Data Centre - August 2021 by datacentremagazine

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August 2021 | datacentremagazine.com

Open Source: Unlocking the Edge for Retailers Networking: How to Take Down the Internet Data Centre Cooling: The Future is Liquid

Schneider Electric Leads Sustainability Change Natalya Makarochkina – the journey to drive efficiencies and cut emissions has only just begun

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The DataCentre Team EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

HARRY MENEAR EDITORIAL DIRECTOR

SCOTT BIRCH CREATIVE TEAM

OSCAR HATHAWAY SOPHIE-ANN PINNELL HECTOR PENROSE SAM HUBBARD MIMI GUNN JUSTIN SMITH REBEKAH BIRLESON DUKE WEATHERILL JORDAN WOOD

PRODUCTION DIRECTORS

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OWEN MARTIN PHILLINE VICENTE JENNIFER SMITH PRODUCTION EDITOR

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VIDEO PRODUCTION MANAGER

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DIGITAL VIDEO PRODUCERS

SAM KEMP EVELYN HUANG MOTION DESIGNER

MEDIA SALES DIRECTORS

JASON WESTGATE GLEN WHITE MANAGING DIRECTOR

LEWIS VAUGHAN

EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT

TYLER LIVINGSTONE

JORDAN HUBBARD

MARKETING MANAGER

CHIEF OPERATIONS OFFICER

MARKETING DIRECTOR

PRESIDENT & CEO

DAISY SLATER

ROSS GARRIGAN PROJECT DIRECTOR

LEWIS VAUGHAN

STACY NORMAN GLEN WHITE

FOREWORD

India is booming With a massive population that remains largely disconnected from the web, India is on the cusp of a veritable tsunami of data centre demand, as data consumption and cloud adoption grow with blinding speed.

“Hold onto yourselves, folks, the Indian data centre boom is here”

Pretty soon, India could have more than a billion people online, consuming and creating content, using social media, and adopting cloud and business intelligence services. All that in a country with barely more than 400 MW of data centre capacity. The demand for digital infrastructure already far outstrips supply, and it’s only going to get bigger. As a result, data centre operators are rushing to grow their capacity in India, with clusters of hyperscale facilities popping up across the country. AWS announced an investment of $2.8bn in November of 2020 to set up a data centre region. Google recently announced its second cluster in the country, located in the NCR. Iron Mountain is aggressively expanding throughout all of India’s major metros as part of a $150mn joint venture with Indian colocation firm Web Werks. Hold onto yourselves, folks, the Indian data centre boom is here.

HARRY MENEAR DATACENTRE MAGAZINE IS PUBLISHED BY

harry.menear@bizclikmedia.com

datacentremagazine.com

CONTENTS

Our Regular Upfront Section: 08 Big Picture 10 The Brief 12 Global News 14 People Moves 16 Timeline: Apple in the fields of Athenry 18 Trailblazer: Gary Wojtaszek 20 Five Minutes with: Stephen Green

Data Centres

Open Source: Unlocking the Edge for Retailers

Schneider Electric

Schneider Electric Leads Sustainability Change

Kohler Co.

Evolving Data Centre Power

PRGX

Audits and AI in a Time of Upheaval: PRGX Weighs in

Networking

How to Take Down the Internet

Critical Environment

Creating a Pollinator-Friendly Data Centre Industry

IXAfrica

Building the Big Edgein Kenya

106 Top 10

Women in the Data Centre Industry

Technology

Data Centre Cooling: The Future is Liquid

118

Edge Centres

Solar Power at the Edge

BIG PICTURE Colocation Crustaceans

Stavanger, Norway

Green Mountain is partnering up with a local lobster farm for an innovative new project. Green Mountain’s Stavanger data centre is “fjord-cooled”; seawater enters the facility at a temperature of 8°C and is released back into the fjord with a temperature of 20°C. The plan is to build a new facility next door, using the heated seawater to breed lobsters.

August 2021

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THE BRIEF “THE WAY WE CURRENTLY MANAGE THE LANDSCAPE MEANS THERE SIMPLY ISN’T ENOUGH FOOD FOR [BEES] TO SURVIVE” Dr Úna FitzPatrick,

Co-founder & Project Manager, AllIreland Pollinator Plan Ireland National Biodiversity Data Centre READ MORE

BY THE NUMBERS China’s data centre industry is on track to consume 222% more energy by 2035.

485.5bn kWh

150.7bn kWh

China Data Centre Energy Consumption 2035

China Data Centre Energy Consumption 2020

“We've got 2,000 stores and each is a mini data centre” Mike McNamara, CIO, Target

“ONE OF THE EASIEST WAYS TO KNOCK OUT A HYPERSCALE DATA CENTRE WOULD BE TO TARGET THE INCOMING FIBRE POSITIONS" Anonymous READ MORE

August 2021

EDITOR'S CHOICE PAT GELSINGER SHAKES UP INTEL DATA CENTRE BUSINESS Following a string of poor performances, Intel CEO, Pat Gelsinger reshuffled the company’s leadership team and dissolved its data centre unit. READ MORE

HOST IN IRELAND MOBILISES THE DC COMMUNITY TO SAVE THE BEES Host in Ireland’s DCs for Bees programme has launched “Orchards in the Community”, pledging to establish more than 1,000 orchards throughout the country. READ MORE

HOW IS AI HELPING TO MANAGE WORKLOADS IN DATA CENTRES? Workloads are taking their toll on the data centre industry. Now, enterprises are turning to AI for help reducing the burden on IT teams. READ MORE

Huawei is Winning the War for Africa’s Cloud Real quick, name one piece of good news that involves Huawei from the last six months. Uh, you mean good news for Huawei and not the US State Department? Geez, that’s a tough one. Beyond tentative 5G deals in Italy and Austria, Huawei has had a rough go of it in Europe, the US, and even at home over the last couple of years. But it’s not all doom and gloom. It’s not? . No. Well, not in Africa at any rate. From Kenya to South Africa, Huawei has been racking up government and enterprise contracts to deliver data centre, cloud, and telecom services. The Senegalese government just opted to stick all its data in a Huawei-built, Chinese ExportImport Bank-funded data centre. So far, there have been 70 deals in 41 countries between Huawei and foreign governments or state-owned enterprises. That’s not going to make Biden very happy. It’s not, but the US and Europe have long left African countries to more or less fend for themselves, and Huawei’s reach is broadening by the day as it steps in to fill that gap.

 PRIVATE CLOUD Contrary to popular wisdom, the private cloud isn’t dead yet far from it. Research conducted in early Q2 of 2021 points to investment in private cloud being on the rise.  REAL ESTATE INVESTMENT Asset management companies in the real estate sector, like Macquarie Capital and Blackstone, are continuing to warm up to the idea of data centres as a sound investment.  THE IRISH DATA CENTRE MARKET A new bill introduced to the Oireachtas recently looks to ban all data centre construction in the country to support Ireland in hitting its national sustainability goals.  INTEL Intel’s data centre business is on the rocks - so much so that Intel’s CEO, Pat Gelsinger, has gutted the division, firing Navin Shenoy, and bringing in fresh talent to run the new units.

W A Y U P AUG 21

W A Y D O W N

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GLOBAL NEWS

UNITED KINGDOM

Kao Data becomes the first UK campus to switch from diesel to HVO fuel Kao Data, which operates one of the UK’s densest high performance computing (HPC) campuses in Harlow between London and Cambridge, has become the first data centre in the UK to switch out its dieselfueled backup generators to run on renewable, low-carbon hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO).

August 2021

FRANCE

Interxion selected to anchor new cross channel fibre The English channel is getting its first fibre route in two decades. Crosslake Fibre is currently in the process of building a 520 kilometre subsea fibre optic cable to join the UK with mainland Europe, which will be anchored in Interxion’s Paris campus.

INDIA

Web Werks announces $100mn data centre in Bengaluru Indian colocation data centre operator Web Werks is ramping up its expansion into additional metro areas throughout the country, signing an MoU with the Karnataka government, outlining plans for a new data centre in the city of Bengaluru.

MALAYSIA

GDS unveils plans for hyperscale campus in Malaysia Chinese data centre developer and operator GDS Holdings is expanding its platform into the Southeast Asian region in response to growing demand for digital infrastructure and cloud services.

PHILIPPINES

Beeinfotech opens its first data centre in the Philippines Beeinfotech PH has opened its first data centre in the Philippines. The multi-millionpeso facility is the largest telco-neutral centre in the country and aims to fulfil the market’s need for a telcograde and tailored data centre services provider.

datacentremagazine.com

PEOPLE MOVES ASSAD NOORI FROM: ATOS TO: INTERXION WAS: COO, IDM, NORTHERN EUROPE NOW: MANAGING DIRECTOR, UK

Interxion: A Digital Realty Company has appointed Assad Noori as its new managing director for operations in the UK. Noori joins the company following a stint as the Chief Operating Officer of the Northern European infrastructure business at Atos, where he spent six years overseeing strategic operations and driving both organisational and digital transformation throughout the business. By leveraging Interxion and Digital Realty’s extensive data centre, cloud and colocation platform throughout the UK and beyond, “Noori aims to make Interxion a longterm choice for IT decision makers, not only offering the data infrastructure they need now, but infrastructure that will support their futures.” 14

August 2021

“ My aim is to catalyse all the positive things going on in the company and bring together Interxion’s talented teams to enhance the customer experience for both new and existing clients”

SANDRA RIVERA FROM: INTEL TO: INTEL WAS: CHIEF PEOPLE OFFICER NOW: EVP, GM DATA CENTRE & AI Following a divisional shake-up of Intel’s data centre unit, Sandra Rivera is taking on the newly minted title of executive vice president and general manager. Rivera will lead Intel’s focus on developing data centre products for cloud-based applications, including Intel’s Xeon line and field programmable gate array (FPGA) products. She will also drive the company’s overall AI strategy.

PAUL BESLEY FROM: PRESCIENT DATA CENTRES TO: CAPITALAND WAS: GM, NORTHERN IRELAND DATA CENTRE NOW: JOB TO: HEAD, EUROPE DC OPERATIONS Paul Besley, previously the general manager of Prescient Data Centres’ portfolio of Tier III colocation data centre facilities in Coleraine in the north of Ireland, has stepped up to manage the European data centre portfolio of CapitaLand, one of Asia’s largest diversified real estate groups, as it continues to expand throughout Europe and the UK. Besley is a veteran real estate executive who has previously held roles at Geo Networks, Vtesse Networks, and Global Switch. datacentremagazine.com

TIMELINE

APPLE IN THE

FIELDS OF ATHENRY After half a decade of court cases, marches protesting the project, marches in support of the project, and finally abandoning the project for more than two years, Apple has announced that it still intends to build a $1bn data centre campus in Galway, Ireland, with the potential for another five year wait before construction even begins.

APR

SEP

2015

Planning Application Filed

Planning Approved

Following an announcement in February of 2015 that it would invest €1.7bn into two hyperscale data centre campuses in Europe, Apple’s planning application for its data centre in Galway is filed.

Plans for the 20 MW (still considered a sizable facility back in 2015), 24,000 sqm data centre on a forested site in Derrydonnell, Athenry, are approved. Apple hints at plans to build more data centres on the site in future.

August 2021

FEB-AUG

OCT

JUN

2016

2019

2021

Plans Appealed

It’s dead

Or is it?

Local environmental groups, as well as those raising concerns over the data centre’s impact on the local power grid, repeatedly appeal the process. The local government gives the nod to proceed in August of 2016. However, the case heads to the High Court in October once again, and isn’t resolved (Apple won again) until October the following year.

After more than four years of protracted legal battles, concessions, marches in favour of the development, and twice as many protesting it, Apple throws its hands up, scraps the project, and puts the land on the market. Perhaps sensing local animosity towards a similar project, there are no takers. The land stays up for sale until June 2021.

Two months ago, just a week after Sinn Féin Galway East representative, Louis O’Hara, said in an interview that the Irish government should buy back the land, Apple filed a request to extend its planning permission for the Galway campus for another five years. Apple’s request does stress, however, that “It is the intention that the project will be undertaken as soon as practicable.” datacentremagazine.com

TRAILBLAZER

Gary Wojtaszek: BUILDING ONE EMPIRE AFTER ANOTHER

ost people at the top of their game don’t turn around and start again from scratch. Alexander the Great didn’t sack the city of Alexandria, only to turn round and walk away from the greatest empire the world had ever known to try and do it all again. Michael Jordan did actually give it a go but, if the first act of Space Jam and his 114 strikeouts during 497 plate appearances (during his actual career as a baseball star) can teach us anything, it’s that a lot of people who conquer the world can only do it once. And then there’s Gary Wojtaszek. The data centre industry titan has already defied expectations by taking an ambitious upstart data centre company with $525mn of investment, called CyrusOne, and turning it into a $12bn landmark of the industry establishment. Wojtaszek stepped down as the CEO of CyrusOne early last year. Now, it really looks as though he’s going to do it all again. Twice. Wojtaszek has served on the board of GDS Data Centres since 2017, during which time they’ve gone from - you guessed it an interloping upstart to one of the fastest growing, most recognisable brands in the Chinese data centre industry. This year, Wojtaszek is lending his magic touch to what just might be the most ambitious project in the industry

August 2021

right now. In March, he announced that he would be joining the board of directors as Quantum Loophole, an (I know it, you know it) upstart data centre company on track for great things. Quantum Loop wants to change the way that we design and build data centres forever. It’s a lofty ambition. But, with the company’s impressive $13mn seed funding round and the addition of Wojtaszek, to its leadership team, it’s off to a promising start. He says he’s “proud to be a contributor, helping the company reach its epic achievement of a first-of-its-kind, gigawatt-scale, master planned data center city developments.” And adds that, “Impeccable data center design considers scalability, cost-efficiencies with highspeed connectivity bridging networks and solutions for speedier transactions. Quantum Loophole’s approach carefully considers all of these elements, with fully integrated state-of-the-art renewable and sustainable solutions.” As Wojtaszek shifts his focus from C-Suite roles towards board-level leadership positions, he explains that, “it’s important to me that data center developments focus on scale, speed, and cost - with a keen eye on environmental and community impact.”

“Throughout my experience, I’ve learned it’s imperative to present contagious passion and enthusiasm” datacentremagazine.com

FIVE MINUTES WITH...

STEPHEN GREEN THE UK AND IRISH DATA CENTRE LANDSCAPES ARE CHANGING, IN THE FACE OF REGULATORY, ENVIRONMENTAL, AND TECHNOLOGICAL PRESSURES - NOT TO MENTION BREXIT. STEPHEN GREEN, CTO OF NTT UK&I, SITS DOWN WITH US TO DISCUSS THE FUTURE.

Q. HOW DO YOU FORESEE THE UK DATA CENTRE MARKET CHANGING IN THE WAKE OF BREXIT?

» The UK is currently working to

position itself as a region where global business can be done in a mature, governed and private way. This positioning will be key for the UK’s growth as it leaves the EU and enters into its own negotiations around contracts. If the UK is able to demonstrate that it is open for business and complying with the Data Protection Act, other regions will see it as a good partner both for business and retaining data.

Q. HOW DO YOU SEE RISING DEMAND FOR SUSTAINABLE DATA CENTRE DESIGN IMPACTING THE INDUSTRY IN THE COMING YEAR?

» We’ll see the demand for

sustainable data centre design impact the industry in a positive way. It’s important that we use our skills and technologies to reshape the future, ensuring that developments in the data centre space are not only good for business but also good for the planet. Powering data centres requires up to 1.5% of our global electricity usage, and this is expected to increase ten-fold by 2030. By 2023, 451 Research has predicted that data centre sustainability will become a competitive differentiator.

“ THERE HAS BEEN A TURNING POINT FOR THE DATA CENTRE INDUSTRY TO TAKE PROACTIVE ACTION ON SUSTAINABILITY” 20

August 2021

“ ACROSS THE INDUSTRY AS A WHOLE, THE PLACEMENT OF DATA CENTRES IS BECOMING A SCIENCE IN ITSELF, AND THE UK IS SEEN AS A GLOBAL HUB” Q. WHAT ARE NTT'S PLANS FOR THE UK?

» NTT is committed to the UK ICT

industry – we’re currently building a London hub of data centres as part of a £500mn data centre investment plan. At the end of 2020 we opened our London 1 Data Center in Dagenham, London. With 25,600 sqm of IT space and a maximum IT load of 64 MW, this location has tripled our data centre footprint in the UK and makes

1.5%

Powering data centres requires up to 1.5% of our global electricity usage, and this is expected to increase ten-fold by 2030.

NTT the third largest data centre company globally. The reason we have a huge focus on expansion projects in the UK is because of its connectivity. Dagenham in East London was selected as the location for London 1 Data Center due to its proximity to the Docklands. This area is established as the UK’s Internet hub and backbone for the global network that facilitates most of the London Internet Exchange's (LINX) infrastructure. datacentremagazine.com

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SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC

August 2021

SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC

SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC LEADS SUSTAINABILITY CHANGE WRITTEN BY: DOMINIC ELLIS

PRODUCED BY: LEWIS VAUGHAN

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SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC

August 2021

SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC

Schneider Electric is proud to be named the world’s most sustainable company – however, as Natalya Makarochkina explains, its journey to drive efficiencies and cut emissions has only just begun

Natalya Makarochkina

chneider Electric has been quietly but determinedly embracing sustainability for the last 20 years and its efforts were recognised when it was awarded the prestigious title of ‘The World’s Most Sustainable Company’ by Canadian media and research company Corporate Knights in January 2021. “It was a great honour to receive the award,” reflects Natalya Makarochkina, Senior Vice President, Secure Power Division, International Operations, after it jumped from 29th place the previous year. “It proves that every time we define a target, we fulfil it and lead by example.” Five months on, you won’t find any complacency among Makarochkina nor her peers. The French company, which came fourth in Gartner’s more recent annual ranking of corporate supply chains, is busy focusing its attention on two key strategies simultaneously – aiming to eliminate its own climate footprint by 2025 via its Sustainability Impact Program, and driving down emissions amongst its customers across more than 100 countries. “We are still at the early stages of our transformation programme – we want to cut CO2 emissions among our top 1,000 suppliers by 50%,” she said. “Future sustainability is key to us and we want to conserve our resources and protect our planet. Schneider Electric will continue to develop new products and ideas, and continue our goal of sustainability.” To many, Schneider Electric is the first name in power management, whether that’s medium or low voltage or secure power, and automation systems – and sustainability is now linked to “multiple customer wins,” as cited within its Q1 results statement. It now earns 70% of its revenue from, and directs 73% of its investments toward, sustainable solutions. datacentremagazine.com

SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC

Global Specialist in Energy Management & Automation

Its ‘Life Is On’ brand strategy, in which the benefits of connectivity and efficiency were first promoted six years ago, seems more pertinent than ever as countries now

“ We are still at the early stages of our transformation programme – we want to cut CO2 emissions among our top 1,000 suppliers by 50%” NATALYA MAKAROCHKINA

SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, SECURE POWER DIVISION, INTERNATIONAL OPERATIONS FOR SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC

August 2021

place greater emphasis on sustainability and meeting net-zero targets. For data centres, be they traditional or micro edge, Schneider’s expertise and knowhow are critical to success. At the moment, data centres consume 1% of global electricity use, but it’s forecast to increase significantly as demand for data grows. “The more data we receive, the more energy we need to process it,” she said. “Previously everyone thought that everything would go to cloud. Now we understand that traditional, hyperscale and colocation will continue to expand. We need more transformation at the Edge.” During COVID, it has seen the emergence of many Edge solutions – and rise in ‘plug-and-play’ and prefab concepts. “It’s extremely important to deliver software too, enabling customers to not only observe the centre, but analytics to make sure they can foresee the potential risks and take the appropriate measures in advance,” she said,

SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC

adding that hybrid solutions have been most in-demand. Micro Edge Data Centres are definitely growing and this will pose challenges for the industry at large. “The problem with Edge is that while individually, they consume a small amount of energy, if you look at the total amounts they consume, it’s huge amounts of power – it can be twice as much as traditional data centres.” It recently expanded its EcoStruxure™ Micro Data Center C-Series with the new 43U, offering the greatest capacity in the company’s commercial and office line of micro data centers. By helping customers deploy IT simply, securely, and reliably in any edge computing or commercial environment, the new solution is our largest, fully equipped model, eliminating the need for a purpose-built IT room, saving up to 48 percent on CapEx in 20 percent less time. The integration of EcoStruxture IT yielded 35% in energy savings and 30% cost savings in maintenance for the largest data centre in North Africa. Another new addition is its Edge Software and Digital Services programme, a complete suite of benefits, support tools and certifications that enables IT solution providers to create a managed power services practice.

• Fostering equal access to digital learning for 24,000 students in India by powering 100 co-educational schools with solar energy

TITLE: SVP, SECURE POWER DIVISION, INTERNATIONAL OPERATIONS INDUSTRY: ELECTRICAL & ELECTRONIC MANUFACTURING LOCATION: MOSCOW Natalya Makarochkina is the Senior Vice President (SVP) of Secure Power at Schneider Electric, on a mission to lead more than 1000 seasoned professionals in delivering sustainable, innovative ways to support customers and partners in their digital transformation. Natalya is a passionate executive with strong expertise in leading successful transformations within IT and Energy Management industries. Previous leadership roles include various senior management and sales positions across international technology companies comprising HPE, Philips, Oracle, 3COM and others. Secure Power provides complete physical infrastructure solutions for data centers, distributed IT environments, and industrial applications. As SVP position Natalya constantly empowers business success within multiple geographies – Asia, Pacific, India, Middle East, South

EXECUTIVE BIO

‘Glocal’ approach and onset of Electricity 4.0 It is important for Schneider Electric to be seen as international and local, she adds. “It’s a very flexible company and adapts to the needs of the customers. It’s not just about having offices in different parts of the world, but R&D and factories too.” Examples of local projects so far include:

NATALYA MAKAROCHKINA

America and CIS. Natalya holds an Executive MBA from the University of Antwerp, and Masters degree from the Higher School of Economics.

datacentremagazine.com

SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC

SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC’S 6 SUSTAINABLE COMMITMENTS 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Creating a climate-positive world Efficient resource consumption Credibility principles Equal opportunities Inclusion of all generations Strengthening communities

August 2021

SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC

“Previously everyone thought that everything would go to cloud. Now we understand that traditional, hyperscale and colocation will continue to expand. We need more transformation at the Edge” NATALYA MAKAROCHKINA

SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, SECURE POWER DIVISION, INTERNATIONAL OPERATIONS FOR SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC

• Transition to a 100% electric company car fleet in Norway by 2023 • Encourage Korean employees to support the shift to electrical vehicle • Add 150 circular product references to Schneider ‘s internal shop catalogue for employees in France. • Increase five-fold Schneider’s spend with indigenous-owned suppliers in Australia as part of the Reconciliation Action Plan • Give electrical products a second life through donations to an online marketplace for educational purposes, and to improve the electrical installations of families at risk of energy poverty in Spain Natalya explains that ‘Electricity 4.0’encompasses electric and digital to create a sustainable future. “It’s really ‘green energy’, using it in the most efficient way,” she said. “It will require a lot of enabling supply and demand efficiency and lifecycle software. It’s extremely important that customers can really integrate digital products and services, where they will require a lot of saved data, moving at high speeds. We try and ‘future proof’ our customers.” datacentremagazine.com

SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC

There are four defined needs for future data centres – Sustainable, Efficient, Adaptive and Resilient. They will need to be achieved through cost optimisation and reducing the risk of downtime. How do you see the industry evolving in 2021? Sustainability will remain top of the agenda, and it will become increasingly important for companies to assess and target the value chain, and Scope 3 emissions. Tech trends include ‘digital first’ and ‘remote

August 2021

first’ models, which will offer more valueadd experiences; we also need to look at integrated and sustainable supply chains, which will allow customers to have scalable digital experiences. How important is technology in driving sustainable practices? It’s extremely important, for private and public sectors. We have developed a lot of software and technology never stops. I believe that sustainability is a priority because it’s key to the next generation – and that’s why it’s core to Schneider’s DNA.

DID YOU KNOW...

WHAT ARE THE TOP TRENDS WITH ELECTRICITY 4.0?

SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC

“One of the challenges is the multi-layered approach. Electricity is everywhere so we must have good software that connects the dots. Customers are not just looking at prices but partners that can reduce carbon.” Last year was challenging, but the benefits of digitization allowed people to connect and businesses to stay operational, she adds. More companies, especially in the industrial sector, are now entering the market at much faster speeds, as companies seek ‘quick win’ solutions. Industry 4.0 is being characterised by connectivity, data and computational power; analytics and intelligence; human-machine interaction and advanced engineering. “We’ve also seen a big increase in e-commerce – this will require more energy, and companies will need to be more sustainable, resilient and efficient. It will be much quicker than the last 20-to-30 years,” she said. US ecommerce forecasts have been revised upwards with 18% growth expected in 2021, and growth in other regions, such as Sub-Saharan Africa, are being driven by rising mobile penetration.

“ It’s extremely important that customers can really integrate digital products and services, where they will require a lot of saved data, moving at high speeds” NATALYA MAKAROCHKINA

SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, SECURE POWER DIVISION, INTERNATIONAL OPERATIONS FOR SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC

The trend to ‘building back better’ is seeing major changes in the Data Centre industry. Leading Edge Data Centres, for example, are bridging the divide between regional and metropolitan Australia – and were acknowledged at the Datacloud Global Awards as a winner of The Edge Award 2021 . Another byproduct from the crisis has been the peak in online education, so learning has become more widely distributed. “That will stimulate digitization in other areas,” she said She signs off our interview on an optimistic note – confident in Schneider’s ability in delivering solutions to meet sustainability challenges. “It is not by chance that we are called the most sustainable company in the world. I’m confident we will meet the targets.”

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DATA CENTRES

OPEN SOURCE: UNLOCKING THE EDGE FOR RETAILERS

August 2021

DATA CENTRES

Open source edge computing is empowering retailers to use cutting edge technologies in the fight for consumer loyalty in a post-COVID world. WRITTEN BY: HARRY MENEAR

ven before the COVID-19 pandemic forced the world into lockdown, brickand-mortar retailers were fighting a bitter war against the rise of ecommerce channels. Now, as economies in Europe, North America and East Asia start to reopen in the wake of months of intensive vaccine rollouts, retailers are looking to throw themselves back into that fight with abandon. In the face of the ecommerce boom, and in the wake of a brutal year, retailers are increasingly looking to edge computing to support increased adoption of technologies ranging from advanced analytics and artificial intelligence (AI), to automation and augmented reality (AR) installations. From the growth of micro-stores and autonomous checkout solutions (a trend which is expected to increase four times over in the next three years) to deep, granular analysis of customer behaviour and identity, the amount of computing power required by a single retail location is far higher today than it was just a few years ago. As a result, edge computing is quickly replacing centralised cloud architectures as the support structure for these increasingly digitalised operations. datacentremagazine.com

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DATA CENTRES

“ As the COVID-19 pandemic impacted store closures, retailers have had to improve their use of technologies at the edge” OCP PROJECT To find out more about the evolving relationship between retail and edge computing - as well as how open sourced hardware is further accelerating edge adoption in the industry - I caught up with several experts from the Open Compute Project, including Steve Helvie, VP of Channel Development; Archna Haylock, Community Director, and Rajeev Sharma, Director of Software. “There is no doubt, the shopping experience has changed, especially in the last couple

years. Retailers have had to grow and change with the increased options for online and digital shopping,” the experts from the OCP explain. “As the COVID-19 pandemic impacted store closures, retailers have had to improve their use of technologies at the edge.” The OCP is actively helping to drive this evolution of the edge-retail relationship. In April, US retailer Target joined the OCP as a platinum member, with the company’s CIO, Mike McNamara illustrating the sheer scope of edge infrastructure that a big box brand like Target oversees. “We've got 2,000 stores and each is a mini data centre,” he said. The OCP’s experts agree that Target's exploration of open source hardware to support its edge computing needs is “a big indicator of how different industries are converging with similar requirements. Cloud datacentremagazine.com

DATA CENTRES

computing is already helping the retail industry in many ways from reducing infrastructure, storage, and computing costs to enabling real-time access to operational and inventory data.” Edge adoption in the retail sector, they continue, will unlock benefits including efficient inventory management, data security, deploying AI/ML applications at the store level for analysis and decision making, and improving the overall customer experience. A New Frontier for the Edge Edge computing has been a part of the retail sector for years. From security systems to inventory management, a certain degree 38

August 2021

of onsite compute has always been a part of the industry. Now, however, as retailers look to take advantage of the kind of higherintensity, low latency solutions that are becoming available, they’re looking for new ways to keep up with the demands placed upon their systems. From the OCP’s perspective, the partnership with Target represents a golden opportunity to explore the ways in which the kinds of edge techniques which are usually applied to the cloud and telecom industries can be leveraged in this new frontier. “This edge environment presents a lot of opportunities and challenges. Smaller

DATA CENTRES

Target and the OCP Target joined the OCP as a platinum member in April 2021.

footprint, service requirements, security and cooling have all changed for a micro data centre, compared to traditional data centres,” the OCP experts explain. “We are looking forward to having Target share their expertise and their unique requirements for large-scale retail with our community, and our community will also be sharing their challenges and solutions with Target and other retailers. This kind of collaboration and partnership is what OCP is all about. Target is committed to working with the OCP community to usher in a new era of Commodity Hardware designed for Enterprise workloads and improve the

“Working together and open sourcing is not new for Target. Many of the retailer’s engineers have already been involved in various OCP Projects and we’ve seen tremendous value from their participation. Today’s announcement further demonstrates Target’s long-term commitment to advance and contribute to the open source community for the benefit of all” - Bill Carter, CTO for the Open Compute Project Foundation. “We are very excited to join the OCP and partner with the community on new use cases for networking and edge computing. This type of open and increased collaboration will help us all create better technology that’s purpose-built for enterprise needs” -

datacentremagazine.com

DATA CENTRES

overall product portfolio for the enterprise and the edge.” Virtualising Retail IT at the Edge The other benefit that retail deployments of edge computing can provide may be less flashy than AI-powered analytics or stores that use video-image-recognition to scan customers’ items and charge their cards without them ever having to visit a register, but they’re just as vital to helping retailers make their IT as efficient and reliable as possible. “Virtualisation has played an important role for retailers to consolidate their hardware into one piece of physical infrastructure. For example, POS (point of sale), network management, and firewalls are all in one virtualised unit. Space is money in retail, and every inch that computing devices occupy could be used to store or display inventory,” the OCP

Stats The ecommerce boom: 67% of millennials and 56% of gen-Xers now conduct most of their shopping online. The Brick-and-Mortar Lockdown: An estimated 20,000 to 25,000 stores closed in the US in 2020, twice as many as the year before. Going Cashier-less: Juniper Research estimates that automated checkout technology will grow from $2bn in 2020 to $387bn in 2025. Smart Retail: the AI in retail sector will grow at a CAGR of 34.4% from 2020 to reach $19.9bn by 2027. 40

August 2021

DATA CENTRES

“Virtualisation has played an important role for retailers to consolidate their hardware into one piece of physical infrastructure” OCP PROJECT experts explain. As Retailers move toward edge computing, they can increasingly reduce their operating expenses by virtualising their local IT requirements inside a single virtual machine that is gathered under a hypervisor and managed remotely. “This move toward the edge also addresses latency requirements for a more decentralised approach,” the OCP experts add. The Years to Come The global artificial intelligence in retail market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 34.4% from 2020 to reach $19.9bn by 2027. The potential for AI, ML, and powerful analytical tools to help retailers understand, connect with, and retain their customers can’t be understated, and it looks increasingly like all that computing is going to happen closer and closer to the edge, where the customers are. The OCP believes that its role in the application of open source methodology to retail edge computing can only grow larger as this trend continues to gather steam. “We’re confident more retailers and more enterprises across other segments will further engage in an open community such as OCP,” the experts say, first through key projects in the retailer community, which will lead to the further development of more mature solutions conceived, tested, and deployed at the edge. datacentremagazine.com

August 2021

POWER EVOLVING DATA CENTRE

WRITTEN BY: DAN BRIGHTMORE

PRODUCED BY: LEWIS VAUGHAN

datacentremagazine.com

KOHLER CO.

Kohler is driving innovation in power systems with a sustainable approach to manufacturing that delivers guaranteed uptime

ohler is meeting the challenges posed by mission critical facilities with a focus on innovation across a wide range of data centre applications. Serving the diverse needs of its customers is key when increasing processing and power density in restricted locations while continuing the drive to improve sustainability and efficiency. Power Across Generations Industrialist John Michael Kohler established the business that still bears his name in 1873. Initially developing farm machinery, the company went on to manufacture a host of kitchen and bathroom appliances with its products used in homes across the word. Kohler first entered the power business back in 1920 providing generators to farmers who weren’t yet connected to the grid. Over the past 100 years the company’s offering expanded to include switchgear, ATS and now UPS. As the largest private power generation manufacturer in the world, Kohler has more than 100 years of experience in industrial power and benefits from the integration of global R&D, manufacturing, sales and distribution. The company’s worldwide distribution locations provide personalized customer support and technical assistance 24/7. A consistent, world class approach to customer service sees all of its equipment supported by a global network of certified

August 2021

KOHLER CO.

“ Is it a revolution where we're going to throw out diesel generators and move to hydrogen fuel cell technology, or is it evolution? Are we going to continue to tweak and refine and make our existing products more efficient so they run cleaner and greener? The answer is both” SEAN FARNEY,

DIRECTOR, DATA CENTRE MARKETING, KOHLER

KOHLER CO.

Kohler: Uninterruptible Power

Kohler distributor technicians and backed by factory-direct technical support. “We have a full ecosystem of data centre power products,” adds Sean Farney, Director of Data Centre Marketing. “We've been providing generators and power systems to all types of mission critical and commercial customers, as well as residential customers for many years - everything from a residential home generator for back up, to the systems that power facilities like hospital, medical care, university and municipal, to keep power running if there's ever an issue with utility.”

the data centre industry worldwide. Kohler’s PODs (Power Optimised Designs) for mission critical facilities are designed with standard and reliable components, and available in a variety of configurations. Whether you need to secure the power supply of your data centre or simply replace your current backup generators, customizable power options are available. Kohler’s qualified technical teams guide customers towards the right technical solution for each project, based on individual requirements and regulations. Stackable and rackable solutions can be deployed with short lead times…

Kohler - Power Optimised Designs for Data Centres (PODS) Inspired by collaborations with its clients, Kohler has developed dedicated solutions for

• Density PODs: Walk-in enclosure/canopy or 45ft container. Best power density on the market. For Hyperscale data centres up to 500MW

August 2021

KOHLER CO.

“ We aim to collaborate across the industry within a sphere of knowledge leadership to continue to develop new products with the environmental responsibility that reflects our sustainability goals”

SEAN FARNEY TITLE: DIRECTOR, DATA CENTRE MARKETING COMPANY: KOHLER INDUSTRY: TECHNOLOGY

SEAN FARNEY,

DIRECTOR, DATA CENTRE MARKETING, KOHLER

Hyperscale Kohler’s growing focus on data centres reacts to the sector demanding more and more power gear to the point where it’s now one of its biggest customer areas globally. “Hyperscalers spend $150bn a year in Capex to build new facilities,” notes Farney of a sector whose global footprint is growing at a rate of 20% per year. “They’re an important global customer segment so we're meeting that demand with new products. A perfect example is our 4MW Gen Set, the KT4000 series is the largest on the market in the world right now. It’s really specific to Hyperscale data centre operators who are building 100-200MW facilities. This approach complements our full product set from 100kW now up to 3.2MW.

EXECUTIVE BIO

• Modular PODs: Skin tight enclosure/canopy or 40ft container. Stackable, rackable and ready for quick deployment. For Regional data centres up to 25MW • X-Press PODs: Skin tight enclosure/canopy or 20ft container. Compact and with a short lead time. For Edge data centres up to 5MW.

Sean heads up Marketing & Business Development for Kohler's burgeoning data center power business. Previously, Sean built and ran Microsoft's Chicago Container Data Center, was the Founder of Edge Data Center company Ubiquity Critical Environments and managed technical operations for startup data center provider 7ticks (Intercontinental Exchange). Sean's work has been highlighted in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Inc., Fast Company, Data Center Frontier & others. He speaks frequently at industry events such as 7x24 Exchange, Data Center Dynamics, The Uptime Institute Symposium, IMN, CRE, and Bisnow data center conferences. Sean holds a Master's degree in Information Technology from Northwestern University and received his Bachelor's degree from Miami University. He shares his passion for learning and research as an adjunct instructor teaching graduate students about IT infrastructure at Northwestern's McCormick School of engineering.

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KOHLER CO.

August 2021

KOHLER CO.

Our World – Kohler

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KOHLER CO.

“And now there's a new term: ‘Gigawatt Campus’, which to me is shocking because 10 years ago, when I was running data centres for Microsoft, our 120MW facility was considered huge! The stakes have been raised so Kohler is meeting that need with larger scale products and you'll see continued development from us across the space.” Recent Synergy research calculated a US$1.5bn uptick for the Hyperscalers due to the global pandemic which Farney notes

August 2021

shows the resilience of the sector and how it’s growing: “If this new modality of how we work remotely from home and anywhere does become the new normal with less interaction in office environments, then we will see continued impact to the upside for data centre builds and providers.” Expansion Kohler has broken ground for its new manufacturing facility in Mosel, Wisconsin where it is developing 155,00 square feet

KOHLER CO.

“Our 4MW Gen Set, the KT4000 series, is the largest on the market in the world right now. It’s really specific to hyperscale data centre operators who are building 100 and 200 megawatt facilities” SEAN FARNEY,

DIRECTOR, DATA CENTRE MARKETING, KOHLER

A GRACIOUS CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE “We want to do things a little bit differently in the industry,” says Kohler’s Director for Data Centre Marketing Sean Farney. “I bring that perspective as a former customer. We pay attention to our customer's needs, particularly around their value chain with many of our products - how we offer them and how we deliver them. It sounds kind of simple, but it's complicated; a big change, and not necessarily what a lot of our customers experience today. Currently it’s more of an industrial factory manufacturing experience where your products are ordered and delivered; but there's a lack of customer intimacy. We focus on that intimacy. One of the key components of Kohler culture is driven by our mission statement we are very clear around one of our key goals and that's a gracious customer experience. We want to delight our customers, something we’ve been doing for 148 years, and if we continue to do that successfully we’ll build strong relationships for the future.”

datacentremagazine.com

KOHLER CO.

August 2021

KOHLER CO.

Kohler: Global Power Partner

of manufacturing space to keep up with demand. An aggressive expansion roadmap will see increased overall production capabilities for power products and test capabilities. “We're also going to make it easier for customers to do factory witness testing and access our engineering consultant expertise at our new customer experience centre,” adds Farney. “We're very excited about this expansion and it shows our commitment to be all in for the data centre sector. Our manufacturing facility in Brest, France continues to grow and we're increasing our US presence alongside capabilities to supplement what we do in Asia.” Trends How will Kohler be reacting to trends across the data centre panorama to meet

the needs of its customers? “There are some fascinating innovations going on in the data centre field and not necessarily influenced by the fallout from Covid,” explains Farney. “The likes of Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Amazon - have robust R&D budgets and teams of PhD level electrical and mechanical engineers working on better ways of doing things because for the Hyperscalers, when you're running gigawatts of critical load, small tweaks can make a really big difference. At Microsoft, we would change the ambient temperature in a co-location facility by just a few degrees and see thousands of dollars of savings. Hyperscalers are incentivised by the green dollar, but also by the push for sustainability. Really forward-looking leaders like Christian Maier at Microsoft are experimenting with immersion cooling, for datacentremagazine.com

KOHLER CO.

Kohler Power

example, using evaporative and conductive cooling of liquid to reduce or increase the ability to exhaust heat. Hats off to the data centre leaders for funding this research and looking ahead at different ways to be more sustainable, to be more efficient, and to run their operations tighter.” Innovation “It's innovate or die,” maintains Farney. “That never changes... We need to continue to drive new product growth. Everyone knows the importance of generators for mission critical facilities. They have contractual agreements and binding SLAs in those contracts to guarantee uptime. Data centre operators are financially incentivized to retain that uptime and make sure the facilities don't go down. And in generators, we provide the backup 54

August 2021

power to ensure that. We recently saw the importance of generators in the US in Texas, when they experienced power grid issues, but the data centres stayed up because they were running on diesel generators. It’s very important to continue to innovate and appreciate the importance of the growing role of backup power in data centres in general.” Sustainability Kohler is investing heavily in its R&D to develop alternatives to diesel generators. “We’re exploring parallel options with new technologies like hydrogen fuel cells,” reveals Farney. “We like to innovate under the umbrella of sustainability. Is it a revolution where we're going to throw out diesel generators and move to hydrogen fuel cell technology, or is it evolution? Are

KOHLER CO.

we going to continue to tweak and refine and make our existing products more efficient so they run cleaner and greener? The answer is both.” Kohler pledges to continue to innovate and develop revolutionary new products while increasing the efficiency of existing products to adhere to the EPA Tier 4 final specification in the US for emissions. “We’re changing approaches to maintenance routines and testing procedures,” adds Farney. “We’re aligning our engine technologies so we can help data centre operators do their testing and operations and maintenance in a cleaner, greener way.” Farney acknowledges that data centres are power hungry; they currently consume almost 3% of global power as they react to the culture of our insatiable appetite for technology and connectivity. “We’re living

in what I call a data centred economy,” he says. “Everyone starts and ends the day with a data centre whether it's Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram or Twitter. As we move through this fourth industrial revolution our need for bits on the wire and images in the cloud increases. Data centre providers react to that and they're growing their footprint accordingly. At Kohler we want to help them plan their power sources in the most sustainable ways possible. We’re looking at engine technology and operational routines so we can further reduce emissions and diesel fuel consumption.” Kohler is using sustainability as a platform to drive both its new product development and for the enhancement of existing solutions. It collaborates across the industry within a sphere of knowledge leadership to continue to develop new products with the datacentremagazine.com

KOHLER CO.

“We’re living in a data centred economy… Everyone starts and ends the day with a data centre whether it's Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram or Twitter. As we move through this fourth industrial revolution our need for bits on the wire and images in the cloud increases” SEAN FARNEY,

DIRECTOR, DATA CENTRE MARKETING, KOHLER

environmental responsibility that reflects global sustainability goals.” CSR Sustainability is a true north for Kohler and one that aligns with its CSR initiatives worldwide. Globally, it is committed to reducing water consumption and helping developing countries where clean water is not abundant. It is also providing water solutions after natural disasters with filtration systems for purification, portable showering and sanitation all part of Kohler’s efforts. Informing and guiding these efforts are initiatives like Innovation for Good (IfG) which seeks to take Kohler’s associates out of their comfort zone to inspire brainstorming new solutions to global power and water issues. Kohler is a leader in environment impact initiatives: • Over 50% of electricity used by renewable sources • Contributed to over 292 Billion Gallons 56

August 2021

of water saved through sales of KOHLER WaterSense labeled products • Impacted the live of over 900,000 people via safe water sanitary initiatives Allied to this, Kohler has implemented a DfE (Design for Environment) program to incorporate environmental impact analyses and metrics into every NPD (New Product Development) project and EPD (Environmental Product Declarations) initiative for disclosure. EPDs are developed by manufacturers based on life cycle inventories and provide quantitative, third-party-certified details of a product's projected environmental impact from cradle to grave. Some manufacturer EPDs use industry averages in their calculations, while Kohler utilises a best-practice approach that compiles company-specific data to calculate the footprint of each product over its complete lifecycle. Meanwhile, in adherence to tier 4 standards, Kohler has launched diesel generators capable of meeting the

KOHLER CO.

Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) strictest emissions guidelines, utilising the markets most simple system, yet sized up to 3250kW to meet the needs of large and complex installations such as data centres. Building on history “We’ve got a great story to tell built on 148 years of history,” maintains Farney. “Kohler

is recognised across the world and well positioned as the number three brand in the global generator space. We’ve got the largest generator on the market and we’re serious about making a sustainable contribution to data centre power.”

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NETWORKING

HOW TO TAKE DOWN

THE INTERNET

August 2021

NETWORKING

From state-sponsored cyber criminals to right wing extremists spouting conspiracies about lizard people, data centres have never been under greater threat.

WRITTEN BY: HARRY MENEAR

et me put on my Bond Villain hat for a moment and think about the best way to bring modern society to its knees. And let’s assume I want to pull this off without wiping out humanity in the process; if I wanted to do that there are always nuclear weapons and, at the rate we’re going, just waiting patiently for fifty years. No, this mustache-twirling thought experiment calls for something a little less drastic than turning the planet into a radioactive wasteland, but only just. For the sake of argument, then, how would I go about taking down the Internet for long enough to topple human civilisation?

“ The biggest security weakness has to be the security associated with access to the data that is held or being generated within the data centre” DARREN WATKINS

MANAGING DIRECTOR, VIRTUS DATA CENTRES datacentremagazine.com

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NETWORKING

Subsea cable map

How do I kill the internet? Based on the kind of research that’s definitely put me on several terrorist watch lists, it seems like there are two main ways to harm the internet in a meaningful sense: cut the cables, and find a way to shut down a surprisingly small number of hyperscale data centres. Whether either, or both of these methods together, would actually turn it off for good is debatable, but given the level of disruption caused by a faulty server knocking out Reddit for an hour, I think it’s safe to assume that taking down the Internet for a whole month could pretty handily trigger the downfall of human civilisation. Cut the Wires This may sound simplistic, but subsea cables are the veins and arteries carrying the lifeblood of the Internet beneath the sea. They represent very physical, tangible targets that are too large to properly defend. There’s even a handy map with a useful list of potential targets available for free on the Internet (et tu, Brutus?).

Subsea cables are both a physical and cyber vulnerability of the modern Internet, and roughly 99% of global web traffic depends on them. Of course, as Bill Kleyman (whose name sounds delightfully similar to Hans Gruber’s alias in Die Hard) wrote in a 2014 article, “you can’t just cut the wires. Why? Because they’re designed to be fixed.” However, he adds that “a strategic strike that will take out the fibre optic cables or damage the entire wire will do the trick. If this is done at choke points you can disable or almost completely halt global Internet traffic.” How to take out a hyperscale data centre Fibre optic cables are also, according to a top exec at a leading data centre brand whose communications team requested he remain anonymous, one of the simplest ways to tackle the second phase of my plan: knocking out some of the world’s biggest data centres. “One of the easiest ways to knock out a hyperscale data centre would be to target the incoming fibre positions, which are datacentremagazine.com

NETWORKING

owned and operated by the fibre carrier,” he explains. Then, because this is something he clearly thinks about a lot, he adds: “Another more complicated way would be to run a port scan through the data centre's corporate network to see if there was any bridge between that and the industrial controls networks. If you can locate operational technology devices that control the cooling and power systems, you can shut them down remotely and cripple the data centre as the industrial networking protocols and devices contain no embedded security encryption or measures to protect them.” Attacks targeting a data centre’s power and cooling systems have been on security professionals’ horizons for over a decade already. In 2014, academics at Ohio State University ran a number of hardware tests and simulations, coming to the conclusion that, with the right malware, you can easily

An Alarming Precedent Recent high-profile outages highlight the potential impact of throwing any kind of wrench - accidentally or otherwise - into the delicate Swiss watch of the modern internet. An outage caused by a glitch at service provider Fastly - which runs an edge cloud between companies' data centres and the end users of sites like Amazon, Twitch, and Reddit - “knocked out half the internet” for about an hour in June. The fire at one of OVHcloud’s data centres in Strasbourg left millions of websites offline in March. These outages - albeit briefly - left the internet reeling. And they were both accidents. Imagine what could happen if there was a concerted effort to bring down the internet. 62

August 2021

“ One of the easiest ways to knock out a hyperscale data centre would be to target the incoming fibre positions” ANONYMOUS

“generate power spikes on multiple servers at the same time, which may cause branch circuit breakers to trip and lead to undesired power outages.” And getting that malware inside a data centre, the data centre security exec explains, is actually a lot easier than it sounds. “Many systems within data centres, which support the cooling, power, and critical infrastructure, require software patches, updates, and maintenance, and are based on extremely vulnerable legacy protocols,” he says. “If these are not

NETWORKING

sufficiently air gapped or secured behind firewalls and DMZ's, they can be easy prey to hackers and malware attackers, essentially attacking the data centre through its own critical infrastructure.” Darren Watkins, a Managing Director at Virtus Data Centres, was also willing to talk to me about the weaknesses of a modern data centre, although, understandably, he politely refused to give me a step-by-step plan for knocking out one of his facilities. “From a holistic security point of view, the biggest security weakness has to be the

security associated with access to the data that is held or being generated within the data centre,” he muses, noting that “This comprises firewalls, software and network security aspects that are the responsibility of the end customer.” Given that some major carrier hotels can host hundreds of different customers of different sizes, the odds that one of them isn’t doing their due diligence with regard to security are troublingly high. Just look at the SolarWinds attack last year, when Russian hackers used access to the company’s Orion software to distribute datacentremagazine.com

NETWORKING

“ Nothing will help if an individual hits the EPO in the switchgear room - a so-called inside job” ANONYMOUS

The Inside Job Aside from getting malware inside a data centre, one of the most effective ways to cause significant disruption is to type up a resume and get a job. A CEO from the industry, who elected to remain anonymous, explains to me “The reality is that, other than squirrels taking down data centres (yes it's true, check it out) human error is the biggest reason why 64

August 2021

it happens. Although Tier III data centers are fed with redundant power feeds, making them ordinarily foolproof, nothing will help if an individual hits the EPO in the switchgear room - a so-called inside job.” They do note, however, that “Most of these facilities have fairly foolproof security systems, and video surveillance would make it challenging to get away with such a dastardly deed.”

NETWORKING

trojanized updates to the company’s customers, and ended up gaining access to data centres belonging to at least nine US federal agencies, including NASA, the State Department, the Department of Defense, and the Department of Justice. In Conclusion… We can all agree that knocking out the Internet through a coordinated campaign of cyber attacks and strategic raids on subsea cable junctions isn’t a good idea - no matter how much joy the thought of a submarine with a giant pair of wire cutters on the front of it brings both my and my fluffy white cat. I’m a reasonable human being. But the world isn’t exclusively made up of reasonable human beings. Not by a long

shot. In April, the FBI foiled a plot by radical right wing conspiracy theorist Seth Aaron Pendley to use a pipe bomb to blow up a hyperscale AWS data centre in Ashburn, Virginia. Pendley, an avowed QAnon truther, fervent Trump supporter, and participant in the January 6 attack on the US capitol, allegedly planned to “kill off about 70 percent of the Internet” if successful. While it’s doubtful that, even if he succeeded, the terrorist plot would have been anywhere near that successful, it’s still a sobering thought. What if someone else tries it? Someone a good deal smarter, or richer than Pendley. What if they succeed? The critical infrastructure that underpins our modern world is a lot more fragile than we’d care to admit. datacentremagazine.com

IX AFRICA

Building the Big Edge in Kenya PRODUCED BY: LEWIS VAUGHAN 66

August 2021

WRITTEN BY: HARRY MENEAR

IX AFRICA

datacentremagazine.com

IX AFRICA

August 2021

IX AFRICA

IXAfrica co-founders Guy Willner and Clement Martineau talk site selection, sustainability, and how to Keep it Africa as they bring the hyperscale to Nairobi

Top: Guy Willner Bottom: Clement Martineau

he data centre industry - prompted by soaring demand from throughout an increasingly digitalised global economy - is growing everywhere. It’s in emerging markets, however, where that growth takes on a true sense of urgency. “People talk a lot about the edge, and the idea I'm pushing a lot is what I call The Big Edge,” says Guy Willner, a 20 year veteran of data centre build outs throughout Europe, Russia, and Africa. Willner is the co-founder and Chairman of both iXcellerate - which operates seven data centres across its two Moscow campuses - and IXAfrica, a Kenyanfocused project in the process of building out the first hyperscale campus in the nation’s capital of Nairobi. He elaborates: “The edge is a train station in Northampton - a drop off place for Netflix or whomever; the Big Edge is Lagos, the capital of Nigeria with a population of 210mn people. It's all the cities around the world with more than a million people but without the digital infrastructure to match.” Nairobi, which has a thriving startup community, a rapidly digitalising economy, and - along with the rest of Kenya and its neighbours - lies at the heart of a latency zone that is home to approximately 300mn people, undeniably fits the bill. And IXAfrica isn’t the only data centre operator looking to captialise on what Willner calls a “tsunami of demand sweeping across emerging markets right now for hyperscale infrastructure.” He adds: “Whereas a lot of the hyperscalers and internet companies have cloud regions, even in smaller European countries, and across Southeast Asia in particular, they're datacentremagazine.com

IX AFRICA

only just beginning to build in South America and Sub-Saharan Africa.” IXAfrica, it would appear, is ahead of the curve.

DID YOU KNOW...

NRB01 - EAST AFRICA’S LARGEST CARRIER NEUTRAL DATA CENTRE CAMPUS

IXAfrica’s first campus is located on a 17,300 square metre plot beside the road that runs between Nairobi and Mombasa. The development comprises three data centre buildings: a 4,314 square metre facility with two data halls and 4.5 MW of critical IT capacity; a 6,098 square metre facility with three data halls and 9 MW of capacity; and a 5,175 square metre facility with two data halls and a capacity of 5.4 MW. Upon full buildout of the planned data centres, the facility will deliver just under 19 MW of capacity across 3,564 racks divided throughout 6,621 square metres of white space.

August 2021

Hyperscale in Nairobi “The campus is tailor-made for hyperscale clients,” says Clement Martineau, the other co-founder of IXAfrica, who is currently working as its Director of Operations, overseeing the ongoing construction of the site and building up a local team. Compared to IXAfrica’s domestic competition, which Martineau explains “is typically very traditional colocation services offered through low density, small capacity data centres”, IXAfrica’s campus has the potential to be “able to deliver close to 40 MW of IT capacity” that - thanks to the favourable local climate and infrastructure, as well as some intelligent design, will “deliver a level of power usage efficiency (PUE) that is competitive with other data centres all over the world, not only with other data centres in Africa.” The location of NRB01 is ideal. The campus, Willner explains, is situated “on one of the major routes from downtown Nairobi to the city's airport, along the NairobiMombasa Road,” adding that “It's about 2km from the main telecoms hub in Kenya, so we can tap into all of the connectivity that it offers, which is really important.” The project, Martineau explains, is nearing the completion of its first phase, a 4.5 MW data centre that will begin operating either at the end of this year or very early in 2022. “We are almost done with the shell construction and are entering the fit-out phase, bringing in all the equipment, from chillers, servers, and switch gears, to power and backup generators,” he says. “We will most-likely be one of the biggest data centres in Africa - the biggest in East Africa by far - when the project is completed.”

IX AFRICA

Guy Willner

EXECUTIVE BIO

TITLE: CO-FOUNDER AND CHAIRMAN Starting his career within the technology industry with Philips NV in Paris and Vienna working in CDROM, Smart Card and Minitel technologies In 1998 he co-founded IXEurope, raising approximately $100 million in venture capital as the CEO and the company’s revenue grew over 600% in its first 3 years. It was listed as Europe’s fastest growing company in 2002 Sunday Times Tech Track 100 and Guy received personal recognition as a semi-finalist in the UK’s Entrepreneur of the Year 2003. In 2007 IXEurope was acquired by Equinix Inc for $555 million. After IXEurope Guy continued to support the datacentre industry with a focus on emerging markets. In Johannesburg Guy invested alongside the IFC (World Bank) in Teraco, overseeing its progress to become the main hub in South Africa with the largest peering point on the African continent, NAPAfrica. The company was sold to Permira in 2014 for $134m and again in 2019 for $1bn. In 2012 Guy ventured into Russia setting up IXcellerate, foreseeing the growth of the Russian data centre market in what is Europe’s largest Internet market (80 million users) with investment from the IFC, Sumitomo Corporation and Goldman Sachs, IXcellerate has attracted some of the biggest global names in the Internet, E-commerce, Gaming and Financial markets. In 2017 Guy spearheaded the launch of Eurasia Peering, the newest Peering point in Moscow, and monitors the increase of traffic regularly.

“ What I call the Big Edge is all the cities around the world with more than a million people but without the digital infrastructure to match” GUY WILLNER

CO-FOUNDER AND CHAIRMAN, IXAFRICA

datacentremagazine.com

Data Centre Design & Consultancy Specialists Future-tech covers M&A, investment, design, project management and operations focussed services. Over the last three years, Future-tech has been engaged on more than 3GW of data centre capacity across a variety of markets and environments.

Future-tech and IXAfrica: Full Life Cycle Expertise James Wilman, CEO of Future-tech, on working with IXAfrica on Kenya’s largest hyperscale data centre project.

with Kenyan architects and engineers, and collaborating with both Guy Wilner, Clement Martineau and the broader team, to help IXAfrica successfully deliver Kenya’s largest hyperscale data centre.

Future-tech is unique among data centre consultancies for a number of reasons. Not only does the Reading-based firm have high levels of expertise in markets ranging from Helsinki to Johannesburg, but Future-tech offers services across the complete life cycle of a facility.

“Future-tech worked on its first data centre project on the African continent in 2012 in Kenya. I’ve been involved in the data centre space there for some time, and known Guy for a number of years through projects and interaction in Europe,” says Wilman. “As the IXAfrica project came into being, Guy and I spoke about it as he knew that we were already quite familiar with the location and broader region. We assisted with the initial site planning and concept design, and the relationship really grew from there.”

“We are involved with projects from the initiation to completion,” explains James Wilman, Future-tech’s CEO. While some factors, like the facility requirements for major tenants, remain the same no matter where you are, Wilman explains that “it’s the environmental conditions, construction methodologies, supply chain, and skill sets available in different locations that vary, and that makes this a very interesting industry to work in.” Future-tech was selected by IXAfrica as the life cycle design strategic partner for its hyperscale campus project in Nairobi, Kenya. Wilman explains that, over the past year, Future-tech has been leveraging its strong local knowledge, working closely

Wilman has developed a strong collaborative relationship with Guy and Clement. “What is refreshing about working with Guy and Clement is that when we bring them options, they listen to us,” says Wilman. “We’ve had a good experience in Nairobi with IXAfrica and the other project partners, and I hope we continue to work with them on their future projects.”

FIND OUT MORE

IX AFRICA

2019

Year Founded

Data Centres Industry

Number of Employees

Once completed, WIllner explains, NRB01 is expected to be a key driver of growth for Kenya’s digital economy, as well as the surrounding region. “Building a big data centre is like building an airport. A city without an airport isn't really on the map, internationally. Once you have an international airport, then you get all sorts of people coming in and out, doing business, doing all sorts of things that stimulate the local economy,” he explains. “If you look at the data centre as the airport of the internet, what you're doing is putting the city on the map. Suddenly, all this international content, and all this international trade, starts passing through this hub.” As a result, he continues, the campus will develop into a thriving ecosystem that blends together Kenyan and East African cloud specialists, integration specialists, IT specialists, networking companies, local startups, 74

August 2021

and incubators, as well as international entities like internet giants and hyperscale cloud providers. “You end up with this big ecosystem which means that, in the medium term, someone who has a really cool idea for a tech startup in Nairobi does not have to get on a plane to San Jose anymore and set up their business there; they can set up that business in Nairobi and have direct access to the world's internet on their doorstep,” Willner adds. “It's a major step forward for tech employment, intelligence retention within the country, and the creation of new communications economies within Kenya itself. Nairobi itself has direct access to a lot of undersea cables which land in Mombasa. It looks East to India and North towards the Gulf. There are all sorts of different aspects of geography, geopolitics, and business that are conspiring to put this region on the map.”

IX AFRICA

Clément Martineau

EXECUTIVE BIO

TITLE: CO-FOUNDER AND OPERATIONS DIRECTOR Clément Martineau brings to IXAfrica Real Estate, Construction and Data Centre expertise together with East Africa market knowledge. He managed the Real Estate portfolio of Orange Telkom and lead the construction projects of the third largest Telecom operator in Kenya. Among the projects he worked on was the construction of a submarine fibre optic cable landing station (terminal "LION 2" connecting Kenya and Mayotte). Clement was also project manager of the refurbishment of some data center's in Kenya and worked on the electrical optimization of the most important technical buildings of the operator. He was the General Manager of Lighthouse Property Company, a diversified Real Estate Development and Management firm, associated to Chase Bank (Kenya). Running the day-to-day operations, developing opportunities, leading and supervising all the projects from residential to commercial. Together with other business executives who share a long-term attachment to the African economic landscape, and an entrepreneurial vision, founded Nelion Partners Ltd in March 2015, a scalable investment platform focusing on a variety of investment opportunities across subSaharan Africa. Nelion takes advantage of the strong macro-economic and demographic drivers of African markets to deliver superior returns to a globally based network of investors. Clément holds an engineering degree in Building Economics from Paris St Lambert, a reputable French building school.

“ We will be the biggest data centre in East Africa by far when the project is completed” CLEMENT MARTINEAU

CO-FOUNDER AND OPERATIONS DIRECTOR, IXAFRICA

IX AFRICA

Title of the video

“ We know this industry is governed mostly by men; IXAfrica is trying to reduce this imbalance as much as possible” CLEMENT MARTINEAU

CO-FOUNDER AND OPERATIONS DIRECTOR, IXAFRICA

August 2021

Competitive Sustainability There are a number of factors, Martineau explains, that make Kenya a highly competitive location for hyperscale infrastructure from a sustainability perspective. “Nairobi is an ideal location for a data centre due to the cool climate - at least during the nights,” he explains. The city is located almost 1,800 metres above sea level, with just a few days of rainfall per month outside of its two rainy seasons, and average temperature lows of around 13°C. These favourable conditions, Martineau continues, are part of the reason why IXAfrica’s Nairobi campus is setting the standard for sustainable design and operating practice in the region. “Kenya is blessed with some amazing weather, which means that we, as data centre operators, can reduce our environmental impact

IX AFRICA To the north of Nairobi - near the Ethiopian border - Kenya is home to the biggest wind farm in Africa, which generates 350 MW of power used extensively to meet the city’s energy needs. In addition to making use of the region’s favourable climate and green energy reserves, NRB01 is built to a high, international sustainability standard that echoes the green construction techniques used throughout other markets where green design is a high priority, like the US and Europe. “We've chosen to use adiabatic chilled water cooling for our campus, which allows us to achieve a very good PUE of 1.25. The adiabatic cooling systems also have the option of functioning even if there's a shortage of water - in which case they can switch over to working as DX cooling units that chill the servers with air instead,” Martineau explains.

significantly,” he says. “At night, especially during the Winter months, it can get down to around 12°C at night and be between 14°C and 16°C degrees in the daytime. As soon as the external temperature gets down below 16°C, we switch off the condensers and do free cooling, which helps us save even more energy.” The other key to NRB01’s impressive sustainability credentials is Kenya’s national grid. “The country is very advanced in terms of green power,” Martineau explains, adding that Nairobi itself already gets about 85-90% of its energy from renewables. “There's some hydro, as well as a lot of geothermal plants serving the region. There's a lot of volcanic activity in Kenya, so there's a lot of superheated water under the ground, which is used to power heat pumps,” he continues. “There's also a lot of wind power.”

Keeping it Africa From construction to team building, IXAfrica’s strategy is to leverage local talent and expertise rather than rely on importing staff and equipment from overseas. “A big pillar of this project is to Keep it Africa. Instead of importing, we look at what we can do in Kenya, and then - if not in Kenya - we look at East Africa and then to Africa as a whole. We're trying to import as little as possible from outside the continent,” says Martineau. In addition to the obvious sustainability benefits of cutting down on foreign imports, IXAfrica is also using its emphasis on local resources to reduce costs across the business at this critical phase. “The level of construction expertise and skill in Kenya itself is very good. There are infrastructure companies here that have been building towers for the telecom industry for decades, so a lot of our building and technology needs are being met with local talent,” he adds. datacentremagazine.com

IX AFRICA

In addition to the construction of the campus itself, Martineau is working with the company’s startup-scale local team to build a culture that sets an example, not only to the African data centre industry, but the wider world as well. “We're trying to empower African women with this project. Today, we have a team of six in Kenya, and we have a 50/50 balance between men and women. We want to keep on pushing for that kind of equality as much as possible as we grow and expand,” he says. “We know that this industry is governed and directed mostly by men, and IXAfrica is going to keep trying to reduce this imbalance as much as possible.” IXAfrica is also directing time and resources towards CSR goals throughout the local community, investing in sports and culture in Nairobi, as well as hiring local artists to paint the outside of the campus’ buildings - something Martineau hopes “will bring a bit of colour to the place in a city that is largely dominated by a lot of grey concrete.” Willner adds: “There aren't many data centres that have won any architectural or design awards, and I think there's a lot we could be doing in the industry as a whole to make them look a bit more friendly to the eye.” Investment in local communities and diverse workforce aren’t IXAfrica’s only goals for helping Kenya grow its digital economy in a sustainable fashion. As Willner explained before, by bringing the internet direct to Nairobi’s doorstep, NRB01 could have potentially impactful longterm benefits for things like talent retention and the city’s own startup ecosystem. “The level of education in Kenya is so good that a lot of the talent here is actually poached away to the UK or the US,” says Martineau. “Hopefully, instead of those people with a level of education that makes them 78

August 2021

“ Hyperscalers and internet companies are only just beginning to build in South America and SubSaharan Africa” GUY WILLNER

CO-FOUNDER AND CHAIRMAN, IXAFRICA

desirable overseas having to leave Kenya, we'll contribute to creating some more high-skill jobs here.” Growing with the Region With the first phase of NRB01 slated to be up and running early next year, and further expansion phases planned beyond that, Willner and Martineau are already casting their eyes around Kenya and the regions beyond for further opportunities. With opportunity, however, comes competition.

IX AFRICA

“There's a bit of a gold rush going on right now in the African data centre industry, so in five years time, I don't know what the market will look like,” Martineau admits. “Both Guy and I are French-speaking, so we're also looking at expanding into some francophone countries. There are places like Algeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Sudan, which have huge populations and huge potential for digital infrastructure growth.” Willner, whether in Russia, Kenya, or any other emerging data centre markets where

he senses the opportunities of the Big Edge, is on a mission. “IXAfrica is the leading hyperscale data centre operator in East Africa. One would hope that, in emerging markets, we'll be seeing a significant jump in the number of data centres over the next 10 years,” he reflects. “We're on a crusade to make that happen.”

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DATA CENTRE COOLING: THE FUTURE IS

Joe Capes, CEO of LiquidStack, talks sustainability, rack density, and the role of two-phase immersion liquid cooling in the data centre of the future. WRITTEN BY: HARRY MENEAR 80

August 2021

TECHNOLOGY

he rise of liquid cooling throughout the data centre industry is largely the rest of what Joe Capes, CEO of breakout liquid cooling firm LiquidStack, calls “a perfect storm.” As demand for increasingly powerful, increasingly dense compute architectures rises throughout the industry - in support of growing artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and high performance computing (HPC) adoption, the need for increasingly sustainable practice through reduced energy and water consumption is putting data centre operators in a seemingly impossible situation.

“Cooling accounts for around 45% to 50% of an air-cooled data centre's energy consumption,” says Capes. “And, for the most part, the data centre industry has wrung out every last drop of efficiency that can be found in air cooling.” However, the compute power - and subsequent energy draw - of server components is still on the rise. Increasingly, the industry is waking up to the potential of liquid cooling to reconcile these two seemingly-mutuallyexclusive trends. “Right now, there's a tremendous amount of investment happening in the cloud services and hyperscale communities into datacentremagazine.com

TECHNOLOGY

“ The entire data centre and IT ecosystem is ramping up around two-phase immersion cooling” JOE CAPES

CEO, LIQUIDSTACK

liquid cooling,” says Capes. “The entire data centre and IT ecosystem is ramping up around two-phase immersion cooling.” That fact puts LiquidStack in a potentially pivotal position. Fresh off the back of a $10mn Series A funding round, LiquidStack is mobilising its operations at speed, in order to “scale up our manufacturing capabilities and really build a global offering,” says Capes. LiquidStack: From the Mine to the Hyperscale LiquidStack started out as Allied Control, a Bitcoin mining startup in a cramped office halfway up a Hong Kong high rise. The

company’s founder and CEO prior to Capes taking on the role, Kar-Wing Lau, had the ambitious goal in 2012 of starting up the first Bitcoin mine in Hong Kong. That goal, reflects Capes, faced no shortage of obstacles. “Hong Kong has an environment with high humidity, high electricity prices, and a high cost of real estate - it's a very vertical city,” he explains. “So, when Allied Control came together, they knew it was going to be very challenging to build an efficient data centre - let alone a profitable Bitcoin mine - in Hong Kong.” Lau knew that, for Allied Control to succeed, “they were going to have to do something different - and maybe something extreme - to make it work.” He exhaustively researched cooling methods, from traditional HVAC air cooling to the earlydatacentremagazine.com

TECHNOLOGY

Inside Azure Datacenter Architecture with Mark Russinovich

phase liquid cooling solutions just starting to appear on the market, eventually settling on two-phase immersion liquid cooling for his fledgling company’s first operation. The 500 kilowatt installation - Hong Kong’s first ever crypto mine - came online later that year, followed up by Allied Control’s second facility in 2014. The second site won multiple awards from the Hong Kong government and other agencies for being the most efficient data centre in all of Hong Kong. As a result, Allied Control was acquired in 2015 by Bitfury, one of the world’s leading international crypto miners. 84

August 2021

Bitfury, Capes explains, “looked at it as a technology acquisition. They went in fullbore, building multiple sites using Allied Control’s technology. They built a 40 MW site in the Republic of Georgia, and then a 120 MW site in Azerbaijan, which still stand as the largest liquid-cooled data centres anywhere in the world.” He adds: “When Bitfury was deploying these sights around 2018, they were starting to see a lot of the same trends in the market that I was seeing personally. Machine learning, AI, higher chip power, higher chip density - it was all driving up

TECHNOLOGY

What is Liquid Immersion Cooling?

energy consumption at the same time that the industry was starting to make real and meaningful investment into sustainability.” Capes joined Bitfury in 2019, and has since overseen LiquidStack’s spin-out into its own company, a move which “ultimately pivoted us out of the crypto industry and into data centres, high performance computing, and the edge.” From the Hyperscale to the Edge: Hermetically Sealed and Hyper-Dense Liquid cooling isn’t just garnering attention among hyperscalers and HPC operators.

Liquid immersion cooling is easily one of the most modern and potentially exciting forms of modern data centre cooling. Liquid, including water, is a far more efficient way to transfer heat than cold air - the traditional medium for cooling a data centre. Water cooled data centre racks have fantastic power efficiency, but the threat of damage from any water at all coming into direct contact with several hundred thousand dollars worth of computing equipment has prevented the technology from seeing much adoption. Liquid immersion cooling uses a dielectric coolant fluid rather than water to gather the heat from server components. Dielectric fluid, unlike water, can come into direct contact with electrical components (like CPU’s, drives, memory, etc.) without causing damage and, in the case of companies like LiquidStack, transfers heat even more efficiently than water. The company’s liquid cooling solutions (in a business context and also in the sense of the literal solutions it pumps across a piping hot server) claim to be able to provide a 4000 times higher heat transfer coefficient compared to air, 21 times more heat rejection per IT rack compared to air cooling, a 41% decrease in energy consumption compared to air cooling, and (this is the big selling point) a 26% higher capacity for cooling than any other form of liquid cooling on the market today.

datacentremagazine.com

Free Cooling: Not Just for the Nordics Anymore “We use very high working fluid temperatures,” Capes explains. “We actually cool fluid off the outside dry cooler plant at 48 C, and we return it to the dry coolers at 53 C. We're working on a project right now to drive those return temperatures all the way up to 60 C. At 53-60 C, you can do free cooling just about anywhere in the world. You can do free cooling in Hong Kong. You can free cool in Abu Dhabi.”

August 2021

TECHNOLOGY

“We ultimately pivoted out of the crypto industry and into data centres, high performance computing, and the edge” JOE CAPES

CEO, LIQUIDSTACK

Capes explains that, thanks to the sheer rack density that LiquidStack’s solutions can be used to achieve, the company’s DataTanks are also finding homes far away from the hyperscalers and public cloud providers, all the way at the network’s edge. “The key with two-phase immersion is that you can very densely pack in the boards. In the data centres that we built with Bitfury, the boards are placed within just 2.5mm of one another,” he enthuses. For edge data centres - which are being deployed just about everywhere, from mountaintops in Tibet to the Sagrada Familia in the heart of Barcelona - density is just part of the puzzle that LiquidStack’s solutions can solve. “Modern IT gear actually has a pretty wide tolerance for temperature and humidity variation. What servers don't like is a rapid swing in humidity or temperature,” says Capes. “The fact that our systems are hermetically sealed also gets us really excited about edge computing, particularly as we start to see more and more computing happening at the edge. Data centres now are being put in places where you don't usually expect to see them, like urban centres or regional locations.”

LiquidStack has been conducting a number of trials in Asia with Japanese automaker Toyota, which is exploring the potential of micro-scale edge data centres to support the development of autonomous vehicles. “They're looking at autonomous vehicles where you have very dense compute applications onboard the vehicle itself, but the need for those vehicles to communicate with data centres or even other vehicles in their immediate vicinity is such that the communication needs to happen with very low latency,” Capes explains. “If you're in the countryside in an autonomous vehicle in a city several hundred miles away to tell your car what to do, that's not very practical.” Hermetically sealed, hyper-dense (a 500 kilowatt micro data centre can achieve densities of about 10 kilowatts per rack; LiquidStack’s DataTanks have achieved densities of more than 250 kilowatts per tank) edge data centres have tremendous potential to support the development of the edge computing infrastructure needed to support real development of IoT, 5G and autonomous vehicle applications. datacentremagazine.com

August 2021

PRGX

AUDITS AND AI IN A TIME OF UPHEAVAL: PRGX WEIGHS IN WRITTEN BY: ELISE LEISE

PRODUCED BY: GLEN WHITE

datacentremagazine.com

PRGX

August 2021

PRGX

Andy Green, PRGX Vice President of Global Infrastructure and IT Operations, talks operational excellence and technology transformation

Andy Green, VP Global Infrastructure & IT Operations, PRGX

verpayments, missed discounts, shipment shortages: these errors are not strangers to companies coping with the aftershocks of COVID-19. While supply chains have been hit by delays and backups over the past year, companies like PRGX have stepped up. According to Andy Green, Vice President of Global Infrastructure and IT Operations at PRGX, the source-topay audit industry has never witnessed such growth, as auditing capabilities have taken on new importance. After all, supply chains in 2021 crave end-to-end visibility. PRGX is a recovery audit and spend analytics company that looks at source-to-pay cycles for large national and multinational companies. They target profit leakage points: in other words, any shortages, errors, or overpayments that traditionally fall through the cracks. Their modus operandi is all about accuracy and finding what companies miss. As Green noted, recovery audit is an incredibly data-heavy field and requires an impressive amount of infrastructure. But over the past 50 years, PRGX has continually evolved and improved to stay ahead of new datacentremagazine.com

PRGX

PRGX Global - insights into Global Infrastructure & IT Operations

digitalisation norms. “We started back in the day when there were literally boxes of paper delivered to the office,” Green said. “Somebody would sort through that paper and look for points of leakage by physically reviewing documents.” Now the world turns at a more rapid pace. When customers request an audit, their transaction data could include several hundred terabytes or even petabytes. “It’s not uncommon,” Green told me, “to have databases that are billions of rows deep. Analyzing such large volumes of complex data requires automation and industry expertise, which is why we pair our advanced technology platform with people who are very familiar with that specific client to maximize our ability to find leakage.” Before advances in automation, audit teams often found the leakage too late and elapsed time frames made a full recovery 92

August 2021

difficult, if not impossible. “If we go back to supplier one and tell them that we overpaid them a million dollars based on the discount program they had in place from 2019,” Green explained, “they’re going to say, what do you expect me to do about it now?” Often, this forced companies to enter negotiations and reach settlements that involved discounts on future purchases a solution that struck them as far from ideal. AI and automation have since changed the playing field. PRGX is leading the digital transformation, aspiring to automate as much as possible. Rather than being a post-event auditor, they seek to be a pre-event partner, helping companies identify and mitigate potential points of leakage. “PRGX’s transformation,” Green said, “is occurring as we speak.” Most companies would benefit from this expert level of digitalisation: unprecedented

PRGX

agility, immediacy, and efficiency. After I inquired how PRGX uses AI to bring advantages to their client companies, Green answered with characteristic enthusiasm. “[AI] has been a huge time saver,” he said. “It no longer takes one person to do this and then pass it off to someone else, and someone else after that. Now, because of the efficiencies of automation and computing power, we can run these [processes] in parallel. A one-month transformation is now a matter of days or hours.” Updating digital processes allowed PRGX to decrease the gap between the time when data arrives and when they identify areas of profit leakage. AI also allowed them to look for duplicates and common data errors within their audits. “We went from a billion rows in a spreadsheet to a hundred million rows,” Green said. “And now, through AI, we’re able to say: we know these are good claims.” From that point, their auditor can take the data and examine it in a compressed

“ When you’re transforming, people often get left out of the equation. So I make sure that my people have access to the tools, training, and resources to understand these new technologies. They’re not employees; they’re team members”

ANDY GREEN TITLE: VP GLOBAL INFRASTRUCTURE & IT OPERATIONS COMPANY: PRGX LOCATION: US Andy Green serves as PRGX, Vice President of Global Infrastructure Support and Operations. He leads the development and transformation of a global IT operation that manages SaaS solutions and IT services for Amazon, Kroger, Target, Walmart, Tesco, and other global retail leaders. He is responsible for the delivery of IT services including Software-as-a-Service, Data Centers, Network Operations, Cloud, Security, Compliance, and DevOps. Prior to joining PRGX, Green was Senior Director of Cloud Infrastructure for PTC where he led global IT operations that managed SaaS solutions and IT services for Coca-Cola Refreshments, Dell, Austal, US Navy and other manufacturing, retail and defense organizations. In 2015 and 2016, he was recognized for excellence in service delivery. In addition to various technical certifications, he holds a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from Florida Atlantic University. Andy graduated with honors from FAU.

ANDY GREEN

VP OF GLOBAL INFRASTRUCTURE AND IT OPERATIONS, PRGX

EXECUTIVE BIO datacentremagazine.com

PRGX

window of time. This, according to Green, is where data still requires a human touch. “[AI] is really about empowering people to do what they’re good at rather than complete every task manually,” he said. “But if you think about what [examining an audit] takes, it’s as much an art as it is a skill. You can’t just take someone off the street and put them in front of a dataset.” To make tough decisions about which new technologies to use, Green defaults to placing PRGX clients first. “What’s the business trying to achieve?” he asked. “Is it additional revenue? Is it increasing the client pool size? We’re focused on what the business wants.” Moving to Cloud PBX — a virtual, internet-based business phone system - for example, was a lifesaver. “In early 2020, when we started working from

August 2021

home, we didn’t lose communication. It’s that kind of empowerment and desire to serve our clients that really makes us successful.” Given his focus on people and building strong teams, it’s no surprise that Green advised not to overlook the personnel aspect of digitalisation. “When you’re transforming,” he said, “people often get left out of the equation. But the last thing I want to do is alienate anyone as we start this journey, so I make sure that my people have access to the tools, training, and resources to understand these new technologies. They’re not employees; they’re team members.” Improvements to audit processing now occur on an hourly basis. “The technology is changing,” Green said. “What you’re

PRGX

“[AI] is really about empowering people to do what they’re good at rather than complete every task manually. Auditing is as much an art as it is a skill” ANDY GREEN

VP OF GLOBAL INFRASTRUCTURE AND IT OPERATIONS, PRGX

datacentremagazine.com

PRGX

August 2021

PRGX

trying to do tomorrow may not be the same thing you’re trying to do the day after. If you build a vision of what you want your environment and your expectations to be in three years, that’s fantastic. But you have to be flexible in your platforms and design because the world will change.” To balance present objectives with future plans, Green seeks out not technology vendors but partners. “I don’t work any other way,” he said. “I can’t just bring a vendor in and ask them to give me technology. I want partners that understand what we’re trying to become. I like to have faith in a partnership and work with people that I trust.”

“I can’t just bring a vendor in and ask them to give me technology. I want partners that understand what we’re trying to become” ANDY GREEN

VP OF GLOBAL INFRASTRUCTURE AND IT OPERATIONS, PRGX

As for long-term goals for the PRGX team, Green hopes to focus on streamlining their technology pipeline. “Rather than having one focal point, we’re currently trying to keep legacy processes alive while moving toward the future.”This time next year, PRGX aims to be entirely focused on enhancing audit delivery and the end-user experience. “We’re working on that right now,” he assured me. “People will have access to our audit services, whether we’re backin an office or not.”

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CREATING A POLLINATORFRIENDLY DATA CENTRE INDUSTRY FEATURE HEADER

DCs for Bees is harnessing the power of the collective to drive meaningful change in Ireland’s data centre community and, just maybe, save the bees. WRITTEN BY: HARRY MENEAR

August 2021

CRITICAL ENVIRONMENT

he world’s pollinator populations are in crisis. All around the globe, bee populations are dwindling, as wild areas critical to bees’ food supplies are developed, pesticides are wantonly sprayed on crops and gardens, and industrial pollutants corrupt the air and soil. In Ireland, a country with 98 species of wild bees that contribute to the continued cultivation of 70% of the nation’s crops, a full 30% of those species of bees are currently facing extinction. At the current rate of decline, Ireland will lose 90% of its bumblebees by 2050. “Rare species are disappearing through habitat loss and our common species are struggling because the way we currently manage the rest of the landscape means there simply isn’t enough food for them to survive,” writes Dr Úna FitzPatrick, Co-founder and Project Manager of the All-Ireland Pollinator Plan at Ireland’s National Biodiversity Data Centre. Along with dedicated teams of scientists at the National Biodiversity Data Centre, Dr FitzPatrick, is one of the people working tirelessly to track, understand, and hopefully reverse the decline in Ireland’s bee (and other pollinator) population. It’s an undertaking of daunting magnitude

and, as with all such efforts, can’t be accomplished alone. Right now, through collective action, industry accreditations, and a collective drive to make a difference, the Irish data centre industry is throwing its weight behind a new initiative, which is making great strides towards ensuring that the country’s data centres are part of the solution rather than the problem. DCs for Bees: Harnessing the Power of the Collective “The data centre industry gets picked on a lot when it comes to sustainability. And sometimes it's warranted, and sometimes it's not,” says Garry Connolly, the President and Founder of Host in Ireland, a strategic global initiative that advocates for the Irish data centre industry. Connolly, who immediately strikes me as an overwhelmingly persuasive individual, with an easy demeanour (and a largely unprintable vocabulary) stresses up front that “there's often a misunderstanding that Host in Ireland is somehow a trade association.” He explains: “Effectively, the whole essence of Host in Ireland is that real power is in the collective. Leave your ego and your own personal balance sheet at the door. We wanted to figure out if we could do the right things, in the right order, for the right reasons, with the right people.” Host in Ireland started out seven years ago with a plan for a one year project. Over half a decade of activity, 40 key industry partners, and a 96% partner

“ The way we currently manage the rest of the landscape means there simply isn’t enough food for [bees] to survive” DR ÚNA FITZPATRICK

CO-FOUNDER & PROJECT MANAGER OF THE ALL-IRELAND POLLINATOR PLAN IRELAND NATIONAL BIODIVERSITY DATA CENTRE

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“THE WHOLE ESSENCE OF HOST IN IRELAND IS THAT

REAL POWER IS IN THE COLLECTIVE” GARRY CONNOLLY

PRESIDENT & FOUNDER, HOST IN IRELAND

retention rate later, the organisation is one of the key forces for mobilising Ireland’s data centre industry, for the sake of driving growth and innovation in the sector. Now, they’re trying to save the bees. “We attract an ilk of a person that… wants to make things better,” says Connolly. “If you're someone who works in this business, and you want to do something tangible, projects like DCs for Bees are a great way of getting a community together to create action. The bees don't give a bollocks whether you work for Digital Realty or Equinix. They really don't. But, if you can get a gang of people together from all these data centre companies with a single sense of purpose, which is way bigger than the industry

90%

of Irish bumblebees will be lost by 2050 at the current rate of decline.

70%

of Irelands crops rely on wild bees for pollination.

1,000

orchards to be planted throughout Ireland by DCs for Bees in 2021-2022 growing season.

organisations in the data sector have signed up to the Orchards in the Community initiative

they're in itself, that can make a real impact.” Host in Ireland unveiled the DCs for Bees Pollinator Plan back in April of 2021. It’s a 42-point plan, produced in partnership with Ireland’s National Biodiversity Data Centre, packed with community and site-based steps that operators can take to make their sites more friendly to pollinators. Steps included in the plan range from, as Conolly said, “doing nothing” in order to facilitate the rewilding of green spaces, to planting wild meadows, installing bee hotels, and organising actions like planting days within the local community. Already, some of the industry’s biggest data centre operators have embraced the programme with open arms. datacentremagazine.com

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CRITICAL ENVIRONMENT

“ When we upgraded our data centres in Dublin, we also took the opportunity to enhance their landscaping to be more pollinator-friendly” GARY WATSON

COUNTRY MANAGER, IRELAND, KEPPEL DC

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Collective Action

Maurice Mortell, Managing Director for Ireland at Equinix, is a vocal champion of DCs for Bees, explaining that the initiative gives the country’s data centre industry a chance to “leverage the strength and depth of our business community, and in turn, address Ireland’s biodiversity plight head on.” Equinix has already begun, Mortell adds, “planting orchards, pollinator friendly plants and installing bug hotels where possible at existing sites in Dublin as well as incorporating pollinator-friendly design into the plans of our new sites.”

Keppel Data Centres, which operates two carrier neutral colocation hotels in Dublin, was “one of the first companies to embrace Host in Ireland’s DCs for Bees programme and later also joined up with the Pollinator Plan developed by Ireland’s National Biodiversity Data Centre,” explains the group’s Financial Controller and DCs for Bees Ambassador, Brid Saruwatari. Gary Watson, Keppel’s country manager for Ireland, adds that “In recent years, when we upgraded our data centres in Dublin, we also took the opportunity to enhance their landscaping to be more pollinator-friendly. At Keppel DC Dublin 1, we planted hawthorn shrubs around the perimeter, and sowed more than 800 bluebell bulbs, as these plants are good pollen sources for the bees. Over at Keppel DC Dublin 2, we planted a wildflower meadow to nurture bees and other insects.”

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CRITICAL ENVIRONMENT

The 'WHY' behind the #DCsForBees Pollinator Plan

“It's the data centre community, and what those people can do in their communities that's having a real impact” GARRY CONNOLLY

PRESIDENT & FOUNDER, HOST IN IRELAND

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Planting for the Future DCs for Bees has already made immense steps towards mobilising Ireland’s data centre community to create a positive impact on the country’s pollinator populations. Connolly, however, also isn’t the kind of person to forgo the opportunity to go one better. “The data centres themselves are only a tiny part of the puzzle. It's the data centre community, and what those people can do in their communities that's having a real impact,” he explains. “Sure, we can alter the physical footprint of these massive data centres in Dublin (because that's where they all are), but what about outside of Dublin? What about outside of Frankfurt, or Amsterdam, or any other data centre hub? We need to go bigger.”

Connolly went back to Dr Fitzpatrick and her team at the National Biodiversity Data Centre and asked “If there was one thing we could do, what would it be?” Connolly continues: “they said: 'plant as many orchards, all over the country, as you possibly can.' Orchards flower twice a year. They're great for biodiversity, great for food, enrich the soil, and the foliage helps create coverage for miner bees, which don't live in hives.” In June, DCs for Bees launched the Orchards in the Community initiative,

bringing together more than 50 organisations from the Irish data centre sector, who have pledged more than 1,000 orchards to be planted throughout the country in the 2021-2022 growing season. The program, Connolly reflects, “gives our partners yet another opportunity to collaborate within their local communities and actively assist in the reverse of the decline of Ireland’s pollinators.”

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TOP 10

WOMEN IN THE DATA CENTRE INDUSTRY Data Centre Magazine celebrates 10 of the most inspiring women taking a leading role in the future of the data centre industry. 106

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omen represent an unfortunately small percentage of the global data centre industry workforce – and an even smaller slice of the pie chart when it comes to senior leadership teams and technical roles. In the US, while women make up 47% of the workforce, they only have 26% representation among computer and information system managers, and even less when it comes to technical and executive roles pertaining to technology (like CHief Information, Technology, or Security Officer). At a time when the need for enterprises in the tech sphere to readdress their approach to diversity and inclusion has never been more apparent – not to mention the growing skills shortage affecting the industry as a whole – Data Centre Magazine is celebrating 10 of the most inspiring women currently taking a leading role in the future of the data centre industry.

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Jaime Leverton ROLE: Chief

Executive Officer, Hut8 Mining Corp APPOINTED: 2020 EXPERIENCE: 20+ years A contender for the title of most influential woman in crypto, Jaime Leverton was appointed as the CEO of Hut8 Mining Corp in October of last year. She brings a wealth of experience in the Canadian tech sector to the role, including a year and a half spent as the Chief Commercial Officer for eStruxture Data Centres. “As a believer in the importance of Bitcoin in this evolution, I’m honoured to join the team as we further solidify Hut 8’s place as a market leader and true technology innovator in this space,” Leverton said upon her appointment last year.

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Brittany Miller ROLE: Vice President of

Construction and Design, RagingWire/NTT Global Data Centres APPOINTED: 2020 EXPERIENCE: 14+ years A veteran of Microsoft and Intel, Brittany Miller joined NTT Global Data Centres’ team in October of last year to oversee the company’s design construction supply chain operations. She is responsible for leading new data centre construction projects for NTT GDC’s operations in the Americas, building out the firm’s footprint following NTT’s acquisition of Ragingwire in 2018. She has a bachelors of science and construction engineering, and an MBA from Arizona State University.

TOP 10

Missy Young ROLE: Chief

Information Officer, Switch APPOINTED: 2017 EXPERIENCE: 15+ years As the CIO of one of the industry’s most unique data centre operators, Missy Young is responsible for driving clients to create a fundamental and sustainable change in the way clients ultimately design and implement intelligent data strategies. Young joined Switch in 2005, helping to take the company public in 2017 – the same year she took on the role of CIO. She is also a vocal advocate for the certification path of education for young students who desire to enter the technology field.

Kim Anstett ROLE: Executive

Vice President & Chief Technology Officer, Iron Mountain APPOINTED: 2020 EXPERIENCE: 25+ years Bringing more than 25 years of experience from throughout the corporate technology sector, Kim Anstett joined Iron Mountain in May of 2019 as the company’s CIO, before being promoted to Executive Vice President & Chief Technology Officer 12 months later. Anstett has extensive experience in development and deployment of global products, enterprise platforms, data analytics, digital transformation, and cyber security. Throughout her career, she has also been a constant champion of early career development and diversity and inclusion programs. datacentremagazine.com

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Sara Baack

Katherine Motlagh ROLE: Executive

Vice President & Chief Financial Officer, CyrusOne APPOINTED: 2020 EXPERIENCE: 25+ years Katherine Motlagh is an experienced finance and digital infrastructure executive with a flair for overseeing strategy and compliance across multiple markets. Prior to joining CyrusOne last year, Motlagh served as the CFO for the European, African and Latin American operations of global infrastructure REIT American Tower. She has also held roles at Ericsson and Nokia. Upon joining the team, she commented: “CyrusOne sits at the nexus of real estate and technology, and my experience in both industries will be helpful as we continue to scale in the years ahead.”

ROLE: Chief Product Officer, Equinix APPOINTED: 2018 EXPERIENCE: 25+ years

Sara Baack joined Equinix in 2012, spending six years as the global data centre operator’s Chief Marketing Officer. She has since taken on the role of Chief Product Officer, bringing her formidable industry expertise to bear, leading data-driven strategy development and execution across multiple functional domains. She has been named Silicon Valley Business Journal’s CMO of the Year, and as one of the Top 50 Most Powerful Women in Tech by the National Diversity Council.

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Qian Xiao ROLE: Chief

Operating Officer & Director, Chindata APPOINTED: 2019 EXPERIENCE: 20+ years After receiving a bachelor’s degree in international finance from Beihang University and an MBA degree from Tsinghua University, Qian Xiao held a number of roles throughout the IT and finance sectors – including as a financial executive at Accenture from 2002 to 2007, and as a senior consultant at IBM between 2007 and 2010. She joined Chindata in 2019 as both COO and Director.

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Dr. Lisa Su ROLE: President

& Chief Executive

Officer, AMD APPOINTED: 2014 EXPERIENCE: 28 years

Dr. Lisa Su is the president and CEO of leading global chipmaker AMD, a position she has held since October 2014. In her role as the driving force behind AMD’s market and technical strategy, Dr. Su is driven by a singular goal: ensure that the brightest engineering minds who call AMD home are focused on developing highperformance compute, graphics and visualisation technologies that will solve the world’s toughest problems. She has previously held roles at Texas Instruments and spent 13 years at IBM, before joining AMD in 2011.

TOP 10

Funke Opeke

ROLE: Founder & Chief APPOINTED: 2008 EXPERIENCE: 20+ years

Executive Officer, MainOne

For more than a decade, Funke Opeke has been one of the driving forces behind the development of Nigeria’s digital infrastructure. After attending and graduating from university in the US, Opeke held a number of ICT roles before returning to Nigeria in 2005 as the CTO of MTN. In 2008, she founded MainOne, which has since grown to become West Africa’s leading communications services and network solutions provider. She has overseen the $240mn construction of the region’s first privately-owned, open access, 7,000 kilometer undersea high capacity submarine cable, as well as the country’s largest Tier III data centre. She has a master’s degree in electrical engineering from Columbia University in New York.

“ If we’re going to transform our society, our society needs to be developed.” datacentremagazine.com

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Creating Digital Communities

TOP 10

DCD Enterprise: Nancy Novak Interview 2018

“ I consider myself a true builder” 116

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Nancy Novak ROLE: Chief

Innovation Officer, Compass Datacentres APPOINTED: 2017 EXPERIENCE: 30+ years With more than 30 years of experience in the construction industry during which time she has overseen the delivery of more than $3.5bn worth of critical infrastructure projects – Nancy Novak is a true infrastructure veteran. She held a number of roles as a construction executive at Balfour Beatty and Hensel Phelps, during which time she worked on renovations and construction projects for airports, hospitals and even the Pentagon, before retiring at the age of 47. She came out of retirement three years later, joining Compass Datacentres in 2017, and has since driven the adoption of cutting edge technology, lean practices, and fostered an innovative culture through diversity of thought at the company. In October 2020, Novak was recognised by Capacity Media at the 2020 Global Women in Telco and Tech awards, receiving the title of the year’s “Best Woman in Data Centre” datacentremagazine.com

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EDGE CENTRES

SOLAR POWER AT THE EDGE WRITTEN BY: HARRY MENEAR

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PRODUCED BY: LEWIS VAUGHAN

EDGE CENTRES

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EDGE CENTRES

Jon Eaves, Founder and CEO of Edge Centres, talks solar power, modular design, and taking the future of the internet “off-grid”

he global digital infrastructure industry is evolving. From Silicon Valley to Nairobi, the growing demand for interconnection and data centre services is simultaneously pushing the industry in two independent directions. “In the market right now, it’s obvious to me that there are the two main asset classes: the hyperscale facilities and the decentralised edge. Traditional colocation assets are also a part of the market, but the sector is definitely in decline,” explains Jon Eaves, the founder and CEO of Edge Centres. Eaves, who has spent the last two decades building data centres and web hosting services throughout Australia and the Middle East, recently turned his attention to that second group of assets: data centres at the decentralised edge. “Rather than go into the hyperscale market, which is very heavily populated in Australia - Sydney alone has more than 100 data centre facilities of which 20 are hyperscale, which is epic we’re looking at the edge,” he says. Eaves’ new company, Edge Centres, launched earlier this year, and is currently on the cusp of a sizable rollout across Australia. They’re hoping to capitalise, Eaves explains, on what he calls the “edge wave”, an imminent boom of regional digital infrastructure set to transform connectivity in the country forever. In the process, through adversity thrown up by the COVID19 pandemic, regulatory restrictions, and

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Edge Centres Space

available technology, Eaves and his team have hit upon some truly unique solutions. These discoveries stand to make Edge Centres’ modular, solar-powered, batteryfirst, “off-grid” facilities a key part of Australia’s future at the edge. Building at the Edge “Moving away from normal third-party colocation towards the edge was a strategic move. At the moment, I would still say that Australia is a year to 18 months away from the IoT and edge wave arriving,” Eaves says. “The towns where I'm building Edge Centres' facilities have never had a data centre in their entire histories. These are areas that have never had access to smart telecommunications. In the Wild West, the towns that had railroads pass through them were the first to progress and grow, and it's much the same in regional Australia with data centre infrastructure.” 122

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Edge Centres’ test case for a regional data centre site is located in Grafton, a city of fewer than 20,000 in the northern part of New South Wales. “It's the largest National Broadband Network (NBN) interconnection point in the whole of Australia,” explains Eaves. “Australia's broadband network is decentralised across 127 points that the NBN connects to, and Grafton is the largest one with 145,000 premises connected to it.” Grafton has been a critical proving ground for Edge Centres’ first facility, soon to be the template for another 19 throughout Australia set to “connect Cairns in the far North of the country with Melbourne in the South,” Eaves explains. “We're creating a new North-toSouth network that currently doesn't exist point to point.” Right now, the Australian NBN links hundreds of smaller regional hubs like Grafton with the country’s major metropolises like Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane (where Edge Centres is based). “We call it the great

EDGE CENTRES

“ IF YOU CAN ONLY DROP ONE SITE EVERY SIX MONTHS, EVEN IF YOU BUILD THEM CONCURRENTLY, YOU'RE GOING TO END UP WAY BEHIND… WHICH IS WHY WE STARTED LOOKING AT SOLAR” JON EAVES

FOUNDER & CEO, EDGE CENTRES

Australian trombone,” says Eaves. “If you send an email from one company to another in Grafton, that email boomerangs all the way to Sydney and back, like a trombone.” All the data created and consumed in Grafton (as well as other small towns where Edge Centres has purchased land, including Dubbo, Toowoomba, Mackay, and Hobart) from emails to Netflix shows has to negotiate the country’s highly centralised network. In other countries, centralised hyperscale data centres serving the entire network isn’t so much of an issue, because the entire country might fit within a single latency zone. In Australia, where populations are massively focused around coastal cities, and getting from Sydney in the East to Perth in the West takes 42 hours by car or six on a plane, latency is more of an issue. “All the Netflix in Australia is consumed from Sydney,” Eaves elaborates. “That means that, if you're in Western Australia - which is six hours by plane away from Sydney - your video is still streaming out of Sydney.”

The result is national digital infrastructure that is woefully unprepared for the impact of Industry 4.0, 5G, and the age of the Internet of Things (IoT). In 2019’s global internet index rankings, conducted by Speedtest, Australian internet ranked 68th in the world, a full four places behind Kazakhstan. However, Eaves explains, regional edge infrastructure will be the vital step towards bringing data “as close as possible to eyes on glass,” adding that “As these edge facilities start coming online, the service providers that currently can't get a foothold in regional areas - because the facilities themselves don't exist - are going to be able to expand.” However, rolling out 20 edge data centres across regional Australia and beyond isn’t a straightforward undertaking by any measure, and the process got a lot harder in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. In overcoming these challenges, however, Eaves explains that Edge Centres hit upon something truly revolutionary. datacentremagazine.com

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EDGE CENTRES

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“ IF YOU'RE IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA - WHICH IS SIX HOURS BY PLANE AWAY FROM SYDNEY - YOUR NETFLIX IS STILL STREAMING OUT OF SYDNEY” JON EAVES

FOUNDER & CEO, EDGE CENTRES

EDGE CENTRES

Going Off-Grid One of the things that Eaves is most emphatic about is just how effective solar power can be at the edge. IT equipment in facilities at the edge is a lot less dense than “in a traditional hyperscaler.” Rather than facility load being measured in megawatts, a modular edge container, like the ones being built by Edge Centres, have densities in the realm of 100-300 kilowatts. “That means that the traditional ways of cooling and powering those facilities can be disrupted to suit our requirements, which is what led us to solar,” Eaves explains.

“ BECAUSE THE EDGE IS SO DIFFERENT TO A STANDARD BRICKS-AND-MORTAR COLOCATION FACILITY, A LOT OF THINGS CHANGE WHEN IT COMES TO THE DESIGN PROCESS” JON EAVES

FOUNDER & CEO, EDGE CENTRES

Solar power, he continues, “wasn’t our original play,” but rather an invention born of necessity, as the saying goes. When Edge Centres acquired its land in Grafton, the greenfield site had never been connected to the national grid before and, when Eaves applied for utility power, his plans bumped up against a six month waiting period. “Six months is just the way it is; those are the rules for everyone,” he reflects stoically. A six month waiting period isn’t a huge problem if you’re a hyperscaler (or even a traditional colocation company) that can only spin up one to two large data centres a year. Eaves’ rollout plan for Edge Centres involves bringing a new batch of multiple data 126

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centres online every four months. “If you can only drop one site every six months, even if you build them concurrently, you're going to end up way behind,” he explains. “So, we started looking at solar as an alternative way of powering these facilities.” Edge Centres began exploring the possibility of running an edge data centre site using solar panels with a backup generator and no connection to the grid (at least at first). “It came to the point where we calculated that we could probably run our sites completely off-grid,” he recalls. When Eaves and I spoke, the Grafton data centre had been running on exclusively solar power for just over three months with no connection to the national grid. “We're now at 93 days today - not that I'm counting - of being 100% solar powered. At the moment, the site has a backup generator, which we haven't needed to run, and no utility feeds,” says Eaves. Pushing the Boundaries of Power and Cooling A huge part of what makes Edge Centres’ sites function independently from both the grid and (so far) their own UPS generators is the innovative approach that Eaves has taken to powering and cooling his facilities. Again, Eaves reflects that the challenges of the past year were a pivotal source of innovation. “We've actually developed our own air conditioners which sit differently to the units you can buy off the shelf. The problem with the off the shelf units is that, because of the pandemic, the world has a shortage of containers, which makes trying to get things delivered a challenge,” he recalls. “My first container full of cabinets was moved off a ship because another customer was paying more. I've had critical components delayed by two weeks because datacentremagazine.com

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people are paying more for priority. What used to be about a $2,000 price tag to get a container from the US or China to Australia is, as of this morning, $6,600 - we're more than three times the pre-pandemic shipping cost of a shipping container. Then, in Melbourne, I've also got three containers waiting on the dock to be X-Rayed, and they've been there since the sixth of June, three weeks ago.” As a result, the Grafton site is pulled together from locally available modified components. Normally, when you power a data centre, you run your electricity from your centralised power source to a mechanical and electrical board to be distributed where it’s needed. “What we've done with the air conditioners is split the power, so we have AC and DC units. So, because we're using purely DC from solar, we tap into that and run both the fans and electronics directly 128

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from the DC without inverters. We only use AC to run the compressor as and when required, so it's a lot more efficient,” Eaves explains. “Then, on the electrical side for the IT load, rather than having a centralised UPS, we run the power straight to a board, which means that each customer has its own dedicated UPS — which are made specially for us and procured by Stulz.” Edge Centres builds its facilities inside non-standardised containers, which allow for extra space and hot-aisle/coldaisle containment. Power is housed in a separate container on site, with two power packs per site - an A and a B feed that are completely separated from the data centre itself. Those individual units carry the batteries, the inverters, and the main board. Each inverter (of which there are five pairs) has its own bank of solar panels in place of a utility power connection. The pairs can be reconfigured on the fly allowing

EDGE CENTRES

DID YOU KNOW...

PARTNERING FOR SUCCESS: STULZ When delivering on hyper specialised design objectives in an industry where off-the-rack just won’t cut it, developing key partnerships is essential. “Because the edge is so different to a standard bricksand-mortar colocation facility, a lot of things change when it comes to the design process,” says Eaves. “When we started out and looked at the kinds of off the shelf technology that was available, we saw that a lot of it wasn't fit for purpose. It was functional, but didn't give us the ability to increase our efficiency as much as we wanted, or to do free cooling.” In order to be able to build its edge data centres the way they need to be built, Edge Centres has partnered with climate control specialists, Stulz. “We went to Stulz, who I'd had a great relationship with in the past, and we figured out a way for them to modify their standard units to make them fit for our purposes. The units we use from Stulz are custom-made just for our facilities,” says Eaves. Following that success, Stulz has also played a role in outfitting Edge Centres with dedicated UPS, as well as hot aisle containment equipment.

for different combinations that creates an impressive level of redundancy. “You need to lose two completely independent solar banks to lose power. By using solar power, our sites are actually more redundant in terms of power than a typical data centre,” says Eaves. “You need to lose two completely separate, paralleled inverter banks, and your batteries, in order for you to lose your load and have an outage.” Solar, Eaves reflects, has been an amazing discovery for Edge Centres, and is the key driver behind the truly staggering efficiency of the company’s sites. “Even if you have 200-300 kilowatts of live, available solar - which we have - if you only need 30 kilowatts because you're a low-loaded new site, all the panels generate is 30 kilowatts. It only generates what it needs. Our PUE is incredibly low as a result,” Eaves explains. “Our operational PUE is 1.04 because we're only creating exactly what we require.” datacentremagazine.com

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“IN THE MARKET RIGHT NOW, IT’S OBVIOUS TO ME THAT THERE ARE THE TWO MAIN ASSET CLASSES: THE HYPERSCALE FACILITIES AND THE DECENTRALISED EDGE” JON EAVES

FOUNDER & CEO, EDGE CENTRES

In order to ensure constant power generation throughout the day, Eaves has positioned his solar banks in pairs, facing East and West (the industry standard is to face North or South, so that each panel gets some sun throughout the whole day). “When the sun comes up in the morning, the East panels get full sun with a little going to the West panels, and then we get the inverse in the afternoon,” says Eaves. By using a technique called solar clipping, each pair of panels runs into a single inverter through a multi-point power tracker. “You can double your bank's capacity from multiple panels, but the inverter only ever receives 30 kilowatts. Rather than having a solar power generation curve throughout the day, we can feed the East and West-facing panels into the inverter to generate the full 30 kilowatts from daybreak until sunset,” says Eaves. In case of a prolonged spell of bad weather, the hyper-efficient lithium-ion phosphate batteries that Edge Centres has selected are capable of running the site for a full 24 hours before the generator needs to kick in. “A battery-first facility that loses solar for whatever reason is really resilient,” says Eaves. “If you lose power from the solar array, your generator or utility connection only needs to run for an hour in order to fully charge our batteries, which can then run the site for 24 hours before the backup power needs to be switched on again.” The Future of the Edge When it comes to the future of data centres at the edge, even the sky doesn’t pose a limit for 130

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Eaves, who launched a modular data centre into space earlier this year. As far as I can tell, he did it because he thought it would be cool, and he’s not wrong. “As part of our branding and our launch, we sent the EC1X modular data centre into space. It was up there for an hour and a half and then it came home,” he says, suggestively glancing behind him at the piece of equipment in question, which had been sitting on a table in his office the entire time we were talking. For the next year and a half, however, Eaves has his eyes fixed squarely on terra firma. “For the next 18 months, Edge Centres is going to be building out its facilities - in Australia as well as in Japan - that we've already acquired the locations for,” he explains. “We can have four modular facilities under construction simultaneously. We can have four civil works under construction simultaneously. Then the units can be fully tested in the factory over the course of a week, and when they get to the sites the solar has already been laid, which means that we can plug the solar panels into the containers and be live within a month.” This ambitious rollout will see Edge Centres launch four sites in October, another four in March, and four in August of next year. He adds that “We've also secured land in Japan about 40 minutes north of Tokyo, and our first edge data centre, ECJ1, which will become our showcase for the Japanese market in October.” The expansion into Japan, he continues, is about more than just breaking into new markets. “If you want to put solar powered modular data centres all over the world, you not only want to be able to test

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“ WITH A SOLAR-POWERED EDGE SITE CONNECTED TO A SATELLITE… THE TWO MOST CRITICAL REQUIREMENTS FOR YOUR BUSINESS ARE NOW ALMOST THE LEAST CONSEQUENTIAL” JON EAVES

FOUNDER & CEO, EDGE CENTRES

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them in different climates, but also different environments - and Japan is obviously very seismic,” Eaves explains. The units that Edge Centres has got going into Japan are specially modified with bases that allow for seismic disruption up to a 7.0 on the Earthquake Magnitude Scale. Eaves says they’re also looking at the Philippines and Vietnam for future projects, but admits that ongoing pandemic travel restrictions “are slowing things down on that front.” Expansion throughout APAC and beyond is likely on the cards for Edge Centres in the near future though as the modular data centre industry - and the edge itself - continues to evolve. “Traditionally, when you build a data centre, there are two things that are absolute necessities. The first is power from local utilities and the second is a fibre connection to other facilities around you,” says Eaves. “Now, if you have a solar powered, off-grid edge data centre like us, you can remove the first dependency on utility power, and then by partnering with a satellite company, you can remove the need for fibre interconnection to a network. Suddenly, the two most critical requirements for your business are now almost the least consequential.” Given the successful trials by satellite internet companies like Starlink and OneWeb over the past year, Eaves paints a picture of a world where the growth of the edge is no longer long, slow creep of fibre networks expand from central metro areas, but rather an “internet for anyone and everyone,” where “if you look at not just rural Australia but locations all over the world - isolated communities in Africa or Southeast Asia, for example - suddenly you can put down a data centre - an internet pod - that can serve a community with content and capability just about anywhere.”

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Data Centre - August 2021

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Trailblazer Gary Wojtaszek

Timeline Apple in the fields of Athenry

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