data centres is immense.
In order to cater to the data requirements of AI, the cloud, ML and all their sibling technologies, data centres need to either build new sites – and then navigate the sustainability criticism fallout – or improve their efficiencies.
“AI and automation have proven to be powerful tools in workload management, as it frees employees from time-consuming and mundane tasks and allows them to focus on work that actually requires a human,” outlines Jeff Kavanaugh, Head of the Infosys Knowledge Institute.
In fact, a recent INAP survey revealed that 81% of IT professionals predicted that, by 2025, most data centre and network tasks will be completely automated.
NOAM ROSEN EMEA DIRECTOR FOR HPC & AI, LENOVO“Machines
many
though there are certainly areas where machines are much better than humans”
The key use cases of AI in workplace automation include deploying predictive analysis, gaining operational insights and improvements, and using data to identify inefficiencies or flawed points in the system.
Alongside these functions, though, AI has an additional and somewhat unexpected application.
“Across data centres, AI is being used to drive safety and security applications like automatic temperature checks, touchless authorisation, and traffic monitoring, for example,” explains Alastair Waite, a member of the Data Centre Market Development team at CommScope.
The predictive ability of AI can be used to enhance a number of other data centre processes, in addition to safety standards.
“With AI, capacity and horsepower can be allocated in a more efficient manner, allowing organisations to scale and become flexible,” adds Sanket Shah, a Clinical Assistant Professor of Biomedical and Health Information Sciences at the University of Illinois in Chicago.
“Automating certain processes and shifting power where necessary will ultimately lower costs for those [managers] that have rapidly evolving data needs.”
SANKET SHAH CLINICAL ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS
“With
In this way, AI can give managers an insight into a site’s future requirements, which gives them a huge planning advantage.
AI and workloads, how will staffing levels be impacted? Naturally, one of the consequences of increasing automation is, often, decreasing staffing levels.
Although one of the greatest benefits of AI is its ability to reduce the need for manual tasks, questions are being raised about how this will impact staffing levels.
In fact, when asked whether they believe that AI would reduce data centre staffing levels, Statista research revealed that 77% of IT and data centre managers surveyed believed that this would be the case.
Of those surveyed, 34% believed that there would be a reduction within the next five years, while 43% also predicted a reduction, but not within the next five years.
But, AI (as it stands, at least) is far from possessing the ability to replace human teams altogether, meaning fears of a technological takeover are largely unfounded.
"Machines simply cannot replace humans in many respects, though there are certainly areas where machines are much better than humans,” outlines Richard Boyd, the Co-Founder and CEO of Tanjo.
And, with the promise of more efficient workloads, enhanced safety procedures, flexibility and improved future forecasting all on the line, it’s hardly surprising that so many data centres are investing in AI technologies.
“Incorporation of AI applications has been an ongoing trend for data centres, and we see no sign of this slowing down,” Waite affirms.
t’s no secret that the world’s data demands are rising. Our global need for data centres is increasing and accelerating at an exceptional pace.
But, despite the evident need for their services, data centres are coming under heavy scrutiny, particularly amid a worldwide energy crisis. Widespread criticism comes from the fact that data centres currently account for around 1-1.5% of global electricity use.
What’s more, it’s almost certain that this energy consumption will grow considerably over time –especially in light of widespread digitisation and automation.
Some reports predict that data centre energy usage will quadruple by 2030. One particularly headlinegrabbing statistic is that, unless renewable energy usage increases, data centres could soon create more emissions than the entire aviation industry combined (which currently accounts for 2% of the world’s CO2 emissions).
This growth has placed the need for green energy at the top of the industry’s priority list.
So, as sustainable energy usage becomes instrumental in future-proofing the world’s data centres, we take a look at the top 10 data centre companies using green energy.
As data centres across the world balance demand surges with sustainability, we explore the top 10 data centres pioneering green energy solutions
There’s no topping 100% – and Kao Data is currently powered by 100% renewable energy across its entire data centre operations. In fact, the green energy pioneer was the first data centre operator in Europe to transition its back-up generators to 100% renewable HVO biofuel.
Kao successfully balances a commitment to sustainable energy with high performance, achieving a PUE of 1.2 and a BREEAM classification of "Excellent" architecture.
VIRTUS is another data centre provider that has successfully achieved 100% renewable electricity usage across its entire site network, committed to reaching net zero by 2030.
Remarkably, VIRTUS has reached the top 10% of UK commercial buildings in terms of energy efficiency. This is largely thanks to the fact that the London-based company sources the energy for all ten of its data centres from zero-carbon electricity supplier Bryt Energy. By doing so, VIRTUS is able to save 45,000,000 tonnes of CO2 annually.
Equinix is committed to achieving bestin-class data centre efficiency, with green energy playing a pivotal role in this reputation.
Across the design and build of its sites, Equinix has consistently high energy-efficiency standards and 100% clean, renewable energy. All of the company’s new builds across its global platform target LEED Silver (or the equivalent green standard) building certifications.
And to maintain this into the future, Equinix has invested more than $129mn into energy efficiency upgrades, retrofits and improvements for its data centres.
Switch has long been flying the flag for green energy. In fact, remarkably, all of Switch’s data centres have been running on 100% renewable energy, ever since January 2016.
The data centre company has a pioneering sustainable vision, which has led to recognition from Greenpeace, as its Clicking Clean Report received the highest rating for any class of company.
Furthermore, Switch is the only company that has been awarded S&P Global’s highest Environmental Rating (of E-1), and it has also been awarded S&P’s highest peer group scores, for both social and governance standards.
Earlier this year, EdgeConneX successfully secured $1.7bn in sustainability funding.
As the first securitisation and multi-currency term loan for the company, this sum will ensure that, as the company grows, its ESG commitments are consistently met.
At company scale, EdgeConneX aims to reach carbon-neutral, water-neutral and wasteneutral status by 2030. Alongside this, its goal is to introduce 100% renewable energy across its entire data centre platform by the same year.
Utilising this funding drive, EdgeConneX's sustainability strategy will see the company deploying renewable energy solutions and reducing its carbon footprint across its global data centre network.
EcoDataCenter has deployed a sophisticated, multi-faceted approach to sustainable energy. Across its geographically varied sites, green energy solutions have been adopted that utilise the natural landscape.
For instance, its Arctic sites are located within Sweden's northern forests where they’re in close proximity to a number of hydropower plants. As a result, the site has constant access to 100% renewable hydropower electricity.
Similarly, EcoDataCenter’s Falun-based main site uses 100% renewable electricity, has an impressive PUE of 1.15, and features a highly efficient heat recovery system.
Scala Data Centers is the leading sustainable hyperscale data centre operator in Latin America.
Following its foundation in 2020, Scala became the first data centre operator in the LATAM region to use 100%-certified renewable energy. What’s more, the company’s data centres boast a 1.5 PUE (significantly lower than the region’s average), and Scala has pledged that all of its new buildings will achieve a OUE of less than 1.4 when operational.
The company is also a member of the iMasons Climate Accord, receiving its CarbonNeutral certification in May 2021. into energy efficiency upgrades, retrofits and improvements for its data centres.
In terms of green energy, Google Cloud is responsible for a huge proportion of world-firsts.
In 2007, it became the first major company to become carbon neutral. Then 10 years later, it was the world’s first major company to match its energy use with 100% renewable energy.
Its future targets are equally impressive: currently, Google Cloud is working towards eliminating its entire carbon legacy, committed to operating on 24/7 carbon-free energy across its entire global data centre network by 2030.
Data centre companies like Schneider demonstrate just how possible it is to futureproof this industry, not only improving sustainable performance, but holding its own against other industries.
In 2021, it was awarded the prestigious title of the most sustainable company in the world, while also named the number one PPA marketplace solution provider by Guidehouse Insights for 2022. Alongside its deployment of green energy, these titles help represent the extensive sustainability work that Schneider does across its client base.
For instance, 40% of Italy’s energy has been made renewable with Schneider’s EcoStruxure Smart Grid. The company is aiming to provide 50 million people with access to green electricity by 2025. It has also added an Alternative Power Generation Technologies course to its Schneider Electric University Data Centre Certified Associate (DCCA) qualification.
Digital Realty recently became the world’s first data centre operator to reach 1GW of sustainable IT capacity. The data centre giant also reached another key milestone, achieving a global 64% renewable energy coverage –a 14% increase in just one year.
Across its US colocation and European portfolios, Digital Realty has achieved a 100% renewable energy coverage. In France, though, its portfolio is carbon neutral.
Furthermore, in 2021, the company added 118MW of solar and wind power to its green energy grid – bringing the total volume of US solar and wind energy under contract to 910MW.
In fact, Digital Realty received the 2021 EPA Energy Star Partner of the Year Sustained Excellence Award for its energy-efficient building initiatives. At the same time, the data centre leader also completed the issuance of two additional green bonds, bringing its total green bond value to more than $6bn since 2015.
