Data Centre Magazine - June 2021

June 2021 | datacentremagazine.com

Data Centres: How can we build the future?

Networking: Sustainability, Site Selection, and HPC under the sea

Data Centre Risk Management Best Practices

Technology: Man or Machine?

Cyber Security in the new normal

Building a sustainable data centre ecosystem Todd Coleman, Founder & CEO of eStruxture, talks diversity, inclusion, and creating an entrepreneurial environment FEATURING:

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The DataCentre Team EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

HARRY MENEAR EDITORIAL DIRECTOR

SCOTT BIRCH CREATIVE TEAM

OSCAR HATHAWAY SOPHIA FORTE SOPHIE-ANN PINNELL HECTOR PENROSE SAM HUBBARD MIMI GUNN JUSTIN SMITH REBEKAH BIRLESON

PRODUCTION DIRECTORS

GEORGIA ALLEN DANIELA KIANIČKOVÁ

VIDEO PRODUCTION MANAGER

KIERAN WAITE

DIGITAL VIDEO PRODUCERS

OWEN MARTIN PHILLINE VICENTE JENNIFER SMITH

SAM KEMP EVELYN HUANG MATTHEW EVANS TYLER LIVINGSTONE

PRODUCTION EDITOR

DIGITAL MARKETING EXECUTIVE

PRODUCTION MANAGERS

JANET BRICE

DAISY SLATER

PROJECT DIRECTORS

LEWIS VAUGHAN STUART IRVING CRAIG KILLINGBACK

MEDIA SALES DIRECTOR

JAMES WHITE RICHARD TURNER MARK CAWSTON

SALES AND MARKETING DIRECTOR

JASON WESTGATE MANAGING DIRECTOR

LEWIS VAUGHAN

CHIEF OPERATIONS OFFICER

STACY NORMAN PRESIDENT & CEO

GLEN WHITE

Bringing the Community to LIVE Broadcast from London to the World

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14th - 16th 2021 EARLY BIRD TICKETS

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Creating Digital Communities

EDITOR'S LETTER

Data centres’ embarrassing ANCAP cousin At a moment in history when the data centre industry is largely coming around to the urgent need for sustainable practice, crypto-mining, trading and NFTs risk ruining it for the rest of us

“[Cryptocurrencies are] an extremely inefficient way of conducting transactions, and the amount of energy that’s consumed in processing those transactions is staggering” Janet Yellen, US Treasury Secretary

Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum and Dogecoin are hitting the mainstream, accompanied by unprecedented interest and record high prices.

However, this uniquely anti-establishment, pro free market trend is having some decidedly unsavoury consequences for the data centre industry’s image.

As the price of cryptocurrencies − alongside the recent NFT fad hitting the digital art world − has exploded, so too has the practice of mining’s energy consumption.

US Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen, called the amount of energy that Bitcoin consumes “staggering”, and a number of regulatory initiatives have kicked off around the world to curtail − and even ban outright− cryptocurrency-related activities.

At a time when the US has rejoined the Paris Climate Accord, and data centre operators of all sizes are working harder than ever to increase efficiency, and use a higher mix of renewables than ever, the crypto industry seems increasingly incapable of reading the room. Frankly, it’s all a little embarrassing.

HARRY MENEAR DATACENTRE MAGAZINE IS PUBLISHED BY

harry.menear@bizclikmedia.com

© 2021 | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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CONTENTS

Our Regular Upfront Section: 12 Big Picture 14 The Brief 16 Global News 18 People Moves 20 Timeline: The road to carbon neutral 22 Legend:

Dean Nelson 24 Five Mins With:

Ian Jeffs

42

Data Centres

The Data Centre of the future

28

50

Canadian Company builds Ecosystem of Empowerment

Tomorrow's Innovation rooted in history

eStruxture

Portacool

90

Technology

62

Man or Machine?

Cyber security in the new normal

Networking

Sustainability, Site Selection, and HPC under the sea

72

Mercury

Expertise across the data centre life cycle

100

NTT DOCOMO, Inc.

Unlocking the potential of 5G

Kuul Evolution FirePro® Evaporative Cooling Media 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.

POWERED BY

™

118

Critical Environments

The changing face of remote HPC

128 Ensono

To Drive Digital Transformation

146

Top 10 KDDI Telehouse Data Centre Risk Management

Connectivity Best Practicesis our core strength

CONTENTS

158

188

Foregrounding Sustainability in Modern Colocation data centres

Cooling Mission Critical Infrastructure

atNorth

172

ExcelRedstone

At the forefront of IT Infrastructure

Munters

202

TAS Energy

The Premier Modular data centre solutions provider

216

Future Facilities

France gets Uptime-Certified Tier IV colo data centre

230

SpaceDC

Green Power in the Tropics

BIG PICTURE The Future is Liquid(Stack) Marlborough, Massachusetts

The heavier the workload, the hotter the heat. As HPC gets more popular and data centres get denser, hyperscalers are casting around for ways to cool their servers more effectively and sustainably.

Meet LiquidStack: the Bitfury-incubated startup whose two-phase immersion cooling tech promises 21 times more heat rejection and a 41% cut in energy consumption. Pretty cool, right? © LiquidStack

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June 2021

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THE BRIEF “WE’RE AT A CROSSROADS, WITH MANY CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES FACING THE INDUSTRY AS WE KNOW IT” Matt Pullen

EVP, MD, Europe, Cyrus One

BY THE NUMBERS The Green Data Centre Boom

$3.46bn Carbon Neutral Data Centre Market 2020

Mattias Fridström

Vice President & Chief Evangelist, Telia Carrier READ MORE

data centre market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 22.17% over the

READ MORE

“A large number of new data centres have been established very close to where larger sea cables are landing”

The carbon neutral

$9.42bn Carbon Neutral Data Centre Market 2025

next five years.

Going green isn’t just a good idea; it’s good business.

EDITOR'S CHOICE DATA CENTRES AND DIRTY FUEL Customer demand, regulation and the outcry against GHG emissions may make a switch from diesel standby to gas generation a timely move for data centres.

READ MORE

“Fostering a culture of good cyber hygiene ... is just as necessary in data centre security as a firewall”

THE AWS BOMB PLOT: HOW HAS IT IMPACTED DATA CENTRE SECURITY? Following a failed attempt to bomb an AWS data centre in Virginia, we ask how the event might impact data centre security moving forward.

READ MORE

Fredrik Forslun,

FACEBOOK HIT 100% RENEWABLE ENERGY. SO WHAT? More often than not, milestones like these are acts of creative carbon accounting rather than meaningful eliminations of a company’s emissions.

READ MORE

READ MORE

VP of Cloud & Data Centre Erasure Solutions, Blancco

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June 2021

 DATA CENTRE SPENDING After a rough 2020, data centre spending is expected to jump by almost 8% this year, as the market roars back to life and projects delayed by COVID-19 resume. This year, Gartner

A Floating Data Centre?

predicts data centre spending will surpass $200bn.

Data centres use way too much water.

How much is way too much?

 DATA CENTRE CONSTRUCTION COSTS To build a hyperscale data

Facilities that use evaporative cooling consume about 8mn gallons of water per megawatt of capacity.

centre, you need to spend

That sounds like a lot.

creates component and skill

It means that, in Silicon Valley - where they have around 411 MW of hyperscale capacity data centres are routinely consuming enough drinking water for about 6.4bn people.

Ok yeah, that’s a lot of water in a state that’s 85% stricken by “severe drought” right now.

between $10mn and $12mn per MW. As demand following the pandemic shortages, that figure could be about to skyrocket. .  INTEL The US chipmaker’s sales of server chips are down as a result of increased competition from AMD and

Exactly. It’s bad. But a company called Nautilus may have the answer.

Nvidia. Intel is spending

What do they do?

this “digestion” phase may

They build data centres. On boats.

In April, Nautilus put a 7 MW data centre on a barge in the port of Stockton (just outside Silicon Valley) that draws all the water it needs for cooling from the bay beneath it.

And the Pact is going to fix it?

It seems like an effective solution, with Nautilus claiming it’s getting a PUE of 1.15 across 100 kW density racks, with zero impact on the local water supply.

W A Y U P

$20bn on two new chip plants in the US, however, so only be temporary.  WATER WASTE Data centres consume vast amounts of water to cool their servers, which can have a proportional impact on local water supplies. Recent developments ranging from floating data centres

JUN21

W A Y D O W N

to “waterless” facilities are fighting this troubling trend datacentremagazine.com

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GLOBAL NEWS 3

NETHERLANDS

Microsoft selects rainwater cooling to appease Dutch farmers The sheer volume of water consumed hourly by the average hyperscale data centre is creating problems for operators and - more importantly - the people who live nearby. Following protests by local farmers, Microsoft has announced that it will use rainwater to cool its Dutch data centres, passing on the excess to local agriculture.

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CHILE

Odata breaks ground on 28 MW Santiago data centre The Chilean data centre industry has swelled in the past year, as the country’s digital economy has exhibited strong growth.

Now, Brazilian data centre operator Odata is continuing its pan-LATAM expansion with a $217mn facility near Santiago.

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June 2021

2

UK

O2 to cut 1mn kilos of CO2 per year with data centre upgrade In order to meet its carbon neutrality commitments by 2025, O2 has announced plans to “radically overhaul” the cooling infrastructure used in its data centres and “core network sites”, an initiative which the company claims will allow it to accelerate its carbon reduction roadmap by saving 1mn kilos of CO2 year-on-year.

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CHINA

What is happening in Apple’s data centres in China?

Are Apple’s attempts to appease the Chinese government negatively impacting on its customers’ right to privacy? The compromise of storing keys used to unlock personal information alongside the data itself means that it is “nearly impossible” for them to stop the Chinese government from gaining access to documents, emails, contacts, and even the locations of millions of Chinese residents.

5

JAPAN

NTT and SKY Perfect are building data centres in space The “new space enterprise” reportedly plans to launch a data centre into space as early as 2025, and begin commercial operations the following year.

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PEOPLE MOVES URI FRANK FROM: INTEL TO: GOOGLE WAS: CORPORATE VP, DESIGN ENGINEERING GROUP NOW: VP OF ENGINEERING Twenty-year Intel veteran Uri Frank has made the jump to Google. The move, and Frank’s new position as the tech giant’s VP of Engineering, signals a new direction for Google, as the company sets its sights on the cloud computing chip market.

By poaching Frank, and doubling down on making its own SoCs, Google is among a number of tech giants fighting to reduce their dependence on Intel. The approach is one that AWS has used for a few years, developing its own Arm-based server chips to run its hyperscale data centres.

“Google has designed and built some of the world’s largest and most power efficient computing systems,” Frank said upon announcing his new position. “For a long time, custom chips have been an important part of this strategy.”

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June 2021

"I look forward to growing a team… while accelerating Google Cloud's innovations in compute infrastructure"

GISLE M. ECKHOFF FROM: DIGIPLEX TO: BULK DATA CENTRES WAS: CEO NOW: EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT

Following his instrumental role as CEO of DigiPlex, where he took the company from a local, sustainable data centre firm to a globally-recognised player in the colocation and hyperscale markets, Eckhoff will turn his attention to leveraging Bulk’s “significant investments in network fiber and a long track record of land banking” in order to make it a key player in the Nordics. He will assume his new role in September, as well as retaining a seat on DigiPlex’s board of directors.

JASON LISH FROM: ADVISOR GROUP TO: LUMEN TECHNOLOGIES WAS: CSO NOW: CSO Cybersecurity veteran Jason Lish has joined Lumen Technologies as the company’s new CSO, bringing a wealth of experience to the role. Lish has led cybersecurity teams protecting everything from US Air Force bases to top-tier advisory firms.

"Protecting Lumen information and physical assets from security threats is critical to protecting and serving our customers and their networks," said Andrew Dugan, Lumen’s CTO. "This is why we are thrilled to have Jason filling this very important role. datacentremagazine.com

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TIMELINE

THE ROAD TO CARBON NEUTRAL In the last year, the data centre industry woke up to the fact that sustainability is no longer a nice optional extra. From Google and Facebook to Digital Realty and Equinix, companies are adopting aggressive and comprehensive carbon neutrality roadmaps.

Based on the Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact, here are the five most important steps data centres can take towards reducing their carbon footprint.

1

20

2

3

Energy Efficiency

Clean Energy

Water

Green power isn’t available everywhere, and even if it is, reducing the amount of electricity your data centre uses should be your first and biggest priority. The Pact states that, by January 1, 2025, operators in compliance need to achieve PUEs no higher than 1.3 in cool climates, and 1.4 in warm ones.

Green power is the future, not just of the data centre industry, but our planet as a whole. By December 31, 2030, all Pact signatories will be matching 100% of their energy consumption with renewable energy or hourly carbon-free energy.

The average evaporatively cooled data centre guzzles around 8mn gallons of water per MW of capacity. The industry needs to find ways to reduce water consumption and its impact on the surrounding area.

June 2021

4

5 Create a Circular Economy

Reuse Waste Energy

Hyperscalers in particular throw out tens of thousands of working, but outdated, servers and other pieces of hardware every year. In order to cut down on waste, the industry needs to set a high bar - aiming to recycle, reuse or repair 100% of used server equipment within the next few years.

The practice is already catching on in Europe, but the global industry needs to start channelling waste heat generated in data centres back into district heating systems to further reduce their carbon impact.

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LEGEND

Dean Nelson Founder & Chairman, Infrastructure Masons

Building the Digital Age

D

uring the past year and a half, digital infrastructure has become more essential to life in the modern world than ever before. In the digital infrastructure sector, few people are as qualified or experienced to support the increasingly essential role of such infrastructure as Dean Nelson.

As the founder and Chairman of Infrastructure Masons, one of the most influential non-profit industry associations in the digital infrastructure space, Nelson has spent the past few years guiding the industry with a combination of extensive wisdom and passion.

Throughout his 30+ year career, Nelson has been guided by one question: “What’s next?” His relentless focus on overcoming complex hurdles and delivering on challenging projects has earned him a reputation as a facilitator and problem solver throughout the industry. In his capacity as Chairman of the Infrastructure Masons, Nelson brings together industry professionals, grows and develops relationships, and drives innovation.

Nelson has also served as the CEO of intelligent energy firm Virtual

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June 2021

Years in Hardware:

30

Years in Networking:

23

Years in Data Centres:

18

Patents held:

4

Power Systems, blurring the line between software and hardware to create some of the industry’s most innovative power solutions that unlock stranded power capacity in data centres.

Prior to entering the data centre industry, Nelson led the Metal team at Uber, responsible for the disruptive ride-sharing giant’s business functions serving its panoply of business units around the world. Prior to joining Uber, Nelson worked as the VP of global foundation services at eBay - leading the team that oversaw the integration and subsequent spin-off process surrounding the company’s PayPal acquisition. He’s a 17 year veteran of tech industry icon SunMicro, too.

His work developing the Digital Service Efficiency methodology (the first miles per gallon measurement for technical infrastructure), among his numerous other achievements, has earned him multiple awards, including his ranking among SearchDatacenter.com’s Top Five People Who Changed the Data Centre, and a Best DC Design award from the Uptime Institute.

“I believe digital infrastructure should contribute to the global economy and society without harming the planet.

What we build makes the world work.

How we build and operate it is just as important” datacentremagazine.com

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FIVE MINUTES WITH...

IAN JEFFS UK GM AT LENOVO, IAN JEFFS, TALKS REMOTE WORK, DATABASE MANAGEMENT AND THE LONG, HARD FIGHT AGAINST COVID-19.

Q. WHAT ARE YOU SEEING COVID-19 DO TO THE DATA CENTRE INDUSTRY AS WE ENTER THE SECOND YEAR OF THE PANDEMIC?

» The pandemic has prompted a mass

increase in the adoption of cloudbased solutions. This makes it possible for businesses to adopt globalised data storage plans, which means that data can be accessed in real time by anyone in the organisation, wherever they are in the world.

With mass remote working continuing this year, we will see a further need for dynamic storage capabilities that enable efficiency and speed of access.

Q. WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE TO MEET THE CHALLENGES OF GROWING DEMAND AND WIDESPREAD REMOTE WORK?

» The widespread implementation

of remote work has also highlighted the need for companies to modernise their data centre infrastructure.

Hyperconverged infrastructure solutions (HCI) are uniquely suited to provide virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), therefore supporting the need for people to work remotely.

Q. WHAT ARE SOME OF THE OTHER KEY TRENDS THAT YOU'RE SEEING HIT THE SPACE IN 2021??

» As the majority of staff will continue

to work from home for the foreseeable future, security will be at the top of every organisation’s priority list.

Remote working presents employers with a host of new security challenges as teams lose control of the security measures they had in place in the office.

In 2021, whilst working remotely, the onus will continue to be placed on individual employees to uphold security measures. More than ever, IT departments across all sectors must take the necessary steps to ensure their company’s staff are educated when it comes to adopting new technology in order to keep data secure.

“ REMOTE WORKING PRESENTS EMPLOYERS WITH A HOST OF NEW SECURITY CHALLENGES” 24

June 2021

Q. WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE HAPPEN IN THE INDUSTRY THIS YEAR?

» In 2021, companies should adopt

more dynamic data storage methods to capitalise on the increasing business value of data. The mass proliferation of data has placed an onus on adopting standardised methods of collecting, analysing and storing data.

“ THE WIDESPREAD IMPLEMENTATION OF REMOTE WORK HAS HIGHLIGHTED THE NEED FOR COMPANIES TO MODERNISE THEIR DATA CENTRE INFRASTRUCTURE” datacentremagazine.com

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Top 100 Leaders in Technology September 2021 To be announced at the Technology & AI LIVE Event NOMINATE NOW

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Creating Digital Communities

ESTRUXTURE DATA CENTERS

ESTRUXTURE DATA CENTERS

Canadian Company Builds ECOSYSTEM OF EMPOWERMENT WRITTEN BY: MELISSA KHAN PRODUCED BY: LEWIS VAUGHAN

datacentremagazine.com

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ESTRUXTURE DATA CENTERS

We spoke to eStruxture's CEO and Founder Todd Coleman about how he's encouraging a diverse and inclusive culture at his data centre

I

n the spirit of all things diversity and inclusion, we caught up with Todd Coleman, CEO, Founder, President and Chairman at eStruxture, a Canadian-born data centre, headquartered in Montreal.

What started off as a chat about eStruxture’s latest acquisition, Aptum Technologies, soon turned into a deep dive on the topic of inclusion in the workplace, and the charismatic leader didn’t disappoint.

With over 25 years experience in the IT, data centre and telecommunications industries, Coleman was most recently Chief Operating Officer and co-founder of Cologix.

He has also held several senior positions at Level 3 Communications, a global telecommunications company, including Senior Vice President of Data Centers, Senior Vice President of Media Operations and President of Level 3 Communications Europe. Todd holds a juris doctorate and a bachelor’s degree in computer information systems. With a long-standing vision to grow largely within Canada, Coleman believes that their focus will always remain on empowering the organization with diversity and a generous touch of empathy.

Todd Coleman Founder, President, Chairman & CEO at eStruxture

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June 2021

ESTRUXTURE DATA CENTERS

datacentremagazine.com

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ESTRUXTURE DATA CENTERS

The eStruxture mantra on leadership Coleman, a thorough businessman with an unmatched acumen, comes with a leadership strategy that is very hands-on, to say the least. Speaking of his experience running a business as large as eStruxture, he adds “I have a philosophy – never ask someone to do something that you're not willing to do yourself – and so we're a very roll-up-your-sleeves entrepreneurial environment where we all wear multiple hats every single day.” He stresses that although eStruxture is in the technology and infrastructure space, they are very much a people business that’s built on relationships and an intra-workforce dynamic that’s constantly evolving.

Speaking of people, Coleman shares his philosophy on giving back to the community that helped build the business in the first place. He says that the success of eStruxture 32

June 2021

is dependent largely on the staff and their families, and this holistic mission is a clear indicator of the empathy that Coleman brings along with his leadership.

Having founded eStruxture in 2017, Coleman believes that there is still a lot to be done in terms of inclusion and challenging the status quo of how things are, specifically within the data centre industry. Traditionally a “good old white boys club”, Coleman quips that this is something they are quickly and actively changing, adding that around 40% of his executive team is now female and that this is only the beginning.

Aptum acquisition only the beginning eStruxture now provides access to an ecosystem of approximately 1500 customers that depend on their infrastructure and customer support. Headquartered out of Montreal, eStruxture is the country’s largest

ESTRUXTURE DATA CENTERS

TODD COLEMAN TITLE: FOUNDER, PRESIDENT, CHAIRMAN, CEO

TODD COLEMAN

FOUNDER, PRESIDENT, CHAIRMAN & CEO AT ESTRUXTURE

EXECUTIVE BIO

“ I have a philosophy – never ask someone to do something that you're not willing to do yourself – and so we're a very rollup-your-sleeves entrepreneurial environment where we all wear multiple hats every single day”

Todd Coleman is the President and CEO of eStruxture.

Todd brings more than 25 years experience in the IT, data center and telecommunications industries. Most recently, Todd was the Chief Operating Officer and co-founder of Cologix.

Todd has also held several senior positions at Level 3 Communications, a global telecommunications company, including Senior Vice President of Data Centers, Senior Vice President of Media Operations and President of Level 3 Communications Europe.

Todd holds a juris doctorate and a bachelor’s degree in computer information systems.

Modular Design for a Diverse World eStruxture Delivers Flexibility Vertiv solutions, including the Vertiv™ Liebert® DSE economization system, allow eStruxture to bring equipment online faster and support the unique service level requirements of its customers.

Read the Case Study

ESTRUXTURE DATA CENTERS

“ The institutional knowledge and the employees that come along with it have to fit into our strategic mix. And so, when we looked at the Aptum deal we were blown away because it made complete sense for us to get that deal done” TODD COLEMAN

FOUNDER, PRESIDENT, CHAIRMAN & CEO AT ESTRUXTURE

Canadian-owned data centre provider, having recently acquired Aptum’s Canadian colocation business. This expansion has furthered eStruxture’s presence into every major territory in Canada, including Toronto, thereby expanding their national footprint.

Speaking of the acquisition, Coleman adds “The institutional knowledge and the employees that come along with it have to fit into our strategic mix. And so, when we looked at the Aptum deal we were blown away because it made complete sense for us to get that deal done.”

Coleman is excited about adding Aptum’s existing data centre employees and colocation customers to the eStruxture family and says that this collaboration is only the beginning when it comes to achieving the company’s long-standing vision of fully taking over the Canadian market. Going forward, the company aims to integrate fully with the current acquisition before making room for future partnerships. datacentremagazine.com

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ESTRUXTURE DATA CENTERS

2017

Year Founded

51-200

Number of Employees

53%

Workforce is from a diverse background

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June 2021

ESTRUXTURE DATA CENTERS

Sustainability at the core of every partnership Coming to partnerships, sustainability is a big factor in driving any collaborations at eStruxture. Coleman ensures that every partnership to date has been made on the basis of a common goal of sustainability, stating “There's a reason why we're headquartered in Montreal. We've partnered with Hydro Quebec where 99% of their power supply is renewable. We have a strong position in Vancouver having partnered with BC Hydro where 95% of their electrical grid is green and so that that's very important to us.” When it comes to challenges faced while acquiring or

“When it starts at the top and you start showing that your actions and words align, the rest of your organisation embraces it and it begins to take a life of itself” TODD COLEMAN

FOUNDER, PRESIDENT, CHAIRMAN & CEO AT ESTRUXTURE

partnering with legacy structures, he adds “We've gone out of our way to avoid the use of water, and that's a key area where data centres have been talking about efficiency and green power for a long, long time.” eStruxture has gone out of its way to become water-neutral across all of its legacy facilities, and this is a drumbeat that Coleman continues to pound on, as the amount of usable water is less than 3% across the the the globe and data centres are one of the largest consumers of water – a forecast states that data centres utilize around 660 billion litres of water annually. datacentremagazine.com

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Cloud, Where Data Thrives Explore simple and scalable cloud infrastructure and data solutions to meet your business-critical workload needs.

Build, deploy and scale via a global channel partner network and data centre footprint across Canada, USA, UK, and the Caribbean.

Learn More

ESTRUXTURE DATA CENTERS

“ This company was built on diversity and inclusion, we want this to be a welcoming environment. Our employees mean everything to us – we're a technology firm at its heart, but at the end of the day, we're built around people” TODD COLEMAN

FOUNDER, PRESIDENT, CHAIRMAN & CEO AT ESTRUXTURE

Speaking specifically about ThinkOn, Vertiv and Belden, Coleman says that these partners have been at the top of their list since the very beginning. Four years ago, eStruxture was small and relatively unknown, and Coleman remembers the partners who backed the company from the beginning when we were just getting started. Apart from providing solutions and expertise, these partners also invested in the company in its early days, when they were an up and coming facility. To this day, Coleman believes that partnership programs at eStuxture are built purely on “relationships and a handshake”. Vertiv was a partner from day one, offering everything from equipment to expertise on priority, and it’s something Coleman won’t easily forget. Belden, too, was a partner right from the start, offering a full research and development scope including their latest technology and top resources. ThinkOn, eStruxture’s cloud

computing partner, further led to developing the company’s cloud-neutral model, allowing customers to find what they were looking for, tailor-made to their needs.

A top-down approach to inclusion Diversity and inclusion have always been Coleman's personal core values, and it's been his mission to bring that into the workplace. As a thought leader in the data centre industry, Coleman aims to make diversity and inclusion a hot topic in every meeting room, as more needs to be said and done now, more than ever. eStruxture is proudly inclusive, with over 50% of their workforce diverse in some way, and nearly 40% of their top management female-led.

Coleman stresses that steps have already been taken to ensure this is not just a fleeting phase but something that becomes a core

ESTRUXTURE DATA CENTERS

“ There's a reason why we're headquartered in Montreal.

We've partnered with Hydro Quebec where 99% of their power supply is renewable. We have a strong position in Vancouver having partnered with BC Hydro where 95% of their electrical grid is green and so that that's pretty important to us” TODD COLEMAN

FOUNDER, PRESIDENT, CHAIRMAN & CEO AT ESTRUXTURE

Belden offers a Collaborative Approach to Colocation Data Center Solutions Watch how Belden helps eStruxture manage high ber density while saving space with the new DCX Optical Distribution Frame (ODF) System.

Speak to Sales

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June 2021

ESTRUXTURE DATA CENTERS

ethic within the industry, and eStruxture is already ahead of its time.

Commenting on the steps taken by eStruxture on building a diverse work culture, Coleman says that any change of that magnitude needs to start from the top. “When it starts at the top and you start showing that your actions and words align, the rest of your organization embraces it and it begins to take a life of itself.” eStruxture’s long-term vision is to continue to diversify its workforce, in the hopes that this will be their key differentiator in a market that’s quickly developing. eStruxture, and particularly Todd, has also gained recognition among industry peers for his relentless pursuit for diversity and inclusion. Speaking to this, Simon Allen, Executive Director of Infrastructure Masons says “Todd was a key contributor to the Digital Infrastructure Industry’s 1st Diversity and Inclusion Best Practice Guide, published by the Infrastructure Masons. Todd’s genuine

and demonstrable commitment to drive cultural change from the top down has delivered benefits that he’s discovered go far beyond commercial advantage. Todd’s conviction to “walk the talk” has inspired many to follow in his footsteps.”

As a closing statement, Coleman adds “This company was built on diversity and inclusion, we want this to be a welcoming environment. Our employees mean everything to us – we're a technology firm at its heart, but at the end of the day, we're built around people.”

datacentremagazine.com

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COLOCATION

THE DATA CENTRE OF THE

FUTURE T

he modern data centre is a marvel of engineering, shaped by decades of changing supply, demand and regulation. Step inside a hyperscale public cloud data centre today and you’ll find yourself in a very different world from the in-house, on-premises enterprise data centres of just a few years ago. Everything, from cooling to power, has been altered

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June 2021

by trends like the shift to public cloud, the growth of the edge and IoT, and the increasingly critical need for more sustainable design principles.

In the data centre industry, change is the only constant. As the result of shifting global trends, the data centre of tomorrow will be just as different from the data centre of today as facilities in 2021 are

COLOCATION

Industry experts from IBM and CyrusOne reflect on the lessons COVID-19 can teach about the future of the data centre industry

WRITTEN BY: HARRY MENEAR

from those built in 2011. “Data centres are changing,” says Matt Pullen, EVP and Managing Director for Europe at CyrusOne, “from the prioritisation of sustainability to the dramatic increase in data usage and growing demand for cloud services. We’re at a crossroads, with many challenges and opportunities facing the industry as we know it, and the conversations and actions

being had and made today ultimately shaping the data centre of tomorrow.”

As the COVID-19 pandemic wears on, the abrupt and often painful effects of the crisis may at least provide a blueprint for the long-term evolution of the data centre industry, and provide some interesting clues about the direction in which the industry is headed. datacentremagazine.com

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COLOCATION

“ We’re at a crossroads, with many challenges and opportunities facing the industry as we know it” MATT PULLEN

MANAGING DIRECTOR EUROPE, CYRUSONE

COVID-19: a Shock to the System The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the data centre industry was almost immediate. “The pandemic forced companies to embrace digitisation in a way many hadn’t before, demand for digital services grew and we observed a surge from enterprise adoption of the cloud,” Pullen explains. “As such, hyperscalers started to draw down on their reservations to manage the increased demand,” as well as consolidating their supplier networks to support more tailored solutions to unique problems. Pullen stresses that, as the repercussions of the pandemic continue to affect the global digital economy − and by extension the data centre industry − “we need to be agile and flexible to meet future challenges.”

The Data Centre of the Future is a Green Machine “Sustainability will play a huge part in shaping what the data centre of the future looks like,” says Pullen.

CyrusOne itself is on track for carbon neutrality across all its facilities by 2040, and plans to hit that goal a decade early in Europe. Even as demand rises steeply, the need for sustainable data centre design that reduces carbon emissions and water usage is rising with it.

“As an industry, we consume large amounts of energy worldwide, and recognise our responsibility to reduce the environmental impact that our facilities create and provide solutions compatible with a sustainable future,” Pullen adds.

“Several of our new development sites, such as Dublin I and Amsterdam I, now have biodiversity and landscaping plans including native planting, wetland areas and wildflower meadows to create natural habitats and food sources for pollinators.”

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COLOCATION

Inside the heart of an IBM Cloud Data Center

The data centre of the future needs to arrive a lot sooner than anticipated in order to meet the skyrocketing demand for everything from digital infrastructure to streaming services. Pullen urges that “COVID-19 has seen businesses digitally transforming in a way we’ve not seen previously, implementing more technology-based services and relying on the cloud more than ever before. Whilst the industry was well equipped to handle this increase in activity during the current pandemic, it’s important for data centres of the future to remain flexible and keep potential future global events in mind.”

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The Birth of the Automated Data Centre One of the big repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic for the industry was an immediate reduction in the number of available onside staff. While some countries − like Germany − quickly moved to recognise data centres as critical pieces of infrastructure, akin to power plants or waste treatment facilities, operators in many countries were forced to cope with fewer onsite staff working longer hours.

“People have been working incredibly hard now for a long time, on longer hours and extended shifts,” says Pullen. “As it relates to development, restricted movement across

COLOCATION

“We need to be agile and flexible to meet future challenges” MATT PULLEN

MANAGING DIRECTOR EUROPE, CYRUSONE

the globe naturally led to some supply chain issues and challenges delivering at pace, owing to reduced volumes of workers able to coexist on site at any one time.”

These challenges may actually come to be viewed in hindsight as a dry run for a problem that’s looming over the industry like Hokusai’s Great Wave: The Silver Tsunami. Coined by an Uptime Institute report from January, the term refers to an alarming trend which is seeing a large number of data centre industry employees with specialised skill sets all due to reach retirement age at around the same time, without enough staff to even come close to

replacing them. The industry’s skill shortage has already been a serious pain point for operators for several years, with more than half of the respondents to the Uptime Institute’s 2018 staffing survey reporting that they were having trouble finding and retaining qualified staff.

One solution to this issue may point towards a new kind of data centre: the fully− or near-fully automated facility.

Thomas Harrer, CTO of IBM Technology EMEA’s Server and Storage division, is a big believer in automation’s ability to help data centre operators overcome challenges like these. “When data centres have the right datacentremagazine.com

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COLOCATION

The Lights-Out Data Centre A lights-out data centre is a fullyautomated facility that requires no onsite staff and little to no remote oversight.

The term was coined by a science fiction author (probably best-known for Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and The Man in the High Castle) Philip K. Dick. In his 1955 story, Autofac, Dick writes of automated factories, and machines making machines. The idea of a lights-out facility has grown more and more prominent - particularly in the manufacturing sector - over the past few decades and could soon make another leap, just as it did from science fiction to flashy prototype, to the accepted norm in the modern data centre.

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infrastructure, automation can really help them to thrive,” he enthuses. “At IBM we’ve found that, in a typical IT environment, AI based operations automation can reduce the response to events and incidents significantly in the data centre, for example from five hours to 15 minutes and from 10 persons involved to only one.”

Successfully integrating automation and AI into more and more aspects of a modern data centre “is not without its challenges,” Harrer adds. But, “once these challenges are overcome, businesses will start to reap the benefits from data centre automation,”

COLOCATION

“When data centres have the right infrastructure, automation can really help them to thrive” THOMAS HARRER

TECHNOLOGY EMEA, IBM

and one of the most important benefits could be keeping the lights on when, in many senses, nobody’s home.

Back in 2016, researchers at the University of Pisa (also featured in this month’s issue) predicted that a world which is saturated with hyperscale data centres would need to be a fully automated one − if operators expect to have any hope of managing the sheer number of issues that such large facilities generate on a daily basis. This, mind you, was released before the effects of the industry-wide skill shortage and

the rapid acceleration of global digital transformations due to COVID-19 were even a blip on the radar.

Today, the idea of a lights-out data centre is getting more common, but the phenomenon is mostly constrained to smaller edge facilities. Using a combination of software to automate the digital aspects of a facility and robots (like the repurposed Roombas that IBM started using back in 2013 to monitor temperature in its racks) may paint an accurate picture of data centre design and operation by the start of the next decade. datacentremagazine.com

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PORTACOOL

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TOMORROW’S

INNOVATION

ROOTED IN

HISTORY WRITTEN BY: MELISSA KHAN

PRODUCED BY: GLEN WHITE

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President and CEO, Ben Wulf, on leading America’s biggest evaporative cooling manufacturers with Portacool’s John Andersen deep-diving on the KUUL effect

S

peaking to the President and CEO of a large organization usually follows the same routine – how they were appointed, what changes have they implemented and what their vision for the organization is. However, Ben Wulf has a slightly different approach.

Having served Portacool for over 20 years, Wulf’s rise to the top wasn’t random at all. Ben started out packing boxes for Portacool at its fulfillment facility well before he entered the office of the organization’s executive management.

Portacool is based out of Center, a facility nestled among pine trees just 17 miles from Louisiana, on the eastern border of Texas.

Portacool was founded 30 years ago, and to this day, remains at the very same location in the same town, with no plans of moving anytime soon. Much like its location, Portacool is, at its very core, intrinsically Texan. The same can be said about Wulf, who is as proudly Texan as they come. Speaking about his leadership style, he stresses that he sees himself as an executive less and as a leader more. “I like to consider myself less the president, more a leader. A servant leader at that, and one that really looks to empower his team so that they can do more with the tools and resources that we provide them in order to do their job successfully,” he adds. A lesson he learned very early in his management days was to listen carefully to his team and approach every task with an open mind. And this spirit of learning

Portacool Factory

PORTACOOL

1990

Year founded

EVAPORATIVE COOLING MEDIA Industry

425

Number of employees

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BEN WULF TITLE: PRESIDENT AND CEO INDUSTRY: EVAPORATIVE COOLING MEDIA LOCATION: USA Ben Wulf is the President and CEO of Portacool, America’s leading portable evaporative cooling company.

He has been with Portacool for over 20 years serving in various roles and departments. This vast knowledge of the organization has led to the current dynamic leadership role and propels the servant leadership style that is wellknown by all employees. As part of this role, he works diligently to promote a positive culture within the organization.

Ben is passionate about giving back to the community, being part of a family, and setting a positive example for future team members, students, and his hometown.

“ I LIKE TO CONSIDER MYSELF LESS THE PRESIDENT, MORE A LEADER. A SERVANT LEADER AT THAT” BEN WULF

PRESIDENT AND CEO, PORTACOOL

EXECUTIVE BIO

has seeped through every department under Wulf, who now heads a workforce in excess of 400 team members.

Wulf holds on to Portacool’s culture firmly as he explains the values upon which the organization thrives. Right at the top is taking care of the team, their safety and their wellbeing. This goes beyond just physical support, providing a holistic environment of care for the staff and their families. Portacool is big on giving back to the community, the town of Center, and has made great strides across various CSR opportunities in the town and state. Portacool looks after the first responders

What is Evaporative Cooling?

of the state, from the police to the fire department and has even built the Portacool park as a way of paying it forward to their home ground. Wulf adds, “This was a major contribution that we made to the city and it’s just been a great resource for the community to use. We use it on a regular basis, but really, really proud to be able to call it Portacool Park and see how much it's getting utilized on a daily basis.”

Company culture aside, Portacool’s business strategy is also one of giving. For instance, their Kuul evaporative media was a technology that was built from need, and not the other way around. Historically, manufacturers had to make do with existing technology, in this case, media to use in their cooling machines, and this led to countless hurdles like shortage of supply and a lag in innovation, to name a few. With Kuul, Portacool was able to create

technology that worked for their systems and adapt based on the need. “When we think of strategy, we think of it through the lens of our customers; their strategy has to be married to our strategy and vice versa. So when we look at Kuul as the technology behind the data centres and markets that are looking for more energy-efficient and sustainable cooling solutions, that is really what drives our progress and innovative spirit at Portacool.” So what is it? Kuul evaporative cooling media is a type of rigid evaporative media designed to produce significant temperature drops that are efficient and sustainable. When speaking of data centres, Kuul FirePro™ is produced with the highest quality virgin materials according to a unique design and production technique, making it the strongest and toughest media designed for the arduous conditions of the data centre environment. This ensures the media datacentremagazine.com

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“ ONE OF KUUL’S GREATEST ADVANTAGES IS THE DESIGN TOOLS THAT WE’VE ENGINEERED. WE HAVE SIMULATION SOFTWARE ON THE COOLING CAPACITY AS WELL AS THE APPLICATION” evaporative media technology is made JOHN ANDERSEN

DIRECTOR OF BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT, KUUL

lasts much longer than the competitors’, equating positive ROI. John Andersen, Director of Business Development for Kuul Media, explains further what the Kuul Effect entails. He says, “Kuul is evaporative media technology, where a structured media evaporates water molecules into the air stream. In order to evaporate water, energy is required, and because energy can neither be created nor destroyed, the air eliminates that energy and replaces it with water molecules. So what we really have is a clean solution in our hands, and we call that the Kuul Effect.”

For data centres especially, Kuul’s technology can be measured by its Power Usage Efficiency, or PUE. As Kuul’s

from flame retardant, inorganic materials, it possesses superior water absorption properties and saturation efficiency, making it ideally suited to provide the enhanced cooling performance required in a data centre environment. Other factors like low pressure drop, strong chemical resistance, longevity and mechanical strength of the media make it an ideal choice for data centre environments.

Speaking about Kuul’s value proposition beyond its use in data centres, Andersen believes that as innovators, they are tasked with guiding, mentoring and educating clients and partners as an extension of Kuul’s technical support offering. He adds “One of Kuul’s greatest advantages is the design tools that we’ve engineered. We have simulation software on the cooling capacity as well as the application, the water quality with regards to what is acceptable and so forth and that guides our end users in understanding the overall efficiency of their application.”

Why Kuul Evolution performance makes a difference: Provides the cooling performance when you need it most, reliably, ensuring higher average air mass-flow through the AHU fans.

• Higher sustainability due to higher net efficiency of the cooling system resulting from lower temperature air at a higher airflow rate, with less energy consumption.

• Much lower air-pressure drop through the media allows for greater ventilation rates with less power consumed by the AHU delivery fans. This makes for lower PUE.

• The strongest media in the industry. Lasting much longer than other brands and allowing more years of service before the need for replacement.

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JOHN ANDERSEN TITLE: DIRECTOR OF BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT INDUSTRY: EVAPORATIVE COOLING MEDIA LOCATION: SOUTH AFRICA

Kuul is just one of many examples of Portacool’s service strategy, and as thought leaders they’ve gone beyond their own systems to provide the necessary innovation and tools for other organizations to benefit from this technology. When asked about Kuul’s competitive advantage, Andersen says “Kuul’s competitive advantage is definitely not just the product but the fact that we’re able to customize products for our customers' needs, which are unique. The Kuul Effect is first-class customer service that includes backup service

EXECUTIVE BIO

John Andersen is the Director of Business Development for Kuul, a division of Portacool. He is a mechanical engineer with distinctions in fluid mechanics and refrigeration. He has an extensive global background in the HVACR industry. His past roles include General Manager, Division Manager, Managing Director, and Director in South Africa, Australia, Sweden, and Italy. John is a member of ASHRAE and SAIRAC. He has served on the IEC committee for the small and domestic refrigeration industry in South Africa. Using his globally diverse roles, he is the spokesperson for Kuul and focuses on strategic development of evaporative media technologies.

PORTACOOL

Kuul Evolution FirePro evaporative media overview

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PORTACOOL

“KUUL’S COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE IS DEFINITELY NOT JUST THE PRODUCT BUT THE FACT THAT WE’RE ABLE TO CUSTOMISE PRODUCTS FOR OUR CUSTOMERS' NEEDS, WHICH ARE UNIQUE” JOHN ANDERSEN

DIRECTOR OF BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT, KUUL

support, engineering time with clients on site or in their facilities, and time with the end user to help them understand the technology.”

Kuul is now the cooling method of choice for a number of manufacturers, making Portacool the trusted leader in cooling technology for years to come. As part of Kuul’s long-term vision, Andersen stresses that one of the top priorities is sustainability, as energy supply is depleting and it is no longer wise to depend on fossil fuel or non-renewable sources. This has led to Kuul continually innovating to build technology that is energy efficient, consumes less water and provides the most cooling possible for the longest period of time.

Kuul FirePro™ — the most economic choice for data centres with the total lowest cost of ownership Kuul FirePro™ has been designed for the data centre industry to ensure it checks all the right boxes for the lowest cost of ownership over an extended period.

• FirePro™ is designed to answer the increasing pressure surrounding power and water availability.

• Higher AHU cooling output with the lowest energy footprint.

• Higher chemical resistance and compressive strength allows FirePro™ to be able to utilize less water for improved WUE. FirePro tolerates the mass of scale due to its high strength in higher scaling water environments.

• Lower PUE makes Kuul Evolution FirePro™ the sustainable choice.

• Media can last twice as long as competitors over many years.

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PORTACOOL

Ben Wulf and John Andersen from Portacool talk about their Kuul evaporative technology

“THIS WAS A MAJOR CONTRIBUTION THAT WE MADE THE CITY AND IT’S JUST BEEN A GREAT RESOURCE FOR THE COMMUNITY TO USE” BEN WULF

PRESIDENT AND CEO, PORTACOOL

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PORTACOOL

COVID-19 had a severe impact on Portacool, which like every other organization, was not insulated from the effects of the pandemic. However, Wulf continued to lead his team with a tremendous amount of calm, courage and empathy. He says that these steps really helped Portacool see itself through some very dark days, even as a community. As the old adage goes, adversity leads to opportunity, and Wulf saw this as the perfect time to really

amp up customer service. “We understand the needs of our customers and our community and that's why we really emphasize empathy and how we took that just beyond our four walls and conveyed it to our customers. And I think it's through that that we've been able to really navigate through a treacherous time.”

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CABLING

SUSTAINABILITY, SITE SELECTION, AND HPC UNDER THE SEA Subsea cabling could be the key to unlocking sustainable, low-latency HPC and cloud capabilities to accelerate digital transformations WRITTEN BY: HARRY MENEAR

T

he tide of data being generated, processed, transferred and stored around the world on a daily basis is rising. Increasingly, enterprises are seeking out the lowest possible latencies between different regions, as the flow of data from market to market becomes more and more essential to successfully operating in the modern, digitalised world.

“Data latency is critical, and the closer you are to the sea cable landing, the closer you are to the other end of the cable where your users live,” explains Mattias Fridström, Vice President & Chief Evangelist at Telia Carrier, one of Sweden’s leading mobile network operators (MNOs). More and more, reducing the time it takes to move huge datasets from one place to another is becoming a mission-critical priority, which is prompting data centre operators and enterprises to re-evaluate practices

like site selection, and to redouble their investments into cabling projects.

“Where there is direct connectivity, latency is at its lowest, and digital performance at its greatest,” says Tate Cantrell, Chief Technology Officer at Verne Global, a leading data centre operator based in the UK that focuses on high performance computing (HPC) infrastructure. “Telecommunications

“ Where there is direct connectivity, latency is at its lowest, and digital performance at its greatest” TATE CANTRELL CTO, VERNE GLOBAL

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companies, governments and data centre operators are united in their common goal to provide direct connections between countries that allow easy and affordable colocation.”

At the same time, the demand for higher performance and lower latency is bumping up against the universally recognised need for more sustainable practice throughout the data centre industry. Verne Global may be headquartered in London, but it builds the majority of its data centres in Iceland, where Cantrell explains that ready access to 100% renewable energy mixes make traditionally power-hungry HPC workloads a far greener proposition.

In fact, freezing temperatures, hydroelectric power infrastructure, and strong government support for green energy generation all conspire to make countries like Iceland, Sweden, and Norway attractive places for enterprises throughout Europe (and even beyond) to house their HPC and cloud compute workloads. However, putting your data centre workload just a few miles south of the Arctic Circle has its drawbacks,

namely the sheer distance between you and your data. Achieving sustainable site selection while meeting increasing demand for lower and lower latencies may seem like a contradictory set of goals.

The answer? Subsea cables capable of moving massive amounts of information across vast expanses of open ocean in the blink of an eye. Cantrell and Fridström are both in agreement that, if power-intensive workloads are to be made sustainable, then strategic subsea cabling infrastructure is the key to delivering on that goal.

Iceland: the future of home of HPC Iceland - like many other island nations around the world - relies on subsea cabling datacentremagazine.com

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Verne Global Data Center Fly-Through Tour

to connect it to the outside world. Until very digital connectivity, but more importantly recently, three such cables (about the “width perhaps, “enterprises can look to cash in on of a garden hose”, according to Verne Global the environmental and economic benefits CEO, Dominic Ward) were the country’s only of housing their compute workloads in an Icelandic data centre.” significant links to the rest of Iceland, as we mentioned the digital world. The FARICE-1 “The closer you before, offers attractive cable joins Iceland to the UK; are to the sea amounts of renewable power the DANICE connects Iceland cable landing the and the kinds of average to Denmark and then on to the closer you are annual temperatures that rest of mainland Europe; and to where your reduce the need for that the Greenland Connect joins power considerably. Cantrell Iceland with, unsurprisingly, users live” explains that this will be Greenland, subsequently a key enabler of delivering linking it to Canada and the MATTIAS FRIDSTRÖM HPC to more companies in US. Now, however, a third VP & CHIEF EVANGELIST, TELIA CARRIER a sustainable way. “Investment connection to Europe is being in HPC is being seen as crucial built - “a connection between across regions and industries, and crossIceland and the west coast of Ireland named IRIS,” explains Cantrell. He adds that, not region coordination and capacity sharing is integral to these investments paying off. New only will the IRIS cable create additional cables, such as IRIS, support wider growth redundancies that safeguard Iceland’s 66

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in cloud computing and facilitate the age of digital innovation where more industries – such as healthcare and enterprise as well as scientific research – are able to access the extensive benefits of HPC,” he says.

“The high costs previously connected to the technology needed to capture, store and analyse vast amounts of data used to be barriers to such industries, but the IRIS cable will be the third connection between Europe and Iceland meaning it will diversify Iceland’s telecommunications and increase Iceland’s accessibility as a home for high density compute.” With sufficient amounts of available subsea cable, the costs of HPC will fall as capacity rises, and data centre operators like Verne Global will be there to cater to demand.

Fridström adds that, with new available markets opening up for HPC comes “More diversity and with that more competition, which will always benefit Enterprise customers that use HPC solutions within their production or testing environment.”

Regarding the IRIS cable, he continues: “As both Iceland and Ireland offer quite good terms for hosting these HPC servers, a good connection between these two countries will make an interesting set up… diversity with high availability is key or HPC solutions.”

1.3mn

kilometres of active subsea cable in the world

SEA-ME-WE 3 the world's longest submarine cable

34,000km SEA-ME-WE 3 length

Verne Global HQ

Verne Global: HPC at the top of the world Located on the outskirts of Keflavik, Verne Global’s Icelandic campus is a highly secure, highly sustainable, 60,000 square metre hub of advanced HPC infrastructure. The campus is unique globally in providing HPC Cloud and two forms of HPC Colocation – enterprise ready and ultra high density - all from the same facility.

The campus receives all of its power from Iceland’s 100% renewable mix of hydroelectric and geothermal electricity, delivered through a grid ranked second in the world by the World Economic Forum for its reliability.

NETWORKING

Redrawing the Map Proximity to submarine cable landings already has a noticeable impact on where data centres are built. “Quite a large number of new data centres have been established very close to where larger sea cables are landing,” explains Fridström. “Marseille is a perfect example of a city that really has the vast majority of its data centres due to the many sea cables landing there.” He adds that the western coast of Denmark is undergoing a similar process, thanks to recently established submarine cable landings that lead to the US, UK and Norway.

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needs to find ways to mitigate its carbon impact, cables like IRIS - which lead from digital hubs in central and western Europe to isolated but highly sustainable markets like Iceland - are set to redefine site selection on a global scale, as HPC becomes an increasingly mission critical resource for a growing number of organisations.

Cantrell provides an example. “The UK’s Earlham Institute (EI) is another example of how broadened connectivity is furthering scientific progress and sustainability at the same time,” he says, explaining that the EI is one of the world’s leading institutions for life science research, which involves a great deal of DNA sequencing. “High-throughput DNA

NETWORKING

“ By moving compute to Iceland, Earlham Institute saves up to 70% in energy costs and significantly reduces its carbon footprint” TATE CANTRELL CTO, VERNE GLOBAL

sequencing instruments process hundreds of millions of DNA molecules at a time, and generate vast amounts of data, from a few hundred gigabytes to several terabytes per run,” Cantrell continues.

“EI was able to relocate its high intensity compute to Verne Global’s Icelandic data centre campus, which is powered by 100% renewable geothermal and hydroelectric sources, with a year-round temperate climate that allows natural ambient air cooling. By moving its compute to Iceland, EI saves up to 70% in energy costs and significantly reduces its carbon footprint.”

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“ Quite a large number of new data centres have been established very close to where larger sea cables are landing” MATTIAS FRIDSTRÖM

VP & CHIEF EVANGELIST, TELIA CARRIER

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one of the factors driving the need for increased HPC infrastructure. AI models continue to proliferate in both size and number, with applications from scientific research to retail. Chinese researchers from Tsinghua University and Alibaba are training a 10bn parameter multi-modal model using NVIDIA's Megatron-LM training code, and Google recently trained a 1.6trnparameter AI language model. Cantrell warns that, “Even though significant strides have been made towards more energysparing algorithms and models, all signs point to increasingly complex models and progressively sophisticated AI. This inevitably means a continued reliance on high intensity compute and, in turn, energy consumption.”

While data centres are getting more efficient all the time, the sheer amount of power required to support HPC workloads like these means that efficiency alone isn’t enough; ultra-efficient designs need to be paired with site selections that give access to renewable power and the kinds of low ambient temperatures that further reduce electricity demand for cooling. “No matter how efficient AI systems – and the data centres that house them – are, HPC and machine learning applications located in facilities powered by fossil fuels will always carry a carbon cost,” says Cantrell. “More and more, enterprises are looking for ways to mitigate the Scope 3 emissions generated by their externally hosted high intensity compute, and consequently, seek enhanced connectivity and more choice when it comes to location. New subsea cables like the IRIS system will be in greater demand, as they facilitate access to data centres powered by renewable energy – enabling organisations all around the world to process and store their data sustainably.”

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EXPERTISE ACROSS THE DATA CENTRE LIFE CYCLE WRITTEN BY: WILLIAM SMITH

PRODUCED BY: LEWIS VAUGHAN

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Mercury’s Alan Clinton, Operations Director, Data Centres and Building Services, on the company’s data centre offering and its COVID-19 response

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lan Clinton is the Operations Director for Data Centres and Building Services at construction firm Mercury, a company he first joined in 2007. He now leads a fast growing department providing for the ongoing data centre construction boom. “I lead the delivery of data centre and building services projects across Europe,” says Clinton. “That covers every aspect of our day-to-day operations, including people management, supply-chain management, client relationship management and more.”

Having been founded in 1972, Mercury has developed a reputation as an experienced hand, and that’s no different for its offering in the mission critical sector. “Mercury is one of Europe’s most experienced hyperscale and enterprise data centre service providers,” says Clinton. “We provide highly complex engineering services to our clients, with very high levels of safety, quality, 74

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Experts in electrical compliance, inspection, testing, documentation, commissioning and safety throughout Europe With unrivalled expertise in the field of electrical inspection and testing, our team has a collective wealth of technical and practical experience. We believe we are the market leader, operating pragmatic and initiative systems which set us apart from competitors.

Superior compliance in construction Group Management’s Steve Cressey on a uniquely collaborative partnership with Mercury Engineering and almost 15 years of compliant construction projects Group Management Electrical Surveys is a long-standing and vital partner to Mercury Engineering. The company offers an innovative suite of electrical inspection, test and documentation services to ensure compliance in complex major construction projects for many of the UK and EU’s leading companies.

No project can achieve handover without the correct documentation and safety critical electrical certification in place,” says Managing Director Steve Cressey. “Our services ensure that project critical documentation and certification can be correctly produced in an efficient, cost effective manner, which makes Group Management an important part of any construction project.”

Cressey joined the business in 2009, bringing strong and incisive leadership to Group Management, with decades of industry experience giving him a unique understanding of the design through to handover construction process. He has stewarded the business’ partnership with Mercury since its inception and describes it as uniquely collaborative.

“The partnership is longstanding, and we’ve built an incredibly strong working relationship,” Cressey says. “Partnering with Mercury, who are an innovative, cutting-edge technology

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provider, means we must constantly improve our services offering. We strive to be the best in what we do, and Mercury can trust we will be efficient in delivering on time, on budget, to achieve a successful handover that meets both Mercury’s and the end clients’ future needs.”

Group Management has since completed more than 30 Data Centre projects throughout the EU as Mercury’s preferred electrical compliance partner, as well as pharmaceutical projects, and new hospitals in the UK & Ireland.

“To ensure the continued success and growth of Group Management we always discuss projects with key clients and their teams, take feedback on the performance of both our business and our individuals, and in turn use that to improve our services,” Cressey says. “We now offer four more services to Mercury than when the partnership began, which has helped spur Group Management’s growth and success within the wider market.”

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MERCURY

innovation and value engineering.”

Mercury’s expertise covers the full data centre life cycle. “We look after every stage of the project, from design & build, planning and construction right through to commissioning, ongoing facilities management and ICT services.”

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has become apparent. It's with this in mind that Mercury has set concrete goals for its sustainability efforts. “At Mercury, we believe that it’s everyone’s duty to play their part to improve the quality of life on our planet,” says Clinton. “This year, we launched ‘Our Planet, Our Duty’, a 50-page document which sets out our sustainability plan. One of the

MERCURY

ALAN CLINTON TITLE: OPERATIONS DIRECTOR, DATA CENTRES AND BUILDING SERVICES COMPANY: MERCURY INDUSTRY: CONSTRUCTION

most important goals we have set is to reduce our Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emission intensity by 50% by 2030.”

As with all companies globally, Mercury has not been unaffected by COVID-19, but it has been successful in minimising disruption to clients. “We’ve been very fortunate in that we’ve been able to continue to work very successfully during

EXECUTIVE BIO

Alan is the Operations Director for Mercury’s Data Centres & Building Services business unit, which delivers projects across Ireland, the UK & Europe. Alan has overall responsibility for the business unit and the most important aspect of this to ensure we exceed our clients’ expectations. This is achieved through leadership ensuring success. Alan has been working in the construction industry for over 24 years with experience in sectors such as Data Centres, Healthcare, Retail, Office & Commercial, Manufacturing and Residential and has spent the last 12 years mainly focused on the data centre industry.

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MERCURY

“ At Mercury, we believe that it’s everyone’s duty to play their part to improve the quality of life on our planet”

the COVID-19 pandemic, with very little impact to our clients,” says Clinton. “Our main success has been without a doubt down to the efforts of our teams. The impact of COVID-19 on the ability of staff to travel has of course been a challenge, but because we have invested so much in technology and our digital transformation over the last several years, we have largely

ALAN CLINTON

OPERATIONS DIRECTOR, DATA CENTRES AND BUILDING SERVICES MERCURY

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EXPERTS IN OUR FIELD We understand the importance of delivering projects to a high standard, on time and on budget.

Our outstanding expertise and commendable 18 year track record set PMI apart from our market competitors.

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been able to continue without major impacts to our business.” The company’s digital capabilities have also been crucial, as Clinton explains: “We have been able to conduct quality audits, factory acceptance tests and more virtually. Our use of BIM, Virtual Realty, Mixed Realty and more have been of huge benefit to us. Our flexible supply chain and multinational staff have also helped us to continue working across all of our different geographic locations.”

DID YOU KNOW...

ROBUST GLOBAL SUPPLY-CHAIN Being ready for that and other unprecedented events which have in recent times rocked the sector requires a strong partner network.

“Having a robust global supply-chain is very important to us. We have supply-chain partners specialising in every aspect of our business strategically located across the globe.

Particularly with concerns such as the COVID-19 pandemic and Brexit, it’s important that we are able to deliver to anywhere, from anywhere.”

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Supporting data centre construction throughout Europe

Tel

+44 01375 892464

Web

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Email jim.mccarthy@manchett.com

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MERCURY

“ Whether it’s with our colleagues on site, our clients, our supply-chain partners or other Mercury staff across the globe, we all can learn from each other and benefit” ALAN CLINTON

OPERATIONS DIRECTOR, DATA CENTRES AND BUILDING SERVICES MERCURY

Clinton credits the company’s culture as having been critical to its response to the pandemic. “Collaboration and communication are some of the most important things to us at Mercury.

Whether it’s with our colleagues on site, our clients, our supply-chain partners or other Mercury staff across the globe, we all can learn from each other and benefit. During this pandemic it was even more important for us to make sure we're communicating with everybody – particularly our staff to ensure their mental health and wellbeing.” It’s thanks to that mindset that the business has been able to weather the storm and be stronger for it. “Obviously it was a challenging year, and circumstances continue to be

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challenging. But our clients and our supply chain and our team have all combined to help us to continue our business with very little impact. We really have great people working in this industry to keep things going in the ways they have.”

The pandemic has, however, had the effect of accelerating pre-existing trends going forwards. “A major trend now that Mercury is looking more and more at is the delivery of data centres using modern methods of construction such as offsite manufacturing,” says Clinton. “There are major benefits to the client for delivering

“ A major trend now that Mercury is looking more and more at is the delivery of data centres using modern methods of construction such as offsite manufacturing” ALAN CLINTON

OPERATIONS DIRECTOR, DATA CENTRES AND BUILDING SERVICES MERCURY datacentremagazine.com

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1972

Year Founded

2,600+

Number of Employees.

€1bn Revenue

MERCURY

“We are continuing to refine our service offering, playing to our strengths, while putting our clients’ changing needs at the heart of our innovation in how we deliver” ALAN CLINTON

OPERATIONS DIRECTOR, DATA CENTRES AND BUILDING SERVICES MERCURY

project elements offsite, such as cost and programme certainty, higher levels of safety, quality, efficiency, and reduced impact to the environment. Our focus on digital transformation over the last number of years is enabling us to deliver more this way – and obviously benefiting our clients.”

The company now stands ready to thrive as it heads into the future. “Last year, Mercury released our latest strategy, Beyond50, a five year plan that aims to take our company beyond its 50th anniversary next year. We are continuing to refine our service offering, playing to our strengths, while putting our clients’ changing needs at the heart of our innovation in how we deliver,” says Clinton.

That strategy is as comprehensive and holistic as the company’s ambition. “Our strategy covers everything from further strategically developing our service and market offering to continuously ensuring that we remain leaders in safety, people, digital transformation, the use of offsite manufacturing, quality, corporate social responsibility and sustainability, while continuing to develop our winning culture.”

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SOFTWARE

MAN OR MACHINE? Cyber security in the new normal As the cyber threat posed to data centres continues to rise, operators may need to readdress where they put their trust

WRITTEN BY: HARRY MENEAR

T

he COVID-19 crisis, which prompted millions - if not billions - of people to participate in a worldwide experiment with remote work, has radically accelerated a process which, in many senses, was already well under way. Looking at the growth in remote work over the decades preceding COVID-19, and where we are now, we can conservatively estimate that the rapid shift to working from home pushed the job market forward by between 10 to 20 years almost overnight. While that’s definitely an oversimplification of a very nuanced issue, the point remains: things have changed, probably forever, and progress has been made very, very fast.

The issue with things changing so quickly in a nuanced, interconnected environment, is that something that has a big impact on one area of the business landscape sends

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71%

of security professionals saw security threats increase due to COVID-19

600%

increase in phishing attacks during the pandemic

“ We have seen a surge in social engineering attacks focusing on the children of target individuals” PHIL SAYER BCN GROUP

equally disruptive ripples across the surface of entire industries. Just look at data centre security, for example.

Unprecedented Disruption “The data centre industry post-pandemic is certainly facing a few tough challenges,” says Ashley Buckland, a Managing Director at JB Associates. Buckland adds that, “with the new norm for many business sectors to work from home, we can expect to see an immediate strong demand to supply increased capacity,” which he foresees having several knock-on effects, from the rising cost of materials to an impending skill shortage and growing pressure to embrace more sustainable practice.

$8.19mn

average cost of a data breach to a US company

36bn

number of records exposed by data breaches in the first half of 2020

However, there’s another area of the industry that’s been just as significantly disrupted by the pandemic (and the resultant shift to remote work): security.

The combination of higher demand, growth in the remote workforce, a massive proliferation in the number of devices belonging to the Internet of Things (IoT) connected to private networks, and the ever-increasing dollar-value of sensitive data means that cyber security in the data centre industry is facing more challenges than ever before.

Phil Sayer, a Senior Project Engineer at BCN Group, has witnessed the spike in cyber threat as a resume of mass remote work first hand over the past year. “During the height of the pandemic, criminals changed their approach to increase the use of phishing attacks due to the shift from office working to datacentremagazine.com

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SOFTWARE

Blanaco, Beyond Point of Sale: How New Technology Expands Insurance Opportunities

remote working. This meant staff members could no longer quickly check or validate the legitimacy of an email, which in turn opened up a new area of vulnerability for [attackers] to exploit,” he explains, adding that, with people working from home, where they would often be surrounded by family and children in particular, “we have seen a surge in social engineering attacks focusing on the children of target individuals. For example, attackers are sending messages to children where they offer to buy them certain items in games such as Fortnite in exchange for running a file on a parent’s computer.”

It’s a level of vulnerability that the data centre industry (and pretty much any other industry where enterprises host their information in the cloud) certainly hasn’t been 100% prepared to meet and, 94

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as a result, the breaches and successful cyber espionage campaigns have kept on coming.

“While the firewall actively mitigates threats, it is not immune to successful attacks from bad actors, and once hackers have navigated that protection layer, they can access sensitive corporate and customer data,” says Fredrik Forslund, VP of Cloud and Data Centre Erasure Solutions at Blancco. “Data privacy is a mega trend and high-profile data breaches have become a far too common occurrence.”

In the scramble to meet this newly evolved threat landscape, cyber security teams are leveraging new, more powerful tools - particularly those that leverage artificial intelligence (AI) - in order to neutralise more threats from more sources and manage an ever-expanding

SOFTWARE

amount of data.

Man or machine?

In a recent report, Derek Manky, FortiGuard Lab’s Chief of Security Insights and Global Threat Alliances at FortiNet, highlighted the threats facing the data centre industry and the role he expects AI to have in identifying, containing and neutralising them. “2020 demonstrated the ability of cyber adversaries to leverage dramatic changes happening in our daily lives as new opportunities for attacks at an unprecedented scale,” he says. According to William Dixon, Head of Future Networks and Technology at the World Economic Forum, and Nicole Eagan, CEO at Darktrace, “The battleground of the future is digital, and AI is the undisputed weapon of choice,” both in the hands of cyber security professionals and the bad actors they seek to defeat.

While AI and machine learning are often hailed (by machine learning cyber security companies) as a silver bullet for handingly more and increasingly complex cyber risk, Sayer remains unconvinced. “Machine learning can leverage experience from all users of a particular system stack and/ or software to compare known outcomes in all observed contexts, which can help

“ Data privacy is a mega trend and highprofile data breaches have become a far too common occurrence” FREDRIK FORSLUND VP ENTERPRISE & CLOUD ERASURE SOLUTIONS,

The remote work revolution In a whitepaper titled The Future of Remote Work released last year, Upwork’s chief economist, Adam Ozimek, revealed some of his findings as the worldwide “unexpected and massive trial run” of a remote economy was rapidly thrown into high gear. He noted that, while remote work was undeniably on the rise during the two decades preceding the COVID-19 pandemic, remote workers still “comprised a relatively modest share of the labor force.” Only 2.3% of 1,500 hiring managers surveyed in Ozimek’s report were overseeing a wholly-remote workforce, and only about 13% of the total workforce was fully remote. Just a few months later, the pandemic raised that figure to around 50%. On the whole - as I’m sure many of us can attest the worldwide experience with remote work has been a relatively positive one.

Survey respondents told Ozimek that “the greatest perceived benefits of remote work include a lack of commute, fewer unnecessary meetings, and reduced distractions at the office,” and “as a result of their experiences during COVID-19, 61.9% of hiring managers say their workforce will be more remote going forward.”

BLANCCO

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data centre operators better manage their facilities,” he admits, pointing out examples of pattern recognition like “Every time we see pattern X of errors in a system like this, we soon see failure Y” or “Whenever we have periods of X type weather, we see Y changes in consumption patterns.” This technology certainly has value, but Sayer is quick to articulate that, “there is an argument for humans being the most competent when it comes to managing and mitigating risk, and managing facilities safely and efficiently.”

As an example, he holds up government security services, an area where “Over the

“There is an argument for humans being the most competent when it comes to managing and mitigating risk” PHIL SAYER

BCN GROUP

past 20 years, intelligence agencies have collected staggering amounts of data and applied the most advanced machine learning, facial recognition, voice analysis, gate analysis, etc to this data.” He adds that, “all this has done is drown them in false positive threats and hidden the real ones.”

The answer, Sayer posits, is to recognise the power of the human mind as a threat detection tool. He holds up airport security as another example, particularly the difference between terminal security in both the US and Canada post-9/11 and Israel at the same time.

“Israelis, unlike Canadians and Americans, don't take s--- from anybody. When the security agency in Israel (the ISA) started to tighten security and we had to wait in line datacentremagazine.com

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“ Fostering a culture of good cyber hygiene... is just as necessary in data centre security as a firewall” FREDRIK FORSLUND VP ENTERPRISE & CLOUD ERASURE SOLUTIONS, BLANCCO

for - not for hours - but 30 or 40 minutes, all hell broke loose here,” said Rafi Sela, the president of AR Challenges, back in a 2009 interview with The Toronto Star.

The solution, he went on to explain, was the “Israeli-fication” of airport security a system which used well-trained humans rather than flashy tech in order to create what Cathal Kelly, a reporter for the Star called at the the time “a system that protects life and limb without annoying you to death.”

Sayer, who definitely possesses a distaste 98

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for mincing his words almost as strong as Sela’s, adds: “nearly all modern airport security is useless theatre and, in fact, the most secure airport in the world is also the one with the least technical systems and the most human countermeasures.”

He isn’t the only one with a healthy distrust of high-tech silver bullets.

“Businesses can obsess over the software and security solutions they think they need to protect their organisation and its data all they want,” says Forslund. “But those

SOFTWARE

solutions are not a panacea for data security.

In fact, fostering a culture of good cyber hygiene through regular data sanitisation practices is just as necessary in data centre security as an organisation’s or cloud provider’s firewall.”

Forslund’s point is that, once the bad actors are past that firewall and inside a network, the damage is already done. He adds that, in an increasing number of cases, the capabilities of that shiny, machinelearning powered, AI-based security

software aren’t all that relevant to whether or not a network, and the data inside it, are compromised. “Quite often, what we see is that these data breaches aren’t solely the result of security software vulnerabilities, but rather instances where IT assets like drives and devices have been lost or stolen – including via an internal attack,” he says.

“When decommissioning equipment or a whole data centre, sanitising those assets should be top priority. Don’t let those redundant IT assets stockpile and become security risks.” datacentremagazine.com 99

NTT DOCOMO

NTT DOCOMO

UNLOCKING THE POTENTIAL OF

WRITTEN BY: HARRY MENEAR E PRODUCED BY: CRAIG KILLINGBACK

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Hisakazu Tsuboya and Zaif Siddiqi of NTT DOCOMO discuss the Japanese telecom’s ambitious plans for 5G in Japan and overseas

T

he impact that the global 5G rollout will have across every region, industry and vertical cannot be understated. 5G connectivity will deliver ultralow latency connectivity and a generational leap in capacity, which in turn is delivering transformational innovations to enterprises, governments and the end consumer.

In Japan, where the national 5G rollout is well underway, adoption is being driven by a joint effort stemming from the public and private sectors in order to meet the exacting standards of enterprise and individual customers. “5G is about delivering ultra-low latency and higher capacity than ever before.

It's also about creating meaningful change in the industry,” says Zaif Siddiqi, Executive Director and Global Head of NTT DOCOMO’s 5G & IoT Business Department.

NTT DOCOMO is positioning itself at the forefront of 5G innovation in Japan, and is currently in the process of taking the vital next step, when the kinds of proof of concept (POC) trials that demonstrated the potential of 5G give way to POCs demonstrating the technology’s commercial viability. “The POCs we have done in the past were about finding out how to launch 5G. The POCs we are doing now are finding out how to commercialise the technology in the enterprise sector, making 5G not only beneficial to our enterprise customers, but proving its potential as a tool to solve wider social issues as well,” Siddiqi elaborates.

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Hisakazu Tsuboya (right), Senior Vice President and General Manager (NTT DOCOMO’s 5G & IoT Business Department) Zaif Siddiqi (left), Executive Director and Global Head (NTT DOCOMO’s 5G & IoT Business Department)

NTT DOCOMO

Why 5G Matters

From the Mass Market to the Enterprise Hisakazu Tsuboya, Senior Vice President and General Manager of NTT DOCOMO’s 5G & IoT Business Department, notes that, while most of the development of the technology has so far been focused on the mass market sector, there is huge potential for 5G to have a transformative effect on the enterprise space. “5G is a very cutting edge technology. Currently, much of the focus has been on the mass market, delivering smartphone solutions to end customers, but we need to think about how best to expand in the enterprise market as well,” he says.

“5G has a very big impact on the progress of companies' digital transformation.”

The roles of both Tsuboya and Siddiqi share the similar goal, of exploring and expanding NTT DOCOMO’s reach within the enterprise 5G segment. However, while Tsuboya is focused on the domestic Japanese market - where NTT DOCOMO does the majority of its business - Siddiqi 104

June 2021

is responsible for the company’s overseas ambitions, an area where he explains there is immense potential to grow and better serve NTT DOCOMO’s customers. “So far, DOCOMO has really focused on the Japanese market. We do around $43bn worth of business annually as DOCOMO, and the whole NTT Group does around $100bn.

We're a significant revenue generator for the Group, but pretty much all of that money is earned in Japan, and largely in the consumer market,” Siddiqi explains. “We want to globalise our product portfolio and make it clear that our services are not only for Japan, but also for our customers overseas. This may take time but we will make it happen.”

Globalising the 5G Business During the COVID-19 crisis, Siddiqi explains that NTT DOCOMO has already made great strides towards expanding NTT DOCOMO’s operational scope overseas, demonstrating several ways in which 5G can not only help

NTT DOCOMO

businesses overcome the challenges of the pandemic, but fully embrace the potential of Industry 4.0. During the past year, when specialised labourers from Japan were unable to leave the country, NTT DOCOMO used 5G powered virtual reality (VR) headsets in order to support a partner in Thailand. “Using our AceReal for DOCOMO AR headsets, skilled waterproof roof painters from Japan who couldn't travel to Thailand to do a job were able to give instructions to unskilled workers on site in real-time over a 5G connection with utilisation of DOCOMO Open Innovation Cloud, an MEC platform that directly connects to NTT DOCOMO's secure and lowlatency network,” he explains.

Partnerships like this, Siddiqi continues, are key to NTT DOCOMO’s efforts to integrate 5G technologies into the modern enterprise. He explains: “When you're approaching digital transformation, there's more to it than just leveraging cutting edge technologies into new customer experiences.” Unless the needs of the customer, and the underlying market forces at play, can be truly understood, “5G doesn’t mean anything,” says Siddiqi, adding that in order to find the right contexts for deployment, “Selection of the right partners is extremely important to delivering on the potential value of 5G.”

HISAKAZU TSUBOYA

SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT AND GENERAL MANAGER, NTT DOCOMO, INC.

TITLE: SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT AND GENERAL MANAGER OF NTT DOCOMO’S 5G & IOT BUSINESS DEPARTMENT LOCATION: JAPAN Academic history Completed the master's course of the Graduate School of Engineering, the University of Tokyo in March 1992.

2003 Completed the MIT Sloan School Management of Technology (Master of Engineering Management)

EXECUTIVE BIO

“ We have 3,600 partners in Japan, who we are working with to develop new 5G solutions”

HISAKAZU TSUBOYA

Career • Apr. 1992 Joined Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) • July 1992 Joined NTT Mobile Communications Network, Inc. (The current NTT DOCOMO, INC.) Oct. 2005 Director, International Business Department (technical planning) and Director, Ubiquitous Services Department • July 2008 Director, Frontier Service Department • Feb. 2015 President of DOCOMO BIKE SHARE, Inc. • July 2017 General Manager, Chiba Branch, NTT DOCOMO, INC. • June 2019 General Manager of Solution Service Department • July 2020 Senior Vice President, General Manager of 5G & IoT Business Department

Reap revenue from 5G, IoT, Data and AI Substantial investment demands quick returns.

Often business can’t wait. Which is why CSPs are so focused on eMBB and FWA as ‘easy wins’ on 5G investment. Truth is, the real revenue generators are hidden in enterprise use cases.

From self-driving vehicles to wide-area drones.

From VR events to AR-enhanced workers.

That’s how entire verticals are transformed.

5G

“39%

of CSPs indicate new revenue generation as primary stimulus for network transformation. Better CX is next at 25%.”

Your 5G network is ready, but can you generate revenue from it?

Source: GSMA: The Mobile Economy Report 2020

Learn more on 5G >

IoT “5G expands CSPs’ TAM for IoT from 15.0% to 41.8 and for IoT connectivity from 2.4% to 4.0% of total IoT value ($1.1T by 2023) “$1.1T total worldwide IoT spending 2023. Only $100B will be for connectivity. ” IoT is a long-promised revenue opportunity for CSPs. Will 5G and smart cities really deliver on this promise?

Source: Oracle commissioned IDC Infobrief: IoT in the Enterprise: New Revenue Opportunities for CSPs.

Learn more on IoT >

Seeing data in new ways, discovering insights and unlocking endless possibilities As 5G, the latest network technology gets into full swing, the latest network technology, high-speed mobile broadband, ultra-low latency, and mass device connectivity will be realized, and it is expected that our lives will change drastically.

It is said that a safer, more secure and prosperous society can be realized by appropriately utilizing cloud technology as well as 5G. In order to realize these, the utilization of Multi-access Edge Computing, which is a cloud installed in a place close to the network core, has begun all over the world.

Oracle’s in-memory technology and Sharding technology that realizes distributed management contribute to the

NTT DOCOMO

realization of regional distributed data management and processing responsiveness in MEC. Various security features of Oracle Database protect your data with fine-grained security controls.

MEC, which is expected to be highly safe, can provide a more secure environment from the user’s point of view.

Oracle’s Converged Database strategy is evolving to support many data formats and various workloads with a single DBMS (Database Management System). As a data format, it supports JSON, Graph, Spatial, Text, XML, etc. in addition to the conventional relational, and handles workloads such as data analysis, IoT, streaming, blockchain in addition to transactions.

Since Oracle Database can handle many data formats and workloads with one technology, it is possible to aggregate the skills required of administrators and developers and perform application development, operation, and maintenance in a simple environment. It will be like. This makes it possible to obtain extremely high productivity in data utilization.

Oracle’s mission is to help people see data in new ways, discover insights, unlock endless possibilities. As network technology evolves, Oracle will continue to support the provision of an environment where data can be used in a highly productive manner.

Learn more (Japanese)

Learn more (English)

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NTT DOCOMO

“ We want to globalise our product and make it clear that our services are not just for Japan, but also for our customers overseas”

ZAIF SIDDIQI TITLE: EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR AND GLOBAL HEAD OF NTT DOCOMO’S 5G & IOT BUSINESS DEPARTMENT LOCATION: JAPAN

ZAIF SIDDIQI

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR AND GLOBAL HEAD, NTT DOCOMO, INC.

EXECUTIVE BIO

Siddiqi was assigned as an Executive Director of Corporate Sales & Marketing Division at NTT DOCOMO, INC. to develop and lead the global enterprise business. His responsibilities were extended in July 2018, where he was appointed to serve as a Board Member of NTT DOCOMO USA, China, Asia, Europe and Brazil to strategize the enterprise ICT business. In July 2020, he assumed the role of Global Head of 5G IoT to address the needs of enterprise clients.

Prior to the current assignment, his professional contributions were at Vodafone Global Enterprise, Microsoft and Verizon Business. Zaif Siddiqi earned his bachelor’s degree from International Islamic University, Malaysia, in the faculty of Economics and Management Sciences with a minor in Business Administration.

He speaks native Japanese, English and Urdu/Hindi and has over 44 years of living experience in Japan.

For example, NTT DOCOMO, together with EDGEMATRIX, launched a worldfirst edge AI platform for intelligent video analytics, enabling high resolution, high security, and real-time video using AI. Using the EDGEMATRIX platform, customers can select and purchase AI applications and download them to an edge AI box remotely. This is the best state-of-the-art solution deployed in Japanese market, and NTT DOCOMO, along with EDGEMATRIX, is working to offer it to overseas markets as well.

Another key partner for NTT DOCOMO is LANDLOG. The firm was founded in 2017 by multiple companies including NTT DOCOMO. LANDLOG aims to build an ecosystem through partnering not only with companies involved in the construction process but also with various stakeholders surrounding the construction industry.

LANDLOG provides an open platform

NTT DOCOMO

DOCOMO's global expansion

where various application providers can easily participate. The platform improves the productivity at the construction site by enabling the collection and processing of data obtained from all things related to construction production such as construction machinery, terrain, materials, and staff.

Contributing to Society 5.0 At home, NTT DOCOMO benefits from an established mass market customer base, a cutting edge 5G and 4G LTE network, and long-standing relationships with a diverse network of partners. “We have 3,600 partners in Japan, who we are working with to develop new 5G solutions,” says Tsuboya, adding that NTT DOCOMO has done numerous 5G trials in Japan - including one with Japan’s bullet train, the Shinkansen, and another with leading construction company, Komatsu. “We have a very close relationship datacentremagazine.com

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Edge AI Box and Platform

Edge AI Box

EDGEMATRIX Platform Edge view

Map view

A compact and robust device “Edge AI Box” applies AI to infer in real time videos from IP cameras and sends analysed data to the cloud, while the dedicated platform remotely manages the boxes and AI applications at many bases, notifies of any abnormality on site, and monitors edge AI video images with a browser.

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NTT DOCOMO

with Komatsu,” says Tsuboya, explaining that the 5G trial with the firm exploited the benefits of 5G in order to support the remote controlling of heavy machinery from a distance of up to 800 kilometers, a powerful solution to an increasingly common pain point in an industry where Tsuboya notes that “the market faces a severe shortage of skilled laborers. With LANDLOG, for example, NTT DOCOMO provides an open platform to create new values and solve issues related to the construction industry.”

Using 5G as the connective tissue between other transformative technologies is a key application for the technology.

Tsuboya explains that, “coupling technologies of AI, IoT, XR and cloud with the network will yield data that we never

“ 5G is about delivering ultra-low latency and higher capacity than ever before. It's also about creating meaningful change in the industry” ZAIF SIDDIQI

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR AND GLOBAL HEAD, NTT DOCOMO, INC. datacentremagazine.com

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NTT DOCOMO

expected before for new monetisation.” By unifying all the technologies that exist within 5G’s orbit, using a comprehensive 5G network, the possibilities start to become the stuff of science fiction.

“By leveraging our network and the technologies that are available throughout the NTT Group and our partners, we bring 5G together with backend infrastructure, AI engine, XR capabilities and cloud services,” Siddiqi explains. “It’s a very complex undertaking but, if we can unite all these technologies successfully, you have everything you need to create a smart city. For example, NTT DOCOMO is working with Oracle on backend database servers that are highly interoperable with 5G architecture. The backend infrastructure is vital to enable fast and flexible deployments of the 5G mobile network,” says Siddiqi.

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NTT DOCOMO

THE 5GEC: ENTERPRISE 5G IN SOUTHEAST ASIA In order to globalise its 5G business, Siddiqi explains that NTT DOCOMO is leveraging the considerable expertise of the NTT group as a whole and of its partners.

“NTT DOCOMO, and the Group as a whole, are working on memorandums of understanding with various governments and cities, which play a vital role in the promotion of new technologies,” explains Siddiqi.

Announced in February of this year, one of the key collaborative efforts between NTT DOCOMO, the rest of the NTT Group, and key partners from throughout the ICT industry, is the 5G Global Enterprise solution Consortium (5GEC). Siddiqi explains that, “The consortium’s mission is to provide overseas companies with professional consultation regarding 5G solutions, especially flexible and highly secure private 5G networks that function independently of public networks offered by local telecommunications operators by coordinating each member’s strength such as advantages in network technologies or sales and marketing networks.”

Between the consortium’s 13 member companies, Siddiqi adds that it possesses “strengths and assets in varied fields capable of implementing and providing a one-stop shop for provision of private 5G services, which can be extremely beneficial to enterprises that are considering upgrading their manufacturing facilities and executing their smart factory initiatives.”

The decision to target the Thai market initially makes sense for NTT DOCOMO, due to the long-standing relations between Thailand and Japan which, Siddiqi explains,

provides not only the potential governmental support for the project, but a broad customer base. “There are more than 5,000 Japanese enterprise customers that currently operate in Thailand, so the amount of manufacturing and processing infrastructure that's present in the market makes it very attractive,” he explains.

“Japan and Thailand have over 130 years of friendship, which means that companies from Japan and Thailand are very accustomed to working together, and the affinity between the Japanese and Thai governments definitely contributes to this state of affairs.”

The consortium’s target for the coming fiscal year is to launch several successful POCs with companies operating in Thailand. Then, once those are successful, Siddiqi expects those POCs to develop into opportunities for commercialisation. Once that has been achieved, he adds that “we want to develop out into other countries in the region, as well as other continents further down the line.”

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TIMELINE: NTT DOCOMO’S 5G ROLLOUT

1

2

3

2014-2019:

2019:

March 2020:

NTT DOCOMO carries out extensive and comprehensive 5G technology verification tests across Japan.

Experimental 5G services are launched, including trials of audience experience enhancement at international sports events such as the Rugby World Cup 2019.

NTT DOCOMO launches commercial NSA 5G services across Japan.

The open platform that transforms construction sites.

The open platform brings value and allows us to work closely with customers. By collaborative creation, we contribute to the productivity of the construction industry.

LEARN MORE

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NTT DOCOMO

4

5

6

7

September 2020:

2021:

March 2022:

March 2023:

NTT DOCOMO’s 5G network achieves max download speeds of 4.1 Gbps.

NTT DOCOMO launches standalone 5G services and begins the transition away from its NSA network.

NTT DOCOMO achieves 55% population coverage with its 5G services.

NTT DOCOMO achieves 70% population coverage.

Siddiqi gestures to the window behind him, through which the last rays of evening sunlight are being replaced by the neon and LED constellation of downtown Tokyo. Less than a quarter mile from his office, Tokyo Tower glows against the darkening sky. “The city behind me was built immediately after World War Two. The technology that was used to build it is 40 to 50 years old now,” he says. “What we have to do now is be ready for a new era of infrastructure. And that's where the NTT Group's technology becomes extremely important to solving the question of how a smart city in this new era operates.”

Backed by the Japanese Government, Society 5.0 is an initiative that focuses on the unification of digital and physical space, and 5G is the essential stepping stone between them. “Society 5.0 is about achieving a high degree of convergence between the physical world and cyberspace. The way to achieve that convergence is to use a 5G network in between the two,” Siddiqi explains.

“ Currently, much of the focus has been on the mass market, but we need to think about how best to expand 5G in the enterprise market as well” HISAKAZU TSUBOYA

SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT AND GENERAL MANAGER, NTT DOCOMO, INC.

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Siddiqi shows a 5G portable base station which is used for immediate 5G coverage at bespoke events

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“Selection of the right partners is extremely important to delivering on the potential value of 5G” ZAIF SIDDIQI

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR AND GLOBAL HEAD, NTT DOCOMO, INC.

Tsuboya adds that, “Innovation has its value when social issues are resolved, and new values are created. For example, with the help of universities and hospitals, DOCOMO is working to provide ultralow-latency connectivity to run mission critical telemedicine applications. We aim to allow patients that are unable to transport themselves to be served by mobile hospitals equipped with state-ofart equipment that will be connected to a 5G network that allows patients to be diagnosed in real-time by medical experts located remotely.”

In Society 5.0, vast amounts of information gathered by sensors in physical space is then accumulated in cyberspace. The data is then analysed by AI, and the results are fed back to humans in physical space in various forms, contrary to the past, when humans were the ones doing the analysis. In Society 5.0, people, things, and systems are all interconnected in cyberspace and optimal results obtained

by AI exceeding the capabilities of humans are fed back to physical space to support better decision making and understanding of our world. “This process brings new value to industry and society in ways not previously possible,” Hisakazu says.

The Road Ahead Both Tsuboya and Siddiqi have an exciting, challenging journey ahead of them. At home in Japan, NTT DOCOMO’s 5G rollout continues, and finding the ways in which the technology can solve enterprise problems, and advance digital transformations throughout the country, is key to making sure NTT DOCOMO plays a central role in creating Society 5.0. Overseas, they face the challenge of building something new, in markets where overall connectivity and development are less mature, and yet customers still expect flawless service. “The Japanese market is extremely demanding, and Japanese customers expect that same level of service to be provided overseas, which can be challenging,” says Siddiqi. Nevertheless, he is optimistic about NTT DOCOMO’s future as a globalised business. “We have set very ambitious targets for our solution business.

We are aiming to have the solution segment hit revenues of $1.2bn in 2021 and to grow still further over the next few years. To achieve those big numbers, we are going to need to work closely with our customers, help them understand the benefits of 5G and what the technology means for their industry.”

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THE CHANGING FACE OF REMOTE HPC Maurizio Davini, CTO at the University of Pisa, discusses the changing demands placed on the university’s IT infrastructure

WRITTEN BY: HARRY MENEAR

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ncreasingly, the data centre is serving as the backbone of high performance computing (HPC) efforts around the world, an area of the industry that has undergone radical changes over the past few years.

Now, the combined effects of increased AI adoption, and remote research driven by the COVID-19 pandemic, are rewriting the rulebook once again.

“When it comes to HPC, you experience waves of different types of demand,” explains Maurizio Davini, who has served as the Chief Technology Officer at the University of Pisa since 1998, back when the job came with the far humbler title of IT Manager. “Five years ago, everything we were seeing was CFD, CAE and automotive simulations. Then came chemistry, and now − during the pandemic − genomics has obviously exploded in terms of the number datacentremagazine.com

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of requests we get for our HPC resources.”

Just as the applications for HPC, and the types of workloads that are required to run those applications are always changing, so too is the infrastructure that is used to support it. “HPC requests are always changing, so we need to design a new kind of infrastructure. AI workloads and genomic analysis are, for example, completely different from CFD. We have to be flexible,” Davini adds.

From quantum chemistry to nanophysics and genome sequencing, researchers at the

“ The ability to pay-per-use for HPC resources in the cloud makes its strategic advantages affordable for almost any organisation” CHRISTOPHER HUGGINS TECH EXECUTIVE, DELL TECHNOLOGIES

Maurizio Davini TITLE: CTO EDUCATION SYSTEM: UNIVERSITY OF PISA Maurizio Davini has worked at the University of Pisa for almost 23 years.

He took over as the university’s IT Manager back in 1998 - before IT department heads were graced with illustrious titles like Chief Technology Officer.

He has spent the past three years overseeing a radical digital transformation and data centre consolidation initiative at the university, fundamentally redesigning the IT infrastructure across the University of Pisa’s campus.

Davini also served as a technical consultant for the Ferrari racing team between 2002 and 2010. datacentremagazine.com

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University of Pisa have come to increasingly rely on the university’s HPC resources to broaden the scope of human knowledge.

Over the past few years, the university’s data centre has also allowed scholars to branch out into newer fields, like big data analytics, data visualisation and machine learning. “This growing array of HPC demands is creating new challenges for the University of Pisa’s IT Centre”, notes a case study by Intel, which provides software stack management tools to Davino and his department in order to better orchestrate an increasingly complex array of tasks.

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“ We like to think of the university network as a whiteboard. We can do almost whatever we want with regards to speed, latency and so on…”

MAURIZIO DAVINI CTO, UNIVERSITY OF PISA

University of Pisa Simplifies HPC with Intel and Dell

From the Ground Up: The Whiteboard Approach The University of Pisa’s IT Centre has been working on a sweeping series of transformation initiatives since 2017, not only to better orchestrate its HPC workloads, but to more successfully support the multitude of IT requirements that need to be met in order to run a modern university. “Before 2017, the IT infrastructure at the University of Pisa was distributed inside various university departments. Our restructuring project involved us redrawing that architecture with the construction of our new data centres,

which saw us consolidate our operations, from 20 small data centres down to three,” Davini explains. The restructuring process, he continues, involves meeting some of the unique challenges that are part and parcel with attempting to apply 21st Century infrastructure to an institution founded in 1343.

“The University of Pisa is laid out similarly to Cambridge in the UK; it's a campus distributed throughout a town,” Davini says. All the buildings that make up the University of Pisa are connected to one another via a private fibre network owned datacentremagazine.com

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“ This shift to scientific research being done remotely will lead to more collaboration between different academic institutions all over the world” MAURIZIO DAVINI CTO, UNIVERSITY OF PISA by the university − a network that Davini himself had a hand in establishing. “That fibre network started to be put in place in the late 1990s, and now we have around 90 kilometres of cable, which contain around 9,000 kilometres of optical fibre running underneath the streets of Pisa,” he says. “The network was built using mono-modal fibre, so now we can do almost whatever we want with regards to speed, latency and so on. We like to think of the university network as a whiteboard − a blank slate on which you can create any network that you want. On this whiteboard, we put our three data centres.”

This whiteboard approach to designing the university’s underlying infrastructure has been incredibly valuable, not only in the University of Pisa’s efforts to adapt to the evolving HPC landscape, but also in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Going Remote in the Age of COVID-19 “The pandemic found us in the middle of this transformation process,” Davini recalls, reflecting that those efforts “have been very helpful to our efforts to address the problems that the university faced as a result of the crisis.”

HPC in a Post-COVID World Increasingly, HPC is experiencing a similar journey to other enterprise and administrative functions: it’s headed to the cloud. “The ability to pay-per-use for HPC resources in the cloud makes its strategic advantages affordable for almost any organisation, including universities,” says Christopher Huggins, the EMEA Business Director for Data Centric Workloads & Solutions at Dell Technologies. “And, while some organisations may not be comfortable with every type of cloud computing, sharing HPC compute and storage resources over a network is hardly news to veteran IT shops.”

Davini adds: “In the past, there was the idea that, to do HPC analysis, you would come to Pisa and do it on-site. Now, that perception has shifted. I think this shift to scientific research and HPC workloads being done remotely will lead to more collaboration between different academic institutions all over the world, especially while international travel is being limited by the effects of the pandemic.”

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The first step, which the University of Pisa − along with academic institutions, enterprises and organisations all around the world − had to complete in just a few short, frantic days, was moving the entire entity’s operations online. “We had to transform the university's entire educational offering from being in-person to being fully remote,” says Davini. “This process didn’t relate only to lessons; it also required us to find a way to take our labs, workstations and other teaching activities online. The new infrastructure we'd been designing since 2017 was essential to offering these services.

Thanks to this digital transformation project, the pandemic didn't find us unprepared.”

HPC in a Post-COVID World Increasingly, HPC is experiencing a similar journey to other enterprise and administrative functions: it’s headed to the cloud. “The ability to pay-per-use for HPC resources in the cloud makes its strategic advantages affordable for almost any organisation, including universities,” says Christopher Huggins, the EMEA Business Director for Data Centric Workloads & Solutions at Dell Technologies. “And, while some organisations may not be comfortable with every type of cloud computing, sharing HPC compute and storage resources over a network is hardly news to veteran IT shops.”

Davini adds: “In the past, there was the idea that, to do HPC analysis, you would come to Pisa and do it on-site. Now, that perception has shifted. I think this shift to scientific research and HPC workloads being done remotely will lead to more collaboration between different academic institutions all over the world, especially while international travel is being limited by the effects of the pandemic.”

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“HPC requests are always changing...

We have to be flexible” MAURIZIO DAVINI CTO, UNIVERSITY OF PISA

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ESSENCE OF ENSONO

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WRITTEN BY: JANET BRICE PRODUCED BY: TOM VENTURO

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Ensono delivers complete hybrid cloud solutions, from mainframe to public cloud, tailored to each client’s transformation journey

T

he essence of Ensono is they are a customer's relentless ally on their digital transformation journey while providing operational excellence on mission critical systems supported by an intelligent governance platform – Ensono Envision.

Ensono is a hybrid cloud managed services company which delivers design, build and run managed services to operate and optimise mission critical platforms, like mainframes, private and public cloud environments – while keeping each business running – vital to their clients who are navigating the new normal following the COVID-19 pandemic.

“At Ensono we offer a truly hybrid transformation experience from assessment to architecture to build, run, operate, and innovate from mainframe to public cloud,” said Paola Doebel, SVP & Managing Director of Ensono North America.

“We are a relentless ally for all our customers – flexible, creative and transformative,” said Doebel who pointed out the recent acquisition of Amido – a UK-based cloud-native consultancy and implementation company delivering design, build and run cloud services on AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure – will help customers grow, optimise and innovate for the future.

“One of the unique things about us is we have expert capabilities from mainframe to public cloud – being able to look at the

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customer’s end-to-end environment is a really unique capability in the market,” said Doebel from Ensono’s headquarters in Chicago. With more than 50 years of experience they bridge the old and new for their customers.

Competitive edge of Ensono According to Doebel, Ensono has that competitive edge because of its end-toend managed services and consultancy and advisory capabilities bolstered by the company’s acquisition of Amido.

“We are a relentless ally for our customers enabling transformation. We will follow through on that last mile with them when it requires creativity, flexibility and real partnership which gives us a competitive advantage. The entire company, regardless of the role or function, rallies around our customers and their success.

We pride ourselves on our customer-centric culture at all levels of Ensono which is hard for a competitor to replicate,” she said.

“ At Ensono we offer a truly hybrid transformative experience from assessment to architecture to build, run, operate, and innovate from mainframe to public cloud” PAOLA DOEBEL

SVP & MANAGING DIRECTOR, ENSONO NORTH AMERICA

ENSONO

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Don’t know where to start with migrating to the cloud? Here’s one answer

Doebel pointed out the pandemic shined a spotlight on technology professionals.

“COVID-19 pushed technology professionals to the forefront of their companies to keep operations going. For

$650M Revenue

1969

the year Ensono was founded

2500+

associates around the world

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example: suddenly all employees had to work remotely, and IT had to enable that transition quickly and safely. In industries like retail, the customer experience shifted from in-store to online. Technology teams had to ensure their environments could handle the additional capacity and transaction volume. The company depended on it. Technology teams became part of the company’s critical response efforts to mitigate the impacts of COVID-19 to their employees and their customers.

“COVID-19 has also exposed pressure points in a customer’s environment or forced a strategy acceleration to adapt to the new demands of the organisation and the market. We step into the arena as a partner knowing there is pressure for them and we go on the journey with our customers.

“We can architect, build, and run an environment from mission critical platforms like mainframe to public cloud migrations and help our clients transform over that

ENSONO

“ We are a relentless ally for all our customers – flexible, creative and transformative”

PAOLA DOEBEL TITLE: SVP & MANAGING DIRECTOR OF ENSONO NORTH AMERICA INDUSTRY: IT & SERVICES LOCATION: GREATER CHICAGO AREA

PAOLA DOEBEL

Paola joined Enonso from Hewlett Packard Enterprise where she served as the Vice President and General Manager for the North America Compute, Software Defined, HPC and AI business. Prior to her North America roles, Paola lived in Asia-Pacific for 8.5 years where she held various leadership roles at Dell Technologies and HPE based in Seoul, South Korea and Singapore. Paola started her technology career at Dell based in Austin, Texas and North Carolina where she held roles ranging from product marketing management to global business and product development.

Paola is a Founding Advisory Board Member of “Sales Community” which is a network of sales leaders. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Pennsylvania.

SVP & MANAGING DIRECTOR, ENSONO NORTH AMERICA

time. We enable them to look end-to-end and encourage them to look end-to-end in their environment – all aligned to what their company objectives are. We work with them individually to figure out what the right solution is to get them where they are trying to go,” she said.

Midrange and Mainframe Managed Services Ensono can keep applications running faster, smoother and cheaper with mainframe and midrange services.

According to Doebel this can help companies reduce IT costs and simplify utility-based models while providing a strong IT foundation which can benefit the following: • Immediately lower hardware, software and labor costs • Reduce risk of retiring workforce and hiring new talent • Reduce technical debt and ensure regulatory compliance • Get flexible options for changing business needs

EXECUTIVE BIO

Ensono focuses on: • Perfecting IT operational strategies • Propelling cloud journeys • Optimising IT performance • Powering insights • Delivering transformation objectives

Ensono Envision Success with Broadcom AIOps Alert Management

Artificial Intelligence for IT Operations (AIOps) is the application of machine learning algorithms and data science to establish proactive, automated remediation capabilities that help IT teams deliver superior digital experiences, while offering fundamental breakthroughs in scale and efficiency. It enables a move away from siloed IT operations management and provides intelligent insights that drive automation and collaboration for continuous improvement.

Broadcom and Ensono partnered to adopt AIOPs best practices to deliver an improved digital experience. These capabilities help IT teams establish proactive, automated remediation capabilities that drive operational efficiency while improving digital experiences.

The result? Transformation and optimization through visualization and automation, integral to Ensono delivering on their IT insights platform, Ensono Envision.

IT Operations teams accept the fact that problems will arise. When a problem surfaces, every effort is made to resolve the matter as quickly as possible. Ensono needed help managing their product lifecycle and determined their event management solution providers could not scale to their performance expectations and were cost prohibitive.

Ensono collaborated with Broadcom to have measurable inputs into the product design, its capabilities and to provide valuable feedback that influenced several features. The partnership started with a series of design workshops to mock-up an effective alert management system.

Ensono now utilizes a single portal to automate monitoring across all mainframe clients. The solution helps IT better focus on higher priority issues, and increase automation across their tool chain with the following benefits: • • • • • •

Single place to view all mainframe issues Automate the resolution to most issues Reduce “noise” for false-positives Create consistency and removing response variations and delays Connect issues to service tickets Readily know who is working on an issue

Learn more about Broadcom Copyright disclaimers: © 2021 Ensono LP. All rights reserved.

Learn more about Ensono

ENSONO

ENSONO TIMELINE:

Jan 2016

Acxiom IT rebrands to Ensono, signifying our commitment to innovation in IT solutions

Sep 2016

Ensono acquires Attenda, expanding our ability to manage complex environments across the globe

Mar 2017

Ensono acquires Inframon.

As a Microsoft Cloud Productivity Partner of the Year, this specialist cloud server provider acquisition built on our ability to deliver the best technology solutions, tailors to our clients' needs on an even bigger scale

Jun 2018

Ensono acquires Wipro’s Hosted Data Center Service, growing in size and scale to accelerate our clients’ innovation and transformation

Apr 2021

Acquisition of Amido, a UK-based cloud native consultancy

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Mainframe modernisation services The investment reduces barriers to innovation and agility by adding new mainframe capabilities, transforming legacy code and data to run anywhere, and developing modern cross-platform applications, helping to fund and propel future transformation.

“Our Mainframe Modernisation offerings and solutions cover the ‘full art of the possible’ to help clients leverage modern mainframe capabilities from a platform perspective, as well as modern application and data structures,” said Doebel “The latter may lead to replatforming converted code and data on the Mainframe, or off the Mainframe to an Ensono-managed public or private cloud. We provide flexibility for clients to choose paths based on already established or preferred patterns within the enterprise.”

Managed hybrid cloud services According to Ensono, managed infrastructure services can optimise the infrastructure of a company, improve agility, availability and security of business applications.

Managed public cloud services Ensono’s Cloud Transformation services are designed to help companies realise the full promise of the cloud and transform existing on-premises applications beyond migrating them to the cloud. It can be flexibly mixedand-matched to deliver business services and objectives.

• Improve total cost of ownership and drive optimal ROI • Leverage cloud native services in pursuit of agility and business impact • Provide assurance for governance and compliance as you transform datacentremagazine.com

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“ One of the unique things about us is we have expert capabilities from mainframe to public cloud – being able to look at the customer’s end-to-end environment is a really unique capability in the market” PAOLA DOEBEL

SVP & MANAGING DIRECTOR, ENSONO NORTH AMERICA

“Ensono follows a phased approach based on best practices to align with our customer’s cloud readiness and business objectives, including cloud readiness assessment and planning, design, deploy, pilot and then migration, said Doebel.

“We architect and migrate client's IT workloads into the selected cloud platform(s) and manage all aspects of the management, security and governance layers. We offer two services Cloud Activate and Cloud Migrate to enable clients to migrate to the cloud.”

• Cloud Activate includes five phases: • Envisioning workshop – TCO and application assessment • Cloud architecture design • Cloud health check

SUPERHERO STRATEGIES FOR MAINFRAME MODERNIZATION – Maximize the value of mainframe technology.

– Build a bridge to the cloud.

– Accelerate your transforma�onal journey.

Our partnership is grounded in a unified technology vision - with a focus on you.

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Ensono Essence

• Cloud Landing Zone – DR deployment • Pilot migration of one application “Once this phase is completed, our client will not only be ‘cloud ready’ but will be operating at least one workload from the cloud,” commented Doebel. “Cloud Migrate is designed to provide a flexible engagement model to support the migration and transformation of applications to the Cloud.”

Consulting and advisory services According to Doebel, Ensono takes a complete hybrid cloud view focusing on the specific outcomes and needs of each client to ensure they provide a’ fit for purpose’ approach to advisory and consulting engagements.

“Our advisory and consulting capabilities include: discovery assessments, application dependency mapping, security assessments,

distributed infrastructure consolidation, legacy hardware and software modernisation and migration of application workloads to private or public cloud,” cites Doebel.

“Transformative 'Reimagine' programs, drive large scale change programs for our clients, enabling them to establish cloud centres of excellence and automated DevOps practices and leveraging cloud native services to drive agility and innovation into our clients' business.”

“No matter what area of advisory and consulting, we ensure the right combination of technologies are in place and working harmoniously together to deliver on the business goals,” she said.

Best-in-breed partnership with Dell Technologies Commenting on Ensono’s partnership with Dell, Doebel said they have a close business datacentremagazine.com

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and executive relationships with the Dell team. “Ensono is a Platinum Cloud Service Provider (CSP), one of only 10 in the US. The Ensono and Dell Technologies partnership combines mainframe expertise and best-ofbreed Dell technology.

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the solutions that will help them achieve the outcomes they want. End-to-end, we deliver what our customers need with our partners.”

“Ensono is a leader in hybrid cloud managed services, offering boutique services at a global scale, and Dell Technologies is a leader in infrastructure innovation including mainframe storage and backup solutions.

Together, we deliver flexible mainframe-asa-service (MFaaS) solutions powered by Dell EMC storage products as well as a best in class private cloud solutions,” she said.

ENSONO

Customer-centricity is at the heart of Ensono Customer-centricity is at the heart of Ensono and each team member is reminded of this when they join as they are presented with the Ensono bear, named Ernesto, who represents our customers. “I know that sounds funny at first, but what it really represents is that the customer is at the centre of all of the decisions we make, all of our discussions, and all of our strategies – so we all have Ernesto bears in our offices and on our desks reminding us of our customers every day.”

Award-winning experts in AWS and Azure • Microsoft US Partner Award for Azure Datacenter Migration • Launch partner for Professional Services in AWS Marketplace • Azure Expert MSP • 10 Microsoft Gold Competencies • AWS MSP Partner • AWS Migration Competency

Associations: Cloud Industry Forum in the UK Illinois Technology Association in Chicago, Illinois (now 1871) NASSCOM Events: Each year they participate in IBM Think, Microsoft Ignite, AWS Re:Invent, and Microsoft Future Decoded. Whether that’s through sponsorship or speaking sessions to support their partners. The public sector is a big industry focus for Ensono, so they always have a presence at NASCIO.

“ We can architect, build, and run an environment from mission critical platforms like mainframe to public cloud migrations and help our clients transform over that time” PAOLA DOEBEL

SVP & MANAGING DIRECTOR, ENSONO NORTH AMERICA

INDUSTRY INSIGHTS...

Doebel points out these accolades are important as it shows Ensono has spent time, effort, dollars and resources to be competent.

Awards: Inc. 5000 America’s Top Private Held Companies list – 2020 Crain’s Chicago Business Top Privately Held Companies – 2019, 2020 Microsoft US Partner Award Winner for Azure – Datacenter Migration 2020 UK Cloud Awards – 2018, 2019 Chicago Innovation Award 2018 for Ensono Envision Microsoft Data Center Transformation Partner of the Year 2018

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“ The new acquisition of Amido is part of our inorganic growth where we're constantly staying ahead of the curve and enabling ourselves and our customers to be agile” PAOLA DOEBEL

SVP & MANAGING DIRECTOR, ENSONO NORTH AMERICA

“There is a limited amount of talent in the market and for a customer that talent can be very expensive. Additionally, they simply might not be able to get people ramped up on all of these possible certifications and ways of operating within each of the different cloud environments especially if they have a multi-cloud strategy.”

“We are able to provide expertise, credibility, and competency and we are constantly looking at where we need to go next with our capabilities. We are focused on what capabilities we need to acquire or build and ensure we're certified to deliver next.

I think it's really important that customers have a partner they can fall back on.”

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THE MEANING BEHIND ENSONO The name Ensono combines the Zen concept of enso, which means freeing the mind to create and the Italian expression in sogna meaning in dreams.

According to the company the name reflects how their associates constantly look at opportunities from different angles, make unexpected connections and arrive at unprecedented solutions.

Doebel’s key message is to reinforce that Ensono is a relentless ally in this time of mass disruption. “We understand the intensity of the environment and we're capable and have the desire to partner with companies on their multi-year journey as they support their organisation’s efforts to deliver for their customers,” she said.

QUICK FIRE: What benefit is digital transformation to a company?

“Customers need to go on the digital journey to achieve scale, agility, scalability, flexibility and resilience. You have to design, build and

run an environment that serves that purpose, and most customers need to go on a digital transformation journey to get there. The reason you need to do that is to then deliver value for your customers and your company at the speed that the market requires.”

What technology trends do you predict taking off in the next five years?

“I think autonomous transportation is going to come to fruition in the next five years, but I think it's going to be on the commercial and freight side first. I say transportation because it could be vehicles or even shipping.

“I also see an expansion in edge computing, Dell has an edge technology solution, HPE datacentremagazine.com

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DID YOU KNOW...

AMIDO

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Ensono’s latest acquisition is Amido – a UK-based cloud native consultancy – which will drive digital transformation to the next level.

They specialise in helping clients build innovative applications and services with complex transitions from legacy technologies to hybrid or cloud-based systems.

The strategic move brings cloud native application and service development expertise to Ensono and significantly expands their digital transformation capabilities. Joining forces with Amido takes Ensono beyond traditional IT outsourcing and will help clients design, build and run successful transformations.

Welcoming this acquisition Doebel said this would help Ensono retain their agility for the customers as they grow in an organic and inorganic way.

Amido, a Google partner and fellow Microsoft Gold partner, shares many of Ensono’s values, including having a clientcentric focus and desire to constantly innovate. Their cloud native expertise includes application development and data engineering across a diverse set of clients.

June 2021

“The new acquisition of Amido is part of our inorganic growth where we're constantly staying ahead of the curve and enabling ourselves and our customers to be agile,” she said.

“The organic portion is the development and expansion of our consultancy and advisory capabilities. We're expanding our security services, mainframe modernisation services and capabilities,” she said.

ENSONO

has EdgeLine, and AWS Outposts edge computing which brings compute capability to the edge where insights and data analytics need to be delivered in real time.

“I can also see Virtual Augmented Reality expanding in the next five years. I can see retail driving this. It will be interesting to see how that transpires after COVID. People were forced out of an on-site retail experience to a digital experience. I think it could kick digital and augmented reality off for the mass market.

“Finally in the insurance world – in which we have more than 40 customers – we see a lot of things happening that are disrupting this sector. I think you're going to see more things like telematic devices, which capture data and help insurance companies analyse driver risk on an individual basis. InsurTech is disrupting the industry by combining various technology solutions with insurance solutions like claims processing, fraud detection, underwriting and others to drive down costs and create a better customer experience and outcome.”

How do you sum up Ensono’s unique selling point after more than 50 years of business?

“At Ensono we offer a truly hybrid transformative experience from assessment to architecture to build, run, operate, and innovate from mainframe to public cloud.

And we're relentless allies in the pursuit of that effort.”

What message would you give to women thinking about choosing a career in technology?

“I think it's exciting and brings a lot of opportunity certainly for women or any underrepresented group who feels like there's no way in. I would say in technology there is always a way in – technology

is the land of startups, bold ideas and entrepreneurship.

“Technology is dynamic and fast and takes a lot of mental and intellectual agility. You have to be willing to fail fast and pivot, or fail fast and adjust, and really accept the bold moves necessary to be successful. You also have to be a constant learner because it moves so fast. Just be fearless.

“This is an industry of fearless leaders with bold ideas and if you want to be a part of that you've got to embrace that edginess and be a contributor”.

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DATA CENTRE RISK MANAGEMENT BEST PRACTICES Data Centre Magazine’s top tips for minimising and managing the ever-evolving risks to the modern data centre

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D

ata centres are such a critical element of the modern world that just a few hours offline can create massive disruptions, both for the operator and its customers. These issues, whether they stem from external factors like fires or – in the recent case of Texas data centre operators – storms, improperly maintained hardware, cyber breaches, or something else, are more common than the average data centre owner would probably care to believe. Back in 2018, the Uptime Institute collected data that showed over 30% of respondents had experienced a downtime

incident or a severe degradation of their services in the previous year, and 48% reported experiencing at least one outage during the preceding three.

For a data centre operator, a full service outage (according to research done by Gertner) costs, on average, $5,600 per minute when you take into account lost sales, a damaged reputation, compensation paid to customers, lost data, and the cost of repairs. In order to avoid these dangers, it pays dividends as a data centre operator to have a rock solid risk management plan in place. The consequences could be dire.

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Understand different types of risk The threats facing the continued operation of a data centre are myriad. From external factors like cyber attacks, natural disasters and failures of the local power grid, to internal ones like equipment failure and human error, a data centre risk management plan should explore a wide range of possibilities and plan accordingly. Engaging the services of a consulting firm, or outsourcing your cybersecurity needs can help increase resilience and reduce costs in both the long and short term.

Good Habits: Conduct reviews to understand your vulnerabilities; consult the experts; integrate risk management practices from day one.

Bad Habits: Base your assessments off industry standards, rather than an in-depth examination of your own facility.

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09

Build redundant A UPS system failure is by far the most common cause of a data centre outage (ahead of human error and cyber attack). Securing multiple sources of power, as well as a backup generator that is capable of keeping your data centre running for more than 24 hours without access to the local grid, can be the difference between a few sleepless nights and disaster.

When you understand the risk to your data centre, decide whether N+1, 2N, or 2N+1 redundancy is right for you.

Good Habits: Build multiple points of redundancy in case of a power outage; develop a pool of multiple backup power suppliers.

Bad Habits: Rely entirely on one type of power backup.

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08

Keep it secret, keep it safe Ensuring the physical security of a data centre is just as important as an effective firewall. One of the easiest and cheapest ways in which to keep your data centre safe is to keep its location a secret.

Hyperscalers like AWS and Google are very cagey about the precise locations of their campuses; if you were to drive past one, there’s very little chance you would see the company’s name in big glowing letters on the roof. By removing obvious signage and maintaining a relatively inconspicuous presence in the local community, you eliminate a good deal of the physical risk to your customers’ data.

Good Habits: Treat physical security every bit as seriously as you treat digital threats.

Bad Habits: Advertise your location more than is strictly necessary.

07

Ensure you have an effective alert notification process If and when something does go wrong with your data centre, ensuring a short response time is critical. Given the fact that data centre downtime can cost as much as $5,600 every single minute, you need to be able to make sure that, in the event of a breach or outage, the right staff receive an alert and details of their responsibilities during the emergency as quickly as possible. A good data centre risk management plan needs to account for the best way to alert employees (both on and off site) in the event of a disaster.

Good Habits: Regularly update your contact information for key employees.

Bad Habits: Create a plan that rests solely on the shoulders of one staff member, who may be unavailable to respond; send out confusing or mixed messages in a crisis. datacentremagazine.com

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05

Trust in zero

06

Establish off-site backup Should your data centre be taken offline by a fire, storm, flood or cyber attack, making sure that your clients’ most valuable data is backed up in a secure offsite location can be key, both to maintaining customer trust, and to resuming service as quickly as possible. It is also worth noting that the typical hurricane is around 300 miles wide, so choosing an off-site backup in the same city – or even region – can limit its effectiveness.

Good Habits: Identify a backup facility that isn’t exposed to the same risks as your primary data centre.

Bad Habits: Keep all your data in a single location.

The idea of “Zero Trust” has gained a lot of ground in cybersecurity circles over the past few years and you should absolutely embrace it in your data centre. In short, zero trust means that your network doesn’t trust any data traffic unless a security policy specifically allows it. This does require a full understanding of your network and the writing of smart policies that allow your business to besafe and function at the same time, but achieving microsegmentation across all the applications in your data centre is one of the most effective ways to reduce cyber risk.

Good Habits: Divide up functions throughout your network with a distributed internal firewall.

Bad Habits: Throw up the external firewall and call it a day.

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04 Visibility is everything Like we mentioned before, the key to establishing the kinds of security protocols that effectively minimise risks to your data centre is visibility.

If you can’t see something, you have no idea of whether it can hurt you. Investing in security platforms that give end-to-end visibility throughout a data centre’s network can make the difference between a neutralised cyber attack and a high-profile breach. At the same time, constant surveillance of your physical facility, in order to ensure that all systems are functioning as intended, and that the building is secure, is equally important.

Good Habits: Watch out for unsecured devices like laptops and IoT sensors connecting to your network.

Bad Habits: Allow blind-spots to continue existing throughout your security system.

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03

Location, location, location The storms that ravaged Texas earlier this year threw up several glaring issues with data centres located in the state. A mixture of unavailable power and susceptibility to severe weather had the potential to severely damage operators’ facilities throughout the state. As climate change results in increasingly severe weather, choosing the right location for your data centre – in a stable environment with access to a strong electrical grid and, preferably, renewable power – is a vital step in preventing a disastrous service disruption down the road.

Good Habits: Examine past meteorological data, as well as the service history of the local grid.

Bad Habits: Build your data centre next to a chemical plant, airport or in a flood plain.

02

TOP 10

Make people your greatest asset

…Not your greatest vulnerability.

Aside from UPS failures, human error accounts for the highest number of data centre outages. Alarmingly, with the industry understaffed and more and more of the workforce reaching retirement age, the problem is only likely to get worse over the coming decade. Invest in your staff and invest now. Data centre operators that attract top talent, develop existing staff and incorporate constant training and development into their DNA will benefit, not only from safer data centres, but a competitive advantage over their peers.

Good Habits: Create partnerships with universities that support scholarships and grants to attract more students to the industry.

Bad Habits: Lean too heavily on automation at the expense of a skilled human workforce.

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TOP 10

Test your plan Good. Now, test it again. Crafting an elegant, comprehensive risk management plan is one thing.

Testing it, making changes, and testing it again is another entirely.

The global data centre threat landscape is constantly evolving, and so should you. According to experts at vXchnge, “Changes in data availability needs or business growth are two of the primary reasons why disaster recovery plans need to be re-evaluated on a regular basis.

As part of that reassessment, the plan itself should be tested frequently as part of ongoing disaster mitigation services.”

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Foregrounding Sustainability in Modern Colocation Data Centres WRITTEN BY: WILLIAM SMITH

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atNorth CEO Eyjólfur Magnús Kristinsson expands on the data centre company’s support for high-density computing with 100% renewable energy

I

celandic high-density computing firm atNorth is leading the charge for carbonneutral colocation data centres. CEO Eyjólfur Magnús Kristinsson, previously Managing Director at Advania, which acquired the company as a smaller side project in 2011, has been CEO since that point, but devoted himself full-time to the role in 2018 as the company rapidly picked up the pace. “The reason for that is the exponential growth of data,” he explains. “And with that comes the need for computational work to crunch that data.

That’s why we’re seeing the data centre industry growing by around 16% annually at the moment, which I expect to continue for at least the next five years.”

Within the data centre industry, atNorth focuses on a specific part of the market particularly suited to the infrastructure it provides across its facilities in Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium and the UK. “We specialise in energy-hungry workloads that require a lot of cooling - typically these workloads include things like high-performance computing, artificial intelligence, deep learning, big data and so on. We take care of everything within the high-performance computing arena with on-demand computational resources.”

A key part of atNorth’s offering is its commitment to using 100% sustainable energy in its operations, and reducing energy use in general with initiatives such as using the naturally colder air of its

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“ We’re seeing the data centre industry growing by around 16% annually at the moment” EYJÓLFUR MAGNÚS KRISTINSSON CEO, ATNORTH

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northerly locations for cooling purposes.

“Sustainability is a fundamental strategy and the company's mission is providing sustainable and energy-efficient solutions to its customers. As we provide a home for energy-intensive workloads, it’s important to use energy from renewable resources, but we've also designed our data centres from the ground up so we can use less energy in general. We offer customers flexible solutions to minimise their carbon footprint - not only in terms of energy but also in terms of space and infrastructure needed.”

That focus on sustainability is not only to the benefit of its customers. “For our newest project in Sweden, we are working with the

ATNORTH

EYJÓLFUR MAGNÚS TITLE: CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER

local district heating company, and using the excess of heat from the data centres to warm local residents.”

That new data centre is located in Kista, Stockholm, and complements atNorth’s existing offering. “We are catering to both the local market in Stockholm, which is extremely rich in high-tech companies working within our focus area of highintensity workloads, but also the wider European market of similar companies that are looking for international colocation,” says Kristinsson. The location also represents another rich resource of renewable energy access, though the company goes further with its own innovative techniques. “For

EXECUTIVE BIO

COMPANY: ATNORTH Chief Executive Officer of atNorth December 2017, Eyjólfur Magnús, most often called Magnus is a data centre veteran. Magnus’s data centre journey did not start by taking over as CEO of atNorth in 2017 as his previous role as the managing director of infrastructure, hosting and core services at Advania since 2010 and was responsible for the Advania acquisition of Thor Data Center in 2011. Advania’s data centre business thrived well under Magnus’s leadership as a division of Advania until its demerger from the Advania Group in 2017, then named Advania Data Centers the company grew to become among the fastest-growing data centre companies in Europe. Advania Data Centers became atNorth in 2021. Prior to joining Advania, Magnus has served in leadership roles at technology companies such as Vodafone. Magnus studied engineering at the University of Iceland and did his master’s in engineering at DTU, the Technical University of Denmark.

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Subzero Engineering is the industry leader in bespoke containment solutions using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to show measurable results for their customers which includes the following savings; $300 million in energy costs, 1.5 billion gallons of water, and three million tonnes in the reduction of carbon dioxide since 2015.

“We believe that a data-driven approach is essential to drive data centre performance and efficiency,” commented Andy Connor, Director EMEA Channel, who points out they offer CFD checks for free.

“We help our customers do this with our customised, streamlined and energy efficient containment solutions which result in a lower total cost of ownership and reduced carbon emissions.”

Subzero Engineering has manufacturing facilities in Salt Lake City, US, where they were founded in 2005 (starting out as a data centre airflow consulting company), and in Dublin, Ireland.

They are now partnering with atNorth in Iceland to provide their hot and cold aisle containment solutions.

“We have a large team of leading industry experts that help us operate globally, and at speed, and we work with customers ranging from the hyperscalers and colocation communities through to well-known brands in sports, retail, HPC, and AI,” said Connor.

Balance performance and efficiency “We started life back in 2005 as a CFD consultancy when data centres were using raised floors and experiencing issues with leakages. Our software solution showed customers how they could analyse the infrastructure and improve efficiency.

“Fast forward 16 years and that approach has stayed with us. We’re an engineeringled solutions provider who helps businesses reduce their carbon footprint and operating costs - but it all starts with the data we produce from our CFD reports.”

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ATNORTH

“ The company's mission is providing sustainable and energy efficient solutions to its customers” EYJÓLFUR MAGNÚS KRISTINSSON CEO, ATNORTH

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instance, we will reuse the heat generated in the data centre and transfer it to a different facility approximately 100 meters away.

This obviously provides our environmentally conscious customers with best of class running on real renewables only, high energy efficiency and we are also contributing to Stockholm's goal of full carbon neutrality before 2040.”

The company’s operations are supported by the work of a number of key partners.

“Our partner ecosystem is critical,” says Kristinsson. “HPE and Intel, for instance, have been working with us on the customer end, supporting us in various cases to provide on-demand solutions. We have had access to their newest technology, and support them in turn with testing. They have certainly become very valuable and strategic partners for us.” atNorth also works with valued partners on the infrastructure end of the equation. “Subzero and Systemair provide

“ I'm sure that the pandemic has imposed irreversible changes on our business - both in terms of customer service but also how we approach our customers” EYJÓLFUR MAGNÚS KRISTINSSON CEO, ATNORTH

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“ We are specifically catering to this fastest-growing segment within the tech sector” EYJÓLFUR MAGNÚS KRISTINSSON CEO, ATNORTH

us with cooling technologies. We've tried several solutions in cooling, and when it comes to natural airflow cooling, Systemair and Subzero have proven to be the most reliable providers.”

Like all companies worldwide, atNorth has had to reckon with the ongoing COVID19 pandemic. “Last year we needed to adapt to a new reality and we will continue to do so. For us, this has meant finding new ways of providing the services we do.

Strict travel restrictions meant that we needed to find new ways of meeting with our potential and existing customers, who rely on us to service the equipment they 170

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host with us.” Kristinsson expects some of the changes the pandemic has wrought to become permanent fixtures. “I think it’s strengthened the relationship that we have with our customers. I doubt that many will revert to the old mode of flying in their own technicians. I'm sure that the pandemic has imposed irreversible changes on our business - both in terms of customer service but also how we approach our customers.”

Partly to thank for its resistance to the pandemic is the culture present at the organisation. “I like to empower my employees and listen very carefully to everyone's ideas and thoughts,” says

ATNORTH

2009

Year Founded

50+

Number of Employees

$38m

Revenue in USD

Kristinsson. “We have incredible talent in our company among our employees, and I basically see my role as being to nurture that talent. It’s a very Nordic leadership style, which works particularly well in a small company like atNorth. It's very important to enhance the dynamics of a flat structure with openness and transparency, so everyone can know how important they are to executing our strategy.”

Looking to the future, Kristinsson expects high-density workloads to continue to play a vital role in powering the rapid growth of the data centre sector. “It’s all derived from emerging technologies such as 5G,

IoT, AI, deep learning and more. We are specifically catering to this fastest-growing segment within the tech sector.” He’s clear that atNorth will continue to ensure that sustainability remains at the heart of the conversation through its sector-leading solutions. “We want to provide the best service to our customers in this space, while obviously using renewable energy only to do, and give them higher energy efficiency than competitors.”

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EXCELREDSTONE

at the forefront of

IT

WRITTEN BY: WILLIAM SMITH PRODUCED BY: LEWIS VAUGHAN

INFRASTRUCTURE 172

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ExcelRedstone’s Gavin Burger and John Smethurst discuss how the company’s smart building and data centre solutions are evolving to meet customer needs

S

ExcelRedstone Data Centre

mart building solutions and IT infrastructure provider ExcelRedstone has helped global tech firms, financial institutions and retailers adapt their IT infrastructure to cope with the pandemic.

From ensuring systems did not fall over in the first rapid move to remote working, to supporting staff and helping improve productivity, its 450-plus engineers have been busy across its operations in Europe, the USA and Asia to keep their customers IT systems running during uncertain times.

While the company has adapted impressively over the past year, the roots of its success date back to 1986, where they provided IT services to offices in the City.

Since then, the business has magnified to a global level, growing five-fold between 2008 and 2020 as CEO Barry Horgan led a series of acquisitions, including the IT infrastructure division of AIM-listed RedstoneConnect and Irish IT services firm Kedington.

ExcelRedstone retains the identity that has got it to where it is today, they are truly customer-centric, and customer experience is paramount to their continued success. “We've grown from a family business founded over 30 years ago, and there's still the same accommodating and focused approach in the business today,” says Gavin Burger, Chief Commercial Officer, who himself joined 17 years ago. He attributes much of the company’s success datacentremagazine.com

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EXCELREDSTONE

“ THE PAST YEAR HAS HIGHLIGHTED THE POSITIVE, FLEXIBLE ATTITUDE AND CULTURE THAT WE INSTIL” GAVIN BURGER

CHIEF COMMERCIAL OFFICER, EXCELREDSTONE

to its culture, showcased in the longterm relationships with multiple global investment banks that it has worked with since the beginning. “The past year has highlighted the positive, flexible attitude and culture that we instil. The whole business revolves around its people – a lot of our staff have continued to work on-site supporting critical data centre infrastructure, which is a real testament to their hard work and commitment that helps underpin our entire business.”

The company has been well-positioned to weather the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, thanks in part to the increased demand for data centres. “Over the last few years, we’ve seen massive growth in the number of new data centres, but even more so during the past year where remote working has driven demands for data centre connectivity,” says datacentremagazine.com

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ExcelRedstone IBC

“OVER THE LAST FEW YEARS, WE’VE SEEN MASSIVE GROWTH IN TERMS OF THE NUMBER OF NEW DATA CENTRES” JOHN SMETHURST SALES DIRECTOR, EXCELREDSTONE

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JOHN SMETHURST TITLE: SALES DIRECTOR INDUSTRY: IT AND SERVICES LOCATION: UNITED KINGDOM

Smethurst. “The growth of these data centres is linked to the ever-increasing number of IP devices that are creating data - from your smart speaker to your smart meter, to your smart device, to the video calls we’re now on every day.”

“The large, hyper-scale data centre world hasn't stopped during the pandemic,” adds Burger. “In fact, it has had to press on at a greater rate than before – increased data consumption and changing consumer habits are driving the demand for IT infrastructure.

EXECUTIVE BIO

John Smethurst has worked in the IT industry for over 25-years, having started his career in 1996 at infrastructure specialist Cableship, which would ultimately become Redstone Converged Solutions. After nearly 15 years with the company, John progressed his career with senior sales roles at a number of leading Systems Integrators before joining Excel IT as Sales Manager in 2013 and assuming the role of Sales Director in 2014. Following significant sales growth at Excel IT the company acquired Redstone Converged Solutions in 2018 to form ExcelRedstone where John heads the sales team focusing on data centre solutions.

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EXCELREDSTONE

We've had to respond accordingly to meet the needs of our customers.”

As the world emerges from the pandemic, ExcelRedstone stands ready to change with the times. “With the new normal, we've seen more of our customers going home-based and adopting remote working or flexible working,” says Smethurst. “But our fieldbased engineers and on-site teams will be there supporting users as they return to the office, making sure their office environment is safe with the toolsets that we have for workspace management. We’re always evolving to meet our customers’ needs, and we are already in advanced discussions with a number of the largest building contractors, landlords and tenants, as people start to return to work and how the office needs to adapt to the changing work styles and

requirements of people. Technology is going to play a significant part in this change, from security, wired and wireless connectivity, people wellbeing, AV to better workplace technologies, ExcelRedstone are leaders in designing, building and running SMART buildings.”

Internally as well, the pandemic has wrought changes, as Burger explains. “It's datacentremagazine.com

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GAVIN BURGER TITLE: CHIEF COMMERCIAL OFFICER INDUSTRY: IT AND SERVICES LOCATION: UNITED KINGDOM Gavin Burger is currently the Chief Commercial Officer for ExcelRedstone and has been a key component of the senior team for more than 16 years helping grow the business from £2.5mn in 2004 to its current £100mn+ level. Before becoming CCO and the acquisition of Redstone Converged Solutions, Gavin was Excel IT’s Chief Operating Officer and was responsible for the company’s global sales and operations. He firmly believes the success of the business is down to the customer-focused approach instilled to meet and exceed expectations. Prior to ExcelRedstone Gavin spent a number of years in senior Sales, Marketing and Operational roles within the Retail and Leisure sector.

EXECUTIVE BIO

opened our eyes in terms of understanding how organisations can operate effectively when they have the IT platforms to work from. That is critical for driving communication, and from that perspective, it's been really positive for us.”

International expansion will continue to be key to meeting these growth aspirations, and today the company’s footprint includes operations in the UK, Ireland, Denmark, Germany, Sweden, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Singapore and America. In January, it hired its first US general manager, based in Virginia, along with local delivery

EXCELREDSTONE

“ THE LARGE, HYPER SCALE DATA CENTRE WORLD HASN'T STOPPED DURING THE PANDEMIC” GAVIN BURGER

CHIEF COMMERCIAL OFFICER, EXCELREDSTONE

and support teams. “Whether we're doing a data centre in the UK or delivering one in Japan, companies want global consistency and to streamline the number of vendors they deal with. You'll see more of that over the next year as we continue our expansion in the USA and expand into Asia to meet the demands and the evolving nature of our customers.”

That’s particularly true of hyper-scale customers, as Burger explains. “We're finding that the large hyperscalers are looking to replicate the complex end to end operational delivery jigsaw from one datacentremagazine.com

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region to another to help drive efficiency and enhance project delivery in terms of quality, cost and timescale: ‘With a team of 450 engineers and over 40 project managers across the company, as well as a dedicated hyper-scale team specialising in compliance, design, and delivery, ExcelRedstone attracts some of the biggest players in the market.

“We can offer these clients end-to-end data centre solutions, from the initial design and installation of structured cabling systems, cable containment and hot or cold aisle containment solutions through to a full suite of IP services including networking, IP surveillance, access control, environmental monitoring etc.” adds Smethurst. Beyond that, ExcelRedstone also provides managed

“ WHETHER WE'RE DOING A DATA CENTRE IN THE UK OR DELIVERING ONE IN JAPAN, COMPANIES WANT GLOBAL CONSISTENCY AND TO STREAMLINE THE NUMBER OF VENDORS THEY DEAL WITH” JOHN SMETHURST SALES DIRECTOR, EXCELREDSTONE

services for the support, maintenance and optimisation of client data centres and computer rooms. “It’s one thing having the tools, but it’s really a question of how you use them. That's why a big part of our business is the managed services to support data centre environments.”

ExcelRedstone’s work wouldn’t be possible without support from their prestigious portfolio of partners, as Smethurst explains. “We are proud to work with many of the leading manufacturers and solutions providers of network infrastructure and associated technology.

This broad-based approach allows us to select the very best solutions for each and every client application, regardless of manufacturer or vendor.”

For example, ExcelRedstone has worked with Vertiv, Corning and Prism DCS on a number of large scale, high profile data centre projects over the years. “We’ve got a long-standing relationship with Vertiv, and we work really well together within the data centre space, particularly in terms of their datacentremagazine.com

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YEAR FOUNDED

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750+

NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES

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UPS, PDU and Thermal Management solutions.

This helped us achieve Vertiv Diamond Partner of the year for Northern Europe in 2020, which we are extremely proud of.” As a Corning Pretium NPI (Network of Preferred Installers), ExcelRedstone holds the highest accreditation available and is one of the largest installers of Corning solutions in EMEA. ExcelRedstone also works closely with UK manufacturer Prism DCS. “When a particular customer wants something different, we’ve taken a number of our data centre clients to Prism DCS, where they’ve customised and built bespoke solutions for cabinets, security caging or hot and cold aisle containment solutions.”

Looking to the future, the company intends to keep up the rapid pace of growth it has been enjoying. “We've grown significantly over the past few years,” says Smethurst. “The ambition is to quadruple in size again over the next five to 10 years. We recently ranked number 1 in The Sunday Times’ 2020 league table of companies with the fastest-growing international sales, and obviously, the aim is to try and maintain that.”

Supporting that growth is the company’s laser focus on its customers. “We're a trusted partner for global providers, which is key to our long-term growth,” says Burger. “Giving our customers the consistency of what they're looking for across a number of different geographic locations underpins that, which is why we've opened up six new entities across the globe in the last two years.”

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MUNTERS

Cooling Mission Critical Infrastructure WRITTEN BY: DAN BRIGHTMORE PRODUCED BY: LEWIS VAUGHAN

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MUNTERS

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MUNTERS

Enabling optimal operating conditions for the world’s most critical infrastructure and essential services

M

unters is a global leader of innovative, energy efficient climate control solutions serving a variety of industries including food, pharmaceutical, lithium battery production, agricultural, marine, and data centers.

With the demand for data centers growing at an ever-increasing rate, ensuring these mission critical facilities can provide the right indoor climate is essential. Efficiently maintaining the right conditions can improve reliability, reduce operating costs and ensure a data center can be run in a more sustainable way. Depending on several factors - such as type, location, size, and power density - data centers may require different solutions to provide the best possible operating performance. Munters offers a wide range of climate systems to ensure the perfect solution.

Cooling Technologies Cooling technologies are the foundation of Munters’ offering to its data center customers. “We offer a variety of different energy efficient cooling systems for data center end users,” explains Gantert.

“We take a project-based approach to developing solutions for customers, where we start with core technologies, and then work with engineers and owners to fine-tune the optimal solution for their projects. Our technology portfolio includes evaporative cooling (both direct and indirect), dry air-

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Michael Gantert President, Data Centers

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MUNTERS

to-air heat exchangers (plate and heat pipe), waterless thermosyphon-based split systems (SyCool), and a fan-coil array for pairing with an air-cooled chiller offering.

We also manufacture air-cooled chillers and fan-coil arrays for a specific strategic partner. In addition to cooling technologies, we offer solutions for make-up air and humidification needs.”

Munters’ engineering experience, design expertise, R&D capability, and flexible manufacturing offer the ability to customize solutions to meet the needs of its customers – everything from footprint constraints to resource (water and power) availability and many other building design considerations.

The Munters Difference The ability to offer different cooling technologies packaged in various ways demonstrates Munters’ capacity to create custom solutions while also maintaining the manufacturing capabilities to scale as required. “It starts with our portfolio of energy efficient cooling technologies. We take these technologies and work with engineers and owners to develop a cooling solution that meets their needs. Then, we leverage our manufacturing capabilities to meet their demand,” adds Gantert.

“We recently expanded our portfolio to address a variety of factors owners and engineers consider when designing a data center, including water availability, first cost, energy efficiency, reliability, scalability, speed, and simplicity. Because we take a projectbased, solutions approach, Munters isn’t pushing pre-designed, standard products to our data center customers. We have the technical expertise to partner with our customers to develop a solution that fits their specific needs, and the proven manufacturing flexibility to meet their demand.”

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Innovation Carl Munters founded the company over 60 years ago - a company with innovation in its DNA. Gantert notes, “In addition to our new SyCool technology, we recently launched a new fan-coil array solution we call Modular ChilledWall (MCW). MCW is a configurable fan-coil platform for owners who utilise aircooled chiller platforms. In addition to new technologies and equipment solutions, we are further developing our systems integration and services offerings to better support our customers.”

Meeting demand in a Covid-19 world Demand for Munters’ solutions ramped up during the pandemic says Gantert. “Due to the increased demand, we’ve expanded our footprint to incorporate manufacturing for data center cooling equipment at both our Virginia and Texas facilities. Meanwhile, our top priority is to ensure we deliver reliable

MUNTERS

MICHAEL GANTERT TITLE: PRESIDENT, DATA CENTERS COMPANY: MUNTERS

MICHAEL GANTERT PRESIDENT, DATA CENTERS

EXECUTIVE BIO

“ We take a projectbased approach to developing solutions for customers, where we start with core technologies, and then work with engineers and owners to fine-tune the optimal solution for their projects”

Michael Gantert is President of the Data Center Business at Munters, a business focused on providing innovative, energy efficient, sustainable climate control solutions to the data center industry. With over 10 years of experience at Munters, Michael is one of the founding members of the Munters data center business and held several roles, including an international assignment in Europe, prior to his appointment as President in 2018. Prior to joining Munters, Michael served in the US Army and worked in the construction industry, with positions in project management, engineering, and services.

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MUNTERS

SyCool 30 Second Video

“ We recently opened a new test lab at our Virginia factory to further expand our testing capabilities and offer owners and engineers the peace of mind that allows them to guarantee uptime” MICHAEL GANTERT PRESIDENT, DATA CENTERS

solutions to our customers, both in terms of functional quality as well as performance.

We’ve spent years testing our technologies to validate performance and developing software tools to simulate performance at any geographical location. We recently opened a new test lab at our Virginia facility to further expand our testing capabilities, offering owners and engineers the peace of mind that allows them to guarantee uptime. We've also partnered with other manufacturers to expand our capacity to support our customers globally.”

Continuous Improvement Strategic partnerships are critical to Munters’ success believes Gantert. “We partner with suppliers who are willing to understand and support our unique business model. At times, in a project-based business model, forecasting becomes difficult. With some partners, we’ve arranged consignment programs and inventory management datacentremagazine.com

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processes to better prepare for large projects. Several of our key suppliers have been our partners for many years, so they know us and they know our business.”

Among these trusted partners is Super Radiator, a coil manufacturer. Munters ties to Super Radiator go back many years before it entered the data center market.

“Coils are a key part of our solution,” says Gantert. “Many of our designs require a coil, either DX or CHW. We rely on Super Radiator to support our coil manufacturing needs, working closely together to forecast demand. Our relationship has become a mutually beneficial one over many years.”

Automated Logic Controls (ALC) is another key supplier for Munters. “We not only offer the cooling technology and the mechanical know-how to develop a solution

Experienced. Knowledgeable. Trusted.

Super Radiator Coils is proud to support Munters with our engineering and data center cooling products.

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MUNTERS

“ Automated Logic Controls has years of experience in the data center and HVAC industries. They offer the flexibility to customize their solutions, and they work closely with us to develop our equipment controls programming for data center applications” MICHAEL GANTERT PRESIDENT, DATA CENTERS

for our customers, we also integrate control systems into our offering,” explains Gantert.

“Our customers connect to our equipment controls system as part of their building automation controls platform, and so all of our systems must include a controls package. Our primary supplier is ALC; they have years of experience in the data center and HVAC industries. They offer the flexibility to customise their solutions, and they work closely with us to develop our equipment controls programming for data center applications. We meet with them routinely to stay in sync with the latest developments; continuous improvement is a shared goal.”

Collaboration is essential for success in the data center market maintains Gantert.

“Internally, our business team works closely with all areas of our company to ensure we deliver for our customers. We work in close collaboration with our partners and customers through the entire project lifecycle, from concept to commissioning, and we aim to maintain a strong relationship with our customers long after a facility is handed over to the end user.”

Supporting the Data Center of the Future…

Data center cooling continues to evolve.

As server technology adapts, and rack watt density increases to support various digital platforms, Gantert expects we will see a natural shift from air-cooled to liquid-cooled solutions for some applications. “As data centers become a larger part of the world’s infrastructure, the industry will shift to adopt more energy efficient, sustainable climate control solutions,” he says.

Water usage also continues to be at the forefront of the sustainability conversation.

“We are continuing to develop waterless solutions, and where water-based solutions are required, we've adapted our datacentremagazine.com

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QTS Data Center - Case study

“ As data centers become a larger part of the world’s infrastructure, the industry will shift to adopt more energy efficient, sustainable climate control solutions” MICHAEL GANTERT PRESIDENT, DATA CENTERS

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solutions to reduce water consumption,” adds Gantert. “We recently received US Patents for two of our technologies very much at the forefront of sustainability for this industry: ‘Staged Indirect Evaporative Cooler Sprays’ reduces water consumption in our Indirect Evaporative Cooling (IEC) solution and ‘Air handling unit with indirect air-side economiser and decoupled variable speed scavenger and condenser fan control’ is a patent related to one of our water-less cooling technologies.” Gantert continues, “In addition, we offer a patented solution called MRM, which stands for Mineral Removal Media. We deployed this technology with a hyperscale customer, and they measured a 40% reduction in the water consumption from their direct evaporative cooling systems.

MUNTERS

SEK 7bn sales in 2020

Innovative solutions since

1955

3,500 Employees worldwide

17

Plants

30

Manufacturing and sales countries

2

Business areas: AirTech (includes Data Center Business) and FoodTech

“Speed is also a huge factor,” he adds.

“Manufacturers will need to configure solutions to meet specific customer needs and then quickly ramp up manufacturing to support the demand.”

A fully connected cooling solution, easily capable of integrating with a building automation platform, is important for data center operators. Gantert envisions an increase in demand for systems integration solutions from cooling equipment providers. “As a cooling equipment manufacturer, we have to provide a controls platform that can easily integrate with a building automation system, creating a connected climate if you will.

Facility operators need the capability to manipulate set points (both manually

and automatically) as dynamics change, whether it’s ambient conditions or data hall conditions. Munters is well positioned with our technologies and controls capabilities to support these trends in the future.”

Munters is set to expand its portfolio of cooling solutions, including new iterations of SyCool, while it seeks to broaden its operational footprint to support global data center customers in 2021 and beyond. “We'll continue to look at manufacturing footprint optimisation as we aim to further boost our capabilities to support global customers. We recently announced plans to relocate our Center of Excellence facility in Virginia to a new, state-of-the-art, sustainable manufacturing location. The site will datacentremagazine.com

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SYCOOL Specifically developed for data centers, SyCool is a waterless thermosyphonbased split cooling system providing an efficient cooling solution for new and retrofit installations where access to a suitable water supply may be limited, expensive or unreliable. No pumps or mechanical assistance are required. The system is available in 400kW and 250kW blocks of cooling capacity. Thermosyphon heat exchangers move heat from the data center to ambient through the evaporation of liquid refrigerant in the SyCool CRAH, and condensing of that same refrigerant in the SyCool condenser.

The CRAH is connected to the condenser with refrigerant piping allowing up to 500’ of separation. As long as the condenser receives air cooler than the CRAH, heat is exchanged passively for ‘free cooling’ of the data center. SyCool

thermal effectiveness is nominally 70% which greatly exceeds that of competing economiser systems.

“It's quite an innovative approach to cooling a data center,” notes Michael Gantert, Munters’ President for Data Centers. “There are similar technologies that use pumps to circulate refrigerant between CRAH units and condensers.

We found that we could instead utilize thermosyphons to naturally circulate the refrigerant, eliminating the pumps while also achieving superior economising efficiency compared to other dry cooling solutions."

• Split systems eliminate duct penetrations • No water consumption • High efficiency economisation • Factory optimised controls

include 365,000 sq. ft. of manufacturing space and offices, as well as a 10,000 sq. ft. test lab with a climate control chamber for performance testing. The new facility will be powered by solar energy, adding to Munters overall sustainability objectives,” says Gantert.

“Whatever challenges a changing business climate may present, Munters is ready with the experience and expertise to help design the perfect climate solution for the data centers of the future.”

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TAS ENERGY

THE PREMIER

MODULAR DATA CENTER SOLUTIONS PROVIDER WRITTEN BY: DAN BRIGHTMORE PRODUCED BY: LEWIS VAUGHAN

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TAS ENERGY

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Supporting Edge and Hyperscale customers with a full stack offering for a modular approach to design, customisation, manufacture and installation

T

AS Energy boasts more than two decades experience in off-site construction, delivering efficient, modular systems utilised in power and utility applications across the globe. When the company’s CEO JT Grumski joined the company in 2013, TAS began to focus more on manufacturing products for the data center/networks industry.

“I was inspired to join TAS energy because I could see a huge opportunity,” recalls Ron Mann, Vice President of Engineering at TAS Energy. “The data center space was one of the last vestiges for innovation that's ripe for disruption. If you look at traditional approaches to data center construction, they are becoming a lot harder to design and support based on where the IT's going.

“Modular is a big part of that going forward, whether it be at the Edge in support of IoT or the rise of 5G. Because of this changing technology landscape, it’s not a matter of if the data center industry is going to change, but a matter of when and who's going to lead it. TAS is in a great position to help inspire efforts at innovation.”

Integrating modular fabrication with innovation “During my time working for HP it became apparent that advances in IT cannot always be supported by traditional construction techniques; things like smaller U compute form factors leading to higher density components and rack systems,” notes Mann. “In the modular 204

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Ron Mann Vice President Engineering, TAS Energy

TAS ENERGY

TAS Products - Modular Data Center Products

21+

years delivering innovative modular solutions

600,000

square feet of manufacturing space

3,000+

modules supplied in 2019

400+

projects delivering efficient modular systems in over 32 countries

10

industries served: Data Centers, District Cooling, Edge, Education, Gaming, Government, Healthcare, LNG/Oil & Gas, Manufacturing/Pharma, Power/Industrial, Telco

space, there’s often been the need to engage with two different suppliers, one who was an expert in fabrication and design of the module, because we learned early on that you can't simply take a storage or shipping container and make it into a data center module, it just doesn't work. And then we'd have to find a module integrator who can unite the electrical and cooling together with all the other elements in the module for a complete modular data center solution. TAS has the ability and capability to perform all of these tasks.”

TAS Energy is well placed to meet those needs with best-in-class modular data center solutions that can bring connectivity to the Edge. “Ultimately, this has led to the development of our new TAS Edge Data Center module – the base design is a five-rack solution that can be expanded up to 17 racks by adding additional modules leveraging the same basic power and cooling building blocks with an initial maximum capacity of 20kw/rack..”

TAS ENERGY

The TAS Edge Data Center The TAS Edge Data Center was developed to deliver the future for Edge computing. Mann’s team focused on three major elements: power, cooling, and IT rack capacity. “We looked at power input and distribution, different approaches to cooling and the possibility for capacity options in the module,” he explains.

“We’ve aimed for a design that allows these three elements to be individually modified off the shelf to match customer requirements without having to redesign the entire product to meet specific customer requirements. At the same time, we’re avoiding under or overprovisioning of the power or cooling.”

“We're also utilising different types of clean technology for that cooling,” adds Mann. “At launch we have a chilled water and DX version, and we will be following up with adiabatic.

We're also working with cold plate technology for higher density applications. What's great about this approach is that you can take the same infrastructure we’ve developed, put in say the cold plate technology for CPUs and GPUs, taking away ~70% of the heat generated, then cooling the rest of the IT components with the airflow that is already available. It’s designed to be an adaptable product.”

RON MANN

VICE PRESIDENT ENGINEERING, TAS ENERGY

TITLE: VICE PRESIDENT ENGINEERING INDUSTRY: ENGINEERING LOCATION: UNITED STATES Ron Mann, VP of Engineering at TAS, has frequently been promoted and selected for critical projects and programs. Successful in identifying and seising untapped opportunities, anticipating market needs and developing products to meet them, Mann successfully builds interdisciplinary collaborations to achieve overall corporate objectives.

EXECUTIVE BIO

“ WE’RE DEALING WITH THE TRANSITION FROM TRADITIONAL ARCHITECTURES AND STICK-BUILT CONSTRUCTION TO MODULARITY”

RON MANN

TAS ENERGY

“The TAS Edge Data Center’s monitoring capabilities encompass a lot of features including calculating things like PUE or pPUE via a configurable dashboard as well as monitoring and alerting for critical functions. “We can support modular IT on any scale, so the alerts can be modified to meet specific customer requirements and densities,” assures Mann.

“We understand that flexibility in software is a big part of the management of any solution.”

From stick-built construction to modularity The move to the Edge is being driven by the need for improved latency. With the adoption of AI, the growing impact of IoT devices, and the rise of 5G, what are some of the challenges that TAS is facing to meet this demand?

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“ MODULARITY LENDS ITSELF TO A REPEATABLE APPROACH THAT CAN BE DEPLOYED AS STANDARD, REDUCING WASTE AND SAVING BOTH TIME AND MONEY” RON MANN

VICE PRESIDENT ENGINEERING, TAS ENERGY

TAS ENERGY

Being at the Edge, presents further challenges with modular DCs being placed inside of buildings, on rooftops, in parking lots, or in a field in the middle of nowhere. “The traditional, large data centers aren't going away, they're just being supplemented to remove the latency and other issues you must overcome for quick data at the Edge,” says Mann.

“Localised nodes are coming into play here. It might be hospitals needing diagnostic support closer to patients or IoT that needs supporting across industrial or manufacturing settings.”

“We've had customers trying to build factories that require specific IT elements that need to be repeatable to deploy at sites around the world. That's where it gets interesting. How do you make a standard when you have different standards in how things are applied across the globe? We’re approaching modular structures now as IT devices rather than buildings - it requires a different approach to upfront planning.”

“We’re dealing with the transition from traditional architectures and stick-built construction to modularity,” he reasons.

“Customers want to take advantage of modularity, but they still want some of the features of a traditional stick-build approach, so there is some mixing and matching going on as the industry adjusts to these new dynamics. Even Hyperscale customers want certain elements of their data centers to be modularized. However, when you are considering a modular approach at any level, not all of the applications or processes from traditional construction apply. Ultimately, we’re having to educate the customer, and also help any third parties involved, to understand modularity with respect to design considerations, operations and even how you ship the modules to site.”

TAS ENERGY

DID YOU KNOW...

PARTNERING FOR INNOVATION

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“TAS Energy has developed a trusted partner ecosystem to support rack and IT integration, cooling solutions and fire protection and suppression,” explains Engineering Vice President Ron Mann.

“Total Site Solutions do a great job with rack and IT integration bringing a value add to the customer. A client may want to integrate all of their IT and fully test it with their in-house software before deploying it, so it's literally ‘plug and play’ when it hits the site. Fully deployable IT is an important endto-end skillset that helps us make a project as cost effective as possible.”

“Stulz have a proven track record developing closely coupled cooling solutions for organisations like HP requiring energy efficient temperature and humidity management technology, specifically for mission critical applications. In many data centers you’ll find a three-foot cold aisle and a one or two-foot hot aisle. Reaction times are a lot quicker when something happens. The example I use is that if you're in Houston, Texas in July and there's five people in a conference room designed to

June 2021

host 15, and the cooling goes out, we may not even notice that for an hour because we have over capacity in the conference room and there's just five of us in there.

Which is a lot like what happens in a data center. But when you're in a closely coupled environment it's different. If you lose a cooling system, your redundancy model's different. You might have minutes to react before your servers hit thermal overload.

But we’ve learned that redundancy isn’t always important to customers if they have a failover strategy, so we aim to do the modularity on the different components: the power, the cooling and the IT.” “Viking helps us with fire protection and suppression. They have a neat rack modular solution for indoor cooling. Together, we’re adapting this contained solution to be able to scale it to the different sizes of modules requested without having to overprovision it. We’re rack and IT agnostic, so this partnership helps us meet the different requirements of our customers and allows us to ‘plug and play’ with different UPS technologies.”

TAS ENERGY

Customer Centricity Mann’s team have experience on both sides of the fence and appreciate the complexities of marrying physical infrastructure with IT. “The first thing we do with each new customer is to determine how modular they are. Is this their first deployment? Do they understand the dynamics? Can we scope it right? How can we be cost efficient to make sure that it meets their requirements? Site preparation is key. In my career I’ve seen deployments of IT modules arrive where the site costs spiraled because of a lack of communication or coordination.

“You have to understand the two elements: What's the site going to look like and what are you trying to do? Are you going to put that module on pilons or a pad? How is it going to be deployed? Is it permanent or is it temporary? You don't want to try to save money on the module side and then spend it all on the site because you didn't plan it the

“ IT’S NOT A MATTER OF IF THE DATA CENTER INDUSTRY IS GOING TO CHANGE, BUT A MATTER OF WHEN AND WHO'S GOING TO LEAD IT. TAS IS IN A GREAT POSITION TO HELP INSPIRE EFFORTS AT INNOVATION” RON MANN

VICE PRESIDENT ENGINEERING, TAS ENERGY

same way. Understanding all of these dynamics is vital to create balance and promote efficiency.”

Efficiency & Sustainability TAS Energy’s full stack offering helps customers develop a greener approach to power by avoiding over-provisioning. “We make sure we’re supporting the customer with exactly what they need for their IT load. For example, if you’re running an average of 10kw/rack across five racks, but the application - maybe it's some type of algorithm for analysis or you’re running a business application – jumps up your compute load to 20kw/rack. How do you make sure your system is accounting for that? We can deploy a system capable of ramping up and back down again so that it matches the load and you're not wasting power, so for example, you're not always static at maximum of say 20kw/rack cooling when you only need 10kw.” datacentremagazine.com

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“THE TAS EDGE DATA CENTER IS THE RIGHT MODULAR PRODUCT FOR THE RIGHT TIME. OUR GOAL IS TO NOT ONLY HAVE PRODUCTS THAT FIT THE ENVIRONMENT TODAY, BUT THAT CAN ALSO ADAPT AND GROW AS THE ENVIRONMENT CHANGES TOMORROW” RON MANN

VICE PRESIDENT ENGINEERING, TAS ENERGY

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trade-offs both as the technology matures and the market adopts it. This is why we take a step approach using best of breed designs and technologies today while continuing to innovate with future technologies that will be used asIT applications and hardware continue to evolve.

TAS is also developing hybrid solutions featuring technologies like cold plate combined with optimised air cooling, says Mann. “As we reach the limits of what we can do with air alone especially as rack power densities increase, you have to look at these hybrid approaches” he continues. “People are getting past the hesitancy of introducing water to a server as they better understand the IT density cooling challenges.”

Trends Mann highlights the long-term strategy for companies will be to focus on more efficient and consistent design.

“Whatever geography

TAS is also at the forefront of the nascent market for immersion cooling technologies with two phase systems. Cooling happens by the natural process of heat evaporation and cooling without consuming a lot of energy. “This technique optimizes the cooling of hardware and results in better cooling efficiency,” says Mann. “Compared to traditional air, liquid immersion cooling, is the best method to remove heat but as with any new or emerging technology, there are support

TAS ENERGY

1999

Year founded

Engineering Industry

233

Number of employees

TAS ENERGY

“TAS IS WELL PLACED TO ANSWER THAT CALL WITH ITS TAS EDGE DATA CENTER OFFERING” RON MANN

VICE PRESIDENT ENGINEERING, TAS ENERGY

a data center is in, modularity lends itself to a repeatable approach that can be deployed as standard, reducing waste and saving both time and money.”

Meanwhile, in the short-term, when companies run out of capacity, they’re looking for a fast turnaround. “Companies are asking: How can I modularise and get something in place today?” reveals Mann. “TAS is well placed to answer that call with its TAS Edge Data Center offering. You don't have to build a megawatt data center and only use half of it initially; modularity allows you to deploy and pay as you need it. We also have some customers who are treating these modular DCs as an expense versus capital because they’re considering the lifecycle of just a few years and then replacing it with another IT solution incorporating the latest IT technologies.”

With Edge evolution sparking a connectivity revolution, Mann is excited about the opportunities TAS has to help its customers realise new and cost-effective ways to deploy their applications. “This industry is ready for change to meet the demands of new IT and edge applications… The TAS Edge Data Center is the right modular product for the right time.

Our goal is to not only have products that fit the environment today, but that can also adapt and grow as the environment changes tomorrow.”

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FUTURE FACILITIES

FRANCE GETS UPTIME-CERTIFIED TIER IV COLO DATA CENTRE WRITTEN BY: MELISSA KHAN PRODUCED BY: LEWIS VAUGHAN 216

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FUTURE FACILITIES

HPE, Future Facilities and New Generation partner to provide Thésée’s innovative colocation DCMS system

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hésée DataCenter, a 100% French colocation hosting services provider –from a few bays to a complete building – has embarked on a colocation project like no other with the launch of their Uptime-certified Tier IV data centre. Located in Aubergenville, 25 minutes from Paris, Thésée is independent and neutral towards telecom operators and cloud providers, giving French-owned organisations the sovereignty they seek from a data centre.

Eventually comprising six data centre buildings, each housing two identical data halls of 534 square metres, the facility is aimed at mixed-density from legacy to HPC server hosting, but in an energy-efficient manner. Each data centre hall benefits from its own 6Sigma Digital Twin from Future Facilities to ensure that capacity is managed efficiently and that it is always working at optimal efficiency from a power and cooling standpoint. Thésée has worked together with Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Future Facilities and New Generation to offer a world-first experience to its end customers with complete transparency on what is occurring in the customer’s data centre space. This is groundbreaking in terms of colocation customer experience. The secret to this customer experience comes from an end-to-end integrated Data Centre Management System (DCMS) designed datacentremagazine.com

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DID YOU KNOW...

WHY DID THÉSÉE IMPLEMENT A DIGITAL TWIN?

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• Offer clients a rich, innovative customer experience – an essential tool in the communication between the data centre and its customers • Allow clients access to a 3D vision of their IT equipment and operating conditions – a home away from home data centre experience • Provide complete transparency to customers in real-time on performance and service level indicators • Allow customers to develop precise knowledge of the evolutionary capacity of their infrastructures and plan future installations risk-free • Help Thésée better optimise the filling of the data centre and use full capacity - essential to the financial success of the data centre

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by HPE, integrating solutions from Future Facilities and New Generation with all of the information accessed via a single web portal. Thésée will offer the end customer the opportunity to manage their own data centre space via a web portal with access to all alarms and performance metrics, as well as the ability to interact with a virtual replica of their 3D space and have access to CFD simulation to assess IT deployment options.

The 6Sigma Digital Twin is the only CFD tool

FUTURE FACILITIES

CHRISTOPHE BOUNIOL TITLE: PRESIDENT Christophe Bouniol, president of the company, has a great management experience associated with a commercial experience, based on more than 20 years in sales and leadership in Europe, as well as his expertise in team management, rigor and commitment to quality services for customers acquired in the management of subsidiaries of U.S. companies, allow to set a course for the young company that is Thésée DataCenter.

DAVE KING

that allows data centres to optimise the design, improvement and operational planning of data centres. The 6SigmaDCX product suite, the industry's leading data centre CFD tool, is built for both data centre design and operations.

Its 3D representation of the physical data centre - combined with a cutting-edge CFD (computational fluid dynamics) solver - lets data centre providers safely simulate the impact of change on a data centre’s resilience, physical capacity and cooling efficiency.

MEET THE TEAM

TITLE: PRODUCT MANAGER Dave King has over a decade of experience in the data centre industry. Most of that time has been spent either consulting on design and troubleshooting projects around the world or training people in the application of engineering simulation for the design and operational planning of data centres. His accumulated global experience has resulted in the publication of numerous papers and being asked to share this knowledge at many leading international conferences. Now a Product Manager at Future Facilities, Dave is using that experience to drive the development of the industry leading data centre simulation product suite, 6SigmaDCX and the 6Sigma Digital Twin.

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6Sigma Digital Twin Simulating the Impact of Data Center Change Without Risk Follow us on:

Learn more

FUTURE FACILITIES

“ This integration facilitates the dayto-day management of the data centre operations on the customer-front and allows users to have an open and transparent dialogue with their providers for the first time ever” GILLES CIEZA

CEO AND FOUNDER NEW GENERATION

The 6Sigma Digital Twin has been used throughout the data centre design phase to validate Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s design, understand rack density limits, and simulate failure scenarios. A digital twin is essentially a 3D representation of the entire data centre and includes all its characteristics – from physical dimensions to energy consumption, giving customers a real-time, cost-effective view. Speaking further about the 6Sigma Digital Twin and its capabilities, Dave King,

Product Manager of the 6SigmaDCX product suite at Future Facilities, says, “The 6Sigma Digital Twin will be used extensively by both Thésée and its customers, in the day-today operations of the data centre, allowing them to see a 3D virtual replica of their realtime data centre space. Customers will use insight from dashboards, reporting, and CFD simulation to make informed decisions on IT upgrades and capacity planning.”

In addition to offering digital access, the digital twin also behaves as a predictive tool with the use of CFD simulation inputs, helping customers gather insights on the data centre’s thermal environment and taking necessary measures to increase efficiency. King, who has been working with Future Facilities for the last 14 years, understands the need for this technology, datacentremagazine.com

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Thésée Datacenter Colocation 6Sigma Digital Twin

“ Thésée is a key partner for us in France to develop our service strategy, and we will go to market together in order to commercialise the software for our own customers” PASCAL LECOQ

WORLDWIDE DIRECTOR OF DATA CENTRE TECHNOLOGY HPE

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adding that simulation has helped organisations make better decisions and adapting to a multi-tenant environment has brought much-needed flexibility to the customers who use these data centres.

Future Facilities has been working closely with their French reseller Wattdesign to build the digital twin model that grants almost full autonomy to the end-users of the Thésée data centre. Originally designed by HPE, Future Facilities were able to connect with Thésée on the implementation of the digital twin as a result of this collaboration.

Future Facilities worked closely with partners

FUTURE FACILITIES

PASCAL LECOQ TITLE: DIRECTOR Director at HPE Pointnext, in charge of Worldwide Datacenter Technology Services Practice, "I focus on Advisory, Professional and Operations Consulting Services that include Data Center transformation and consolidation programs, featuring strategic advisory consulting from Edge to Cloud, concept and detailed design, implementation and commissioning services, Data Center assessments and capacity planning, operations consulting, as well as solution offerings as Modular Data Centers from Micro DC’s to POD’s (Data Centers in containers), Datacenter Management Services, Datacenter as a Service."

GILLES CIEZA

like Wattdesign, HPE and New Generation to ensure that Thésée’s colocation centre was equipped with the latest product suite, which meant building some new integration models and adapting the software to cater for a multi-tenant environment. Thésée co-founder Christophe Bouniol, who has years of experience working in the IT space, understands the need for customer sovereignty and transparency, and so offering a French-owned data centre to its end users and implementing Future Facilities’ 6Sigma Digital Twin didn’t require a second thought. Bouniol says that high

MEET THE TEAM

TITLE: CEO "NewGen is a high tech company specializing in deep tech and integration of complex solution s for B to B clients. We develop innovative solutions for DC Operators aiming at creating value through the adoption of our DC Management System technologies (DCMS) NUVEA PaaS. Our platform provides easy overall integrated management of DC operations, dramatic cost reduction as well as overall optimization of DC management. NUVEA PaaS enables DC operators to quickly build up a service stack and generate additional revenues through its market place."

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USE OF CFD SIMULATION IN DESIGN • Finetune the data centre design and find out the design limits • Simulate failing AHUs in high-density environments: N+2, N+1 and N scenarios • Optimise whitespace organisation • Ensure that cooling could cope with space configurations at Phase 1, Phase 2 and Phase 3 of implementation using 6-12 AHUs • Explore the thermal dynamics of the computer room when low- and highdensity racks are placed in close proximity

DID YOU KNOW...

USE OF CFD SIMULATION IN OPERATION

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• Check the risk of any data centre changes and maximise performance • Make informed ‘scientific’ recommendations to clients on rack and equipment placement • Allow customers to test future scenarios and take full advantage of the data centre capabilities with confidence • Simulate every data centre change, both in pre-sales and capacity planning

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FUTURE FACILITIES

“ At Thésée, we are proud to work with our business partners such as HPE –who helped us design our data centre, New Generation who helped us build our own portal, as well as Future Facilities and Wattdesign in France who helped realise our solution for a best in class colocation data centre” CHRISTOPHE BOUNIOL PRESIDENT THÉSÉE DATACENTER

availability and increased energy efficiency are Thésée’s competitive advantage and continues to test and implement solutions that will continue to provide these benefits to his data centre facility. Speaking about the collective collaboration that helped bring the data centre to life, Bouniol adds, “At Thésée, we are proud to work with our business partners such as HPE – who helped us design our data centre, New Generation who helped us build our own portal, as well as Future Facilities and Wattdesign in France who helped realise our solution for a best in class colocation data centre.”

Thésée has worked closely with Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) to build a new generation data centre (NGDC), bringing together the best in class technologies and solutions. The collaboration between HPE and Thésée is two-fold – the first being on a design and concept level, allowing HPE to choose contractors, monitor quality, implement changes and integration of the DCMS (along with partner New Generation).

The second phase of collaboration focuses on the sales and business development of the data centre, allowing HPE to migrate their client roster to Thésée’s data centre. Pascal Lecoq, HPE’s Worldwide Director of Data Centre Technology Services, adds, “Thésée is a key partner for us in France to develop our service strategy, and we will go to market together in order to commercialise the software for our own customers.” datacentremagazine.com

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At the heart of this collaboration is New Generation, offering an enhanced customer functionality through end-to-end integration of all the systems – from DCIM and BMS to operations optimisation components – with the help of their NUVEA PaaS web service portal. New Generation has had a long-standing partnership with HPE, working together to create an integrated management solution for the data centre and its customers. Gilles Cieza, CEO and founder of New Generation, adds that this integration “facilitates the day-to-day management of the data centre operations on the customer228

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front and allows users to have an open and transparent dialogue with their colocation providers for the first time ever”. With the NUVEA PaaS model, Thésée’s end users will be able to log in to a single web interface to see all data centre and operating condition metrics, as well as order equipment and decide on planned upgrades. Customers will be able to see their data centre space with full equipment specifications as a 3D view, powered by the 6Sigma Digital Twin. Thésée will offer its customers the ability to simulate future capacity planning to ensure their space usage is maximised without risk.

FUTURE FACILITIES

6Sigma Digital Twin by Future Facilities

“The 6Sigma Digital Twin will be used extensively by both Thésée and its customers in the day-to-day operations of the data centre, allowing them to see a 3D virtual replica of their real-time data centre space” DAVE KING

PRODUCT MANAGER, FUTURE FACILITIES

Future Facilities’ 6Sigma Digital Twin and the innovative systems architecture combine to offer Thésée customers a truly unique experience. The use of Future Facilities’ CFD simulation via the 6Sigma Digital Twin allows both Thésée and its customers the ongoing ability to predict outcomes and make operational decisions in a cost-effective and risk-free manner whilst maximising energy and capacity efficiency. The insight offered

by Future Facilities’ 6SigmaDCX product suite is crucial to the continued success of the Thésée DataCenter project. Speaking about how Future Facilities continues to

adapt to the needs of the industry, King adds, “We work not only with companies running high-density AI applications but also with companies who are trying to make the most out of 25-year-old ageing infrastructure, so we have quite a large breadth of experience.

So, whenever we come up against something new, we're always trying to make sure that our software adapts and evolves to allow people to simulate anything that they have in their existing data centre with our software.”

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GREEN

POWER IN THE

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WRITTEN BY: HARRY MENEAR PRODUCED BY: LEWIS VAUGHAN

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THE EXECUTIVE TEAM BEHIND SPACEDC TALKS GREEN POWER, EMERGING MARKETS, AND COLLABORATING WITH THE OCP

A

cross Southeast Asia (SEA), the region’s data centre industry is experiencing a period of generational change. In Singapore, the region’s most mature market, construction of new data centres has ground to a halt, stopped short by a government moratorium that took effect back in 2019 - part of the government’s attempts to find a way to reconcile a powerhungry business with its own commitments to the Paris Climate Agreement. Elsewhere, the rise of e-commerce and cloud, combined with the effects of the ongoing COVID19 pandemic, is driving demand for digital infrastructure to all-time highs. “In 2019, SEA’s digital economy was worth about $100bn. That figure is showing every sign of tripling by 2025,” says Darren Hawkins, CEO of SpaceDC. SpaceDC’s COO, Carolyn Harrington, explains that, “Traditionally, companies would look to house their data and compute resources in Singaporean data centres. But Singapore has a moratorium going on right now as the country grapples with how to reconcile its data centre industry with its carbon-neutrality goals.” The trend emerging in response, she continues, is that companies across SEA are now gravitating towards data centres within emerging markets like Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines, as opposed to Singapore.

This is where SpaceDC comes in. Founded in 2019, the Singapore-based startup is bringing new levels of technical sophistication, and a focus on green power, to emerging markets

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“ OUR MISSION IS TO BE A ONE-STOPSHOP FOR CUSTOMERS LOOKING TO EXPAND IN BOTH MATURE AND EMERGING MARKETS” DARREN HAWKINS TITLE: CEO COMPANY: SPACEDC INDUSTRY: DATA CENTRES LOCATION: SINGAPORE Darren Hawkins is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of SpaceDC, the first data center provider in Singapore to establish a partnership with the government's sovereign wealth fund (GIC). Over the course of a 30+ year career in the data centre and critical infrastructure industries, Hawkins has worked for clients such as ANZ, Global Switch, Toyota, HSBC, BAA, TfL and Telstra. He has a proven reputation for delivering a broad range of capital-intensive projects that led to long-term business advantages across Europe and Asia Pacific, with successful projects ranging in value of up to $10bn.

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SpaceDC Chief Executive Officer Darren Hawkins

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State of the Art Data Centres with resilient and high-quality infrastructure | Space DC

“GREEN POWER IS GOING TO BE IMMENSELY IMPORTANT OVER THE NEXT FEW YEARS”

throughout SEA. The - well underway, we company opened its sat down with Hawkins, first data centre in the Harrington, and SpaceDC’s Indonesian capital of CTO Nick Stavroulakis, Jakarta in November of to discuss the changing last year. Housed in an landscape of SEA’s elegant, yet industrial, data centre industry, silver building 15 the legacy of COVIDkilometres from the heart 19, and the realities of of the city, JAK2 delivers delivering green data 1.45 MW of carrier neutral centre infrastructure in data centre capacity in a the tropics.

DARREN HAWKINS Tier III facility that not only CEO, delivers a PUE of 1.3 in a Staying cool and keeping SPACEDC country where average it green in the tropics temperatures never fall below 25 Degrees “Climate is a huge factor to consider Celsius, but also holds the title of Asia’s first when expanding into both developing OCP-Ready data centre. and mature markets in SEA. Jakarta DC Now, with Space ’s next project, JAK1 - a 24 and Singapore are both very hot and MW hyperscale facility that both dramatically humid climates year-round, as opposed expands the company’s capacity in Indonesia, to Melbourne or Sydney, or markets and maintains the exacting standards that further north where you get seasons,” make JAK2 stand out from the competition explains Stavroulakis, the man in charge 236

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of designing and building a portfolio of data centres that are not only capable of delivering world-class colocation services in the heart of Jakarta, but doing it sustainably. “Success in SEA is really dependent on building to a design that maximises your facility's efficiency in this hot and humid climate.”

As a result, SpaceDC’s Jakarta data centres - which are both housed on its 1.8 hectare ID01 campus - take a novel approach to cooling their server racks.

“Rather than use a very traditional chilled water solution, or even a DX CRAC unit design, we're using high-efficiency, variable-speed chillers, which bring our efficiency right up and our PUE right down,” Stavroulakis explains. “With the design of JAK2, we spent a lot of time designing and building to both international and Indonesian standards to make sure that the

facility meets the needs and expectations of both overseas and domestic customers.” JAK2 uses fan walls to cool its server racks which, as opposed to a traditional CRAC unit, is far more efficient.

Stavroulakis adds that, from a design and maintenance perspective, “Fan walls also mean that there's no raised floor, which means we can install bigger, heavier, denser racks. The other advantage there is that the fan walls can all be maintained by the onsite staff, as opposed to having to call in a more specialised contractor to come and repair a broken CRAC unit.”

Keeping both temperatures and PUE’s low in a climate like Jakarta is no mean feat, but for SpaceDC, it’s a nonnegotiable issue. As Harrington explains, “Sustainability really is at the heart of our philosophy, starting from the design phase of the data centre.”

JAK1: BRINGING HYPERSCALE TO INDONESIA

CASE STUDY...

“Indonesia’s data centre sector is expected to grow significantly, driven largely by mass e-commerce adoption.

Currently, there is more than 100 MW of hyperscale capacity that's expected to be added to the market over the next few years,” Hawkins says. “And we'll be developing 25 MW of that ourselves in our ID01 campus.”

The overwhelming share of that capacity will be housed in JAK1, SpaceDC’s 24 MW hyperscale data centre. Built to exacting Tier III, OCP-Ready, Colo Solution Provider Status standards, JAK1 promises to be one of the most cutting-edge, efficient and green data centres, both in Indonesia and all of SEA.

JAK1 at a glance: Capacity: 24 MW Uptime Institute Tier III certification N+1 redundancy on all critical power and cooling systems 99.995% availability 24 x 1,000kW data halls Floorspace: 26,000m2

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SpaceDC Chief Technology Officer Nick Stavroulakis

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“SUCCESS IN SEA IS REALLY DEPENDENT ON BUILDING TO A DESIGN THAT MAXIMISES YOUR FACILITY'S EFFICIENCY IN THIS HOT AND HUMID CLIMATE”

NICK STAVROULAKIS TITLE: CTO COMPANY: SPACEDC INDUSTRY: DATA CENTRES LOCATION: SINGAPORE As the Chief Technology Officer at SpaceDC, Nick Stavroulakis oversees the design and construction of all the company’s data centre campuses. Prior to joining SpaceDC, Stavroulakis served as the Principal and Project Engineer at Wood & Grieve Engineers, spearheading multidisciplinary teams of more than 25 technical staff with major projects exceeding AUD500mn in value. Some of the clients and projects include ANZ Bank, Global Switch, Telstra and Fujitsu Data Centers. He currently lives in Singapore with his family.

He has a Bachelor of Engineering in Mechanical Engineering and holds a certificate by Uptime Institute as an Accredited Tier Designer.

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2019

SpaceDC was founded in 2019

50+

The company currently has 50+ employees

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Going green in SEA, however, can be an uphill struggle. “Jakarta still uses mostly coal-fired power stations,” says Stavroulakis. “Which is why we've also got several options for doing onsite gas power generation, which is good compared to buying exclusively from the grid. Natural gas is a very good transition fuel in countries like Indonesia where there aren't enough renewables to go around.” JAK2 was the first data centre in Indonesia to fit a Selective Catalytic Reduction system to the diesel generators used to power its UPS, ensuring that maintaining its rate of 99.982% uptime availability doesn’t come at the cost of its green ambitions.

SpaceDC is also actively exploring more on-demand renewable energy generation for the customers for whom green power is a must-have. “If we have the demand from the customer, we'll develop our own solar array to fuel their presence in our facility,” says Hawkins. “We've been working away in the background developing those options, and we're ready to start having those conversations with our customers.

It's a good interim step that allows us to offer a far more environmentally friendly and efficient alternative to grid supply.”

In the meantime, Stavroulakis and his team are exhibiting a laser-like focus on reducing the power that SpaceDC’s facilities consume. In a market where renewables are in short supply, “It's better to reduce the amount of energy we use in the first place than to try and buy just solar power in a market where it isn't widely available.”

Harrington, whose job as COO is very much the Yin to Stavroulakis’ Yang, is quick to add that “Sustainability is at the heart of our business, and we instil it in everything we do - not just how we run our data centres.” datacentremagazine.com

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SpaceDC Site Tour

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groundbreaking in many ways, its 1.45 MWs pale in comparison to the next phase of SpaceDC’s Indonesian expansion. “JAK1 takes us to a new level in terms of being able to provide better performance and technical specifications to our customers,” enthuses Hawkins, adding that, “We've spent a lot of time during the building of JAK2 using the lessons we learned along the way to improve JAK1.” The four-storey facility can accommodate taller racks, and even denser server deployment of up to 10 kilowatts per rack, and promises to deliver some of the greenest, most efficientlyused power of any data centre in the region. To do that, JAK1’s design is breaking with a lot of the accepted practices in the Indonesian data centre market. “There's a lot of accepted redundancy in the design of some of the data centres in the Indonesian market,” explains Hawkins, “which is obviously inefficient, from a product, design, and environmental perspective.” SpaceDC, Hawkins adds, is looking to educate its customers about the From cutting down on paper usage in the office, using as little power as possible, and making sure that the power that is used is the greenest power possible, to reusing building materials. “When we built JAK2, we didn't throw anything away; all waste materials were reused in the construction process,” she adds.

JAK1: Taking it to the next level “As a design objective, what we wanted to do with JAK2 was provide a robust and resilient data centre built to international standards that matched the quality of facility you might see in Singapore, Tokyo, Sydney and other tier one markets,” says Hawkins.

JAK2 has been up and running for just under six months now and, while

“JAK1 TAKES US TO A NEW LEVEL IN TERMS OF BEING ABLE TO PROVIDE BETTER PERFORMANCE AND TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS TO OUR CUSTOMERS” DARREN HAWKINS CEO, SPACEDC

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Meet the SpaceDC team

“ SUSTAINABILITY IS AT THE HEART OF OUR BUSINESS, AND WE INSTIL IT IN EVERYTHING WE DO - NOT JUST HOW WE RUN OUR DATA CENTRES” CAROLYN HARRINGTON COO, SPACEDC

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fact that, because JAK1 (and JAK2) facilities are built to next generation standards of quality, they don't need the same amount of built-in resilience that more traditional facilities require.

“The average PUE for a data centre in Jakarta is close to 2, and the Uptime Industry calculates the global average at around 1.58,” says Stavroulakis. “We have a PUE of 1.3 which, if you look at a cold climate, isn't that impressive. But if you look at the kinds of PUE being recorded in tropical climates like ours, it's quite good.”

JAK1 was originally going to spin up in 2021, but the pressures of COVID-19 have conspired to push the launch date to early next year - still an impressive feat given the

DC SPACE SpaceDC Chief

Operating Officer Carolyn Harrington

CAROLYN HARRINGTON TITLE: COO COMPANY: SPACEDC INDUSTRY: DATA CENTRES

hammer blow that the pandemic delivered to the delicate Swiss watch of the global just-in-time manufacturing industry. “I think the world of manufacturing has spent the last 20 years or so really refining that 'just in time' model, where you have the minimum amount of inventory possible, parts from one factory get finished and then shipped straight out to another factory for the next step, and so on,” says Stavroulakis. “It was a really big eye opener to see how COVID19 threw that whole model out the window more or less overnight.” Over the past 12 months, SpaceDC has worked closely with its manufacturing partners and suppliers to overcome the challenges of the pandemic.

“Everyone’s thinking three, four, five steps

EXECUTIVE BIO

LOCATION: SINGAPORE Carolyn Harrington is the Chief Operating Officer of SpaceDC, a role in which she oversees not only the overall operations of the company’s data centre assets, but also the business’ commercial arm, including sales, customer account management, legal, and marketing. She brings more than two decades of experience establishing and growing new companies to the role, and excels at strategic planning, as well as effective management of staff and development of market ready products and services.

Harrington has received widespread recognition by various establishments, including Springboard Enterprises and, more recently, Portfolio Magazine Singapore, as an accomplished women entrepreneur leading technologydriven companies.

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ahead, as opposed to before COVID-19, when you could just think of the next one or two,” Stavroulakis adds.

Building for the future “Green power is going to be immensely important over the next few years.

Customers are looking for end-to-end services that include green power and we're developing the solutions to meet those needs,” says Hawkins. “Our focus at SpaceDC is to provide technically focused and green-driven data centre development in Asia. Our mission is to be a one-stopshop for customers looking to expand in both mature and emerging markets.” In the coming years, SpaceDC is set to grow, not only in Indonesia - where the company is

SPACE DC

already exploring projects in other cities outside Jakarta - but across emerging markets throughout SEA. The plan, Hawkins explains, is to continue driving data centre standards to higher and higher levels in the markets where SpaceDC operates, while continuing to keep sustainability at the forefront of everything the company does.

In order to stay ahead in the data centre industry, Stavroulakis explains that you need to think, design, and build ahead of the curve. “It takes about three to six months to design a new facility, then you have permitting, building, equipping progressing from the point where you start a project to the day when it goes online can take two to three years,” he explains.

When the SpaceDC team sits down to

DID YOU KNOW...

THE OCP IN SEA Originally founded as part of Facebook, the Open Compute Project (OCP) has spent the past decade building a global community of technology leaders looking to bring the benefits of open-sourced design and manufacturing - which already has a firm foothold in the software space - to the data centre hardware industry.

“JAK2 is the first OCP-ready data centre in all of SEA. Besides the facility being OCP-ready, we've also achieved Colo Solution Provider Status from the OCP, which translates to our offerings having a strong technical service and support capability, which enables our customers to scale their deployments of OCP infrastructure,” says Hawkins.

“It's really exciting to be a part of the OCP community. It really helps to distinguish us as a brand in terms of being part of the same community as tech giants like Google and Facebook, and it helps us position ourselves as a brand that our customers can depend on to deliver world-class solutions.”

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JAK2: BREAKING THE MOULD

CASE STUDY...

SpaceDC’s first Indonesian data centre, JAK2, came online in the midst of COVID-19 - amid social distancing, lockdowns, supply chain disruptions and travel bans. With most of its team based in Singapore, the company had to get creative with the process of, as Harrington describes it, “building a data centre from the ground up, from another country altogether.”

From using modularised, containerised, prefabricated construction techniques, to virtual site inspections - which then became virtual customer tours - SpaceDC has adapted well to the unexpected and unprecedented constraints of data centre construction in the age of COVID-19.

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JAK2 at a glance: Capacity: 1.45 MW Average density design: 3.8kW per rack (maximum of 15kW per rack) Uptime Institute Tier III certification 99.982% availability PUE rating of 1.3

SPACE DC

plan the next generation of facilities, the key is to “always be looking at that next wave of innovations and ways to create efficiencies. If we sat down and designed our data centres to look like the ones that are operating today, by the time they came to market, they'd already be a few years behind the curve. Designing for the future is a huge focus for us.”

This cutting edge design, Harrington adds, is only as effective as the team behind its day-to-day operations. “You can build an amazing data centre, but if you don't operate it right and have the right team in place, it doesn't matter,” she says. “I can say unequivocally that, in our operation team, the left hand definitely knows what the right hand is doing.

COVID-19 placed a huge task in front of them and, as a company, we're immensely proud of the work that they've done.”

For Hawkins, as the originator and guiding force behind SpaceDC’s strategic direction, the ID01 campus is just the beginning. “It’s the start of a broader strategy for us in SEA. We're very much looking to provide capacity for our customers to grow,” he says. “We're embracing the challenge of driving data centre standards in Indonesia, and we look forward to continuing in the future, not just in Indonesia, but in other countries as well.”

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