EDITOR
JOSEPHINE WALBANKCHIEF CONTENT OFFICER
SCOTT BIRCH
MANAGING EDITOR
NEIL PERRY
PRODUCTION DIRECTORS
GEORGIA ALLEN DANIELA KIANICKOVÁ
PRODUCTION MANAGERS
PHILLINE VICENTE JANE ARNETA CHARLIE KING
CREATIVE TEAM
OSCAR HATHAWAY SOPHIE-ANN PINNELL HECTOR PENROSE SAM HUBBARD
MIMI GUNN JUSTIN SMITH REBEKAH BIRLESON JORDAN WOOD CALLUM HOOD
VIDEO PRODUCTION MANAGER KIERAN WAITE
DIGITAL VIDEO PRODUCERS MARTA EUGENIO ERNEST DE NEVE THOMAS EASTERFORD
DREW HARDMAN
JINGXI WANG
JOSEPH HANNA
MARKETING DIRECTOR NEIL PERRY
MARKETING MANAGER ALICE PAGE
PROJECT DIRECTOR
LEWIS VAUGHAN
MEDIA SALES DIRECTORS
JASON WESTGATE
JAMES WHITE
MANAGING DIRECTOR
LEWIS VAUGHAN
CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER STACY NORMAN
CEO GLEN WHITE
JOIN THEIn this edition of Data Centre Magazine, we explore: the market opportunities for the managed cloud, the e-waste crisis, insider guidance for improving DE&I, and Europe’s sustainability-geared data centre build legislation
Reports predict that the global carbon neutral data centre market will follow a 22.19% CAGR over the next five years, rising from its $5.02bn 2021 valuation to $16.53bn in 2027.
As the world’s demand for data centres continues to rise, it will be fascinating to see how the industry counterbalances this with the equally pressing global drive towards sustainability.
Beyond simply being an industry priority, sustainability is now a factor that will define – and, if successfully implemented, ensure – the future of the world’s data centres.
In this issue, we’ve explored the full spectrum of data centre sustainability, spanning everything from diversifying the industry talent pool to addressing the burgeoning e-waste crisis.
I’d also like to take this opportunity to thank our immensely talented intern, Charlie Steer-Stephenson, who has contributed throughout this month’s issue.
Keep reading to find the latest industry news, developments and insight.
JOSEPHINE WALBANK josephine.walbank@bizclikmedia.com
“Sustainability targets have driven monumental changes – not just across companies, but also at national levels. And, largely unsurprisingly, data centres have been in the firing line. As a result, sustainability strategies have never been more instrumental in securing the sector’s future”
Data centres that get things right stand to reap some monumental rewards. The big question providers are asking themselves is how do I get it right?
The Internet of Things, 4K video, social media, and cloud services are all helping to drive demand for data centre infrastructure and data centre interconnection.
In 2020 64.2ZB of data was created or replicated according to IDC
According to Arizton Advisory and Intelligence, there were around 515 data centre building or expansion projects in 2021. The analyst forecasts the worldwide data centre industry will increase from $215.8 billion in 2021 to $288.3 billion by 2027.
Businesses that stay in a traditional ecosystem will miss out on commercial prospects because they are unable to adapt to changing circumstances. An organisation that remains confined to a private-only environment or a single data centre may find it difficult to expand in markets where it lacks a point of presence or the appropriate alliances.
The data centre industry has changed a lot over the past 10 years. One of the biggest changes in the industry has been the arrival of Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) platforms, such as Console Connect
NaaS provides the ability to communicate with other data centres, public clouds, and SaaS instances rather than being restricted to a single ecosystem. It accomplishes this using an on-demand, self-service architecture that enables users to adjust bandwidth to suit their needs while only paying for what they use.
Data centres can fully benefit from Console Connect Software Defined Interconnection® technology and the underlying PCCW Global network. Console Connect broadens access to hundreds of cloud on-ramps around the world and helps data centre providers and their enterprise customers get closer to the cloud.
Software defined fabrics mean it is not as costly or complex to interconnect data centres and manage network connectivity. Customers can establish a global connection fabric that expands to meet their changing demands by utilising a flexible, fluid, and intelligent network rather than being constrained to a single data centre environment.
When new partners, customers or sites need to be connected, the organisation can turn up services ondemand, connecting data centres, public clouds, Internet Exchange Points and their own various networks.
Console Connect’s user interface also provides realtime visibility into network performance throughout the whole data centre ecosystem. An intuitive and intelligent network enables users to continuously adapt and optimise network connectivity with granular and real-time control over bandwidth.
As data centre providers expand their footprints globally, either organically by building new facilities or through acquisition, Console Connect can connect any new points of presence to an existing network quickly and efficiently in all corners of the globe.
With Console Connect, users can quickly establish private, high-speed connections across a high-performance network that is today accessible from 800+ data centres in 50+ countries worldwide. Through a straightforward, user-friendly online application, businesses can instantly and effortlessly interconnect with a global ecosystem of data centres, clouds, applications and other business partners.
Michael Glynn SVP Digital Automation Innovation Console Connect
Image credit: Microsoft
For a number of years, Microsoft has been paving the way for sustainable data centre technologies. And, its latest solution is a hydrogen fuel cell backup system, designed to provide a sustainable, emission-free backup power source.
Microsoft’s latest test saw a first-of-a-kind hydrogen generator set in two 40-foot-long shipping containers.
These hydrogen fuel cells were built by engineers at Plug and form dependable, high-performance and completely emissionfree generators, with a 125 kilowatt capacity.
Testing is currently being conducted to ascertain whether this system can perform to the same standard as diesel alternatives.
Sustainability also gives us the opportunity to continuously innovateAyotunde Coker CEO
Microsoft has partnered with sustainable electricity supplier Ecotricity to power its forthcoming New Zealand data centre region with 100% carbon-free energy.
In the report, AWS outlined the data centre
sustainability strategies that it has implemented. For instance, in one community, up to 96% of all spent cooling water from AWS data centres is sent to local farmers to help grow crops.
The cable was landed by WIOCC in Lagos, Nigeria. Google’s state-of-the-art Equiano cable will improve connectivity across the region, driving faster internet speeds and reducing internet prices.
The world’s carbon neutral data centre market has been predicted to reach a $16.53bn value by 2027, rapidly rising from its $5.02bn 2021 valuation, at a 22.19% CAGR over the next five years.
Edge Centres has announced that it has secured US$5.7mn in its latest seed funding round, to help drive its edge expansion n America.
Pliops has closed a US$100mn Series D funding round, led by Koch Disruptive Technologies.
Google's London data centre incurred a “cooling related” outage on the UK's hottest day on record.
A new JLL report revealed a serious lack of energy consumption, with only 28% of the APAC's data centre managers having access to key energy efficiency metrics.
Since ecological awareness began to spread in the mid-20th century, companies and governments have faced intensifying pressure from environmental institutions and individuals to do their bit to save the planet.
Gradually over the decades, the global effort to develop ‘green’ technologies escalated, as both producers and consumers became more invested in combating climate change.
Following the 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment, governments worldwide began to invest in the development of renewable alternatives to fossil fuels.
The formation of the UN Climate Change Convention in 1992 led to increased demands for sustainable technologies. But – although the 90s’ upsurge in sustainable technologies seemed promising – CO2 emissions increased, due to poor ecological awareness amongst societies and businesses.
Nine years after its formation, Google became the first large company to declare a carbon neutral status. Since then, the company has aimed to eliminate its carbon legacy and use renewable energy across all its cloud regions.
Setting a new benchmark for sustainable technology, Verne Global became the first data centre powered on 100% renewable energy. Then, over the past decade, data centres across the world have replicated this achievement.
COP26 drove many large companies (including Microsoft and Apple) to publicly promise to be carbon neutral by 2030. By then, we’ll see a much higher proportion of data centres running on renewable energy, at netzero water usage, utilising new cooling technologies, and supporting local ecosystems.
Susanna Kass’ extensive data centre accreditations include, but aren’t limited to, her status as an Energy Fellow at Stanford University, being the Co-Founder of InfraPrime, and acting as a Data Center Advisor for the UN SDG Programme.
Already, just two years’ in, this is a decade that has been defined by sustainability strategies.
Sustainability is, quite rightly, at the forefront of every exec's mind, and carbon neutrality is a target that data centres across the world are prioritising.
The last few years have seen data centres take up sustainability strategies at a phenomenal pace. But, this has only been possible thanks to the groundwork laid by the sustainability pioneers that have been flying the flag for decades.
Kass’ previous roles include the EVP Head of Innovation IT operation and Sustainability Strategy for BASELAYER, the Head of Innovation & Strategic Development at NextEra Energy Resources, and the COO of International Operations for eBay, no less.
Susanna Kass has more than three decades of experience in the data centre industry, and it’s almost impossible to top her sustainability credentials.
As the Co-Founder of InfraPrime, Kass has enabled countless organisations to achieve their goals of carbon neutrality.
InfraPrime works to help its clients reach this critical goal by 2028-30, through its decarbonisation services, and the implementation of the InfraPrime Net Zero PowerShell circular energy cloud sustainability solution.
And there is no better sign of the times than the fact that InfraPrime’s client list includes big names such as Microsoft, Google, Equinix, ICEOTOPE, DCD, academic institutions across the world, and a number of other global organisations (including yours truly).
In fact, InfraPrime has also been chosen by the European Union for the Clean Energy project, to set the industry’s clean energy standard.
Alongside this, InfraPrime also connects its client to a wide range of sustainability technologies, including hydrogen fuel cells, liquid immersion cooling, and carbon dioxide reuse and district heating.
Kass herself is an esteemed inventor of sustainable data centre solutions, with patented clean energy design and advanced modular technologies.
In addition to the invaluable assistance that InfraPrime provides at organisational-scale, Kass also works to inspire the next generation of data centre sustainability leaders.
As part of her role as an Energy Fellow at Stanford University,
The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), act as a universal call to action. The targets were implemented in 2015, and the UN is working to achieve all 17 global goals by 2030.
Kass collaborates with the Civil, Environmental, Mechanical, Electrical and Computer Science Engineer Masters students. She works to instil a holistic understanding of metastructures, and create sustainability-driven projects that promote 24/7 clean energy and deliver net-zero results.
Within the university, Kass is also a Climate Change Researcher and a guest lecturer in the Urban Sustainable Systems research programme.
Thought leadership and achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals Kass also acts as the Data Center Advisor for the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
Assisting with the implementation of these crucial targets, Kass brings together leaders in the private sector with public organisations and academics to reach sophisticated, future-proof solutions for the global data centre industry.
Kass is also one of the researchers behind The Clean Energy For Biden project, which paves the way for America to upgrade its existing infrastructure and work toward carbon neutrality.
And, as a cloud sustainability thought leader, Kass is a member of Climate 50 World’s Top Most Influential Climate Leaders in Data Centers and Cloud, has worked across 17 countries, has been named a Top 50 Climate Change Leader, Top 50 Women Leaders in SF, Power 100 Women in Sustainability, and is a Charles Rudd Distinguished Lecturer.
» Having worked in the data centre industry for most of my career, it is clear that now is a pivotal time for taking action.
CyrusOne is a founding member of the European Data Centre Association’s Board of Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact Europe (CNDCP) and one of over 70+ companies and associations in Europe committed to taking the necessary steps to make data centres climate neutral by 2030. As such, being appointed to the Pact was an immensely proud moment for me –and CyrusOne as a whole.
In this role, I work alongside my fellow directors to set the direction for the CNDCP, work closely with the European Commission, liaise with work groups representing each of the four pillars of the Pact (energy efficiency, clean energy, water and circular economy) and oversee decision-making.
Through sustainable design, the implementation of renewable resources, operational excellence and more, we are working tirelessly to make progress towards our pledge.
Q. HOW DOES CYRUSONE, AND YOU PERSONALLY, WORK TOWARDS GREATER SUSTAINABILITY?
» Seeing people succeed. A large proportion of the capacity demand in our industry is driven by a small number of customers. Those are some of the largest clients and most demanding companies in the world.
» In Europe, we have a limited number of customers who are the largest companies on the planet. You cannot interface with those customers without having a mature, suitably sized organisation.
The lesson I have learned is that you have to grow your team in line with the growth of the business and not behind it.
As such, it is very motivating to see my organisation deliver for, and be trusted by, our customers. It means I have hired the right people, put them in the right roles and kept them focused and highly motivated.
“Having worked in the data centre industry for most of my career, it is clear that now is a pivotal time for taking action”
A BizClik Brand
28 October 2022 WRITTEN BY: JOSEPHINE WALBANK
PRODUCED BY: LEWIS VAUGHAN
The drive towards net-zero CO2 has ignited innovation across every industry sector, but none more so than the world’s data centres.
Today, the dual demands of high performance and improved sustainability standards mean the risks for data centres are higher than ever, as those that do not match the pace of the rest risk being left behind.
In conversation with David Craig, the CEO of Iceotope, we discussed how Iceotope’s cooling technologies offer a long-term, seamless aid to sustainability targets.
Readily scalable, holistic solutionswhat Iceotope brings to the cooling market Iceotope’s precision immersion cooling solutions are a prime example of data centre technologies aligning with the ever-expanding and ever-changing nature of the industry.
“I would describe our difference as: we definitely set out to understand the customer’s problem and create a solution that fits,” says Craig.
“If you look at the liquid cooling space today, there are two very dominant technologies in cold plates and tank immersion. Our approach was to say, ‘This cannot just be a technology; this must be a solution that is scalable and serviceable’.
“So, by being in racks and chassis, we fit customers’ integrator models, and we're incredibly serviceable – actually achieving slightly better serviceability than air cooling.”
Iceotope’s high-performance cooling solutions are precisely engineered to help data centres achieve the dual demand of rapid growth done sustainably
Alongside this, the technology also offers a simple, efficient way for data centres to improve their sustainability standards.
“We use a fraction of the raw materials, and we use a fraction of the amount of dielectric coolants – it's cheaper, it's simpler, it's lighter. We don't need to worry about spills, we have superior thermal performance, and we’re able to deliver a better holistic performance to the customer overall.”
Craig explains how Iceotope’s technology makes heat management infinitely easier.
“Today, everything to do with heat in computers is a problem to manage. And actually, adopting our technology removes that altogether, because you're not really cooling anymore. What you're actually doing is capturing heat. So, computers run better, they run in more places, they run more inexpensively, but also, you can do useful things with heat, depending on where you are.
“Fundamentally, what we have done is deliver a scalable, serviceable, deployable
“ I think this is one of those times that occurs once in a generation, where incrementalism becomes potentially quite dangerous”
solution which – by being able to retrofit and scale down to one, as well as up to many –means that the customer doesn't have to go for this ‘all or nothing’ type of approach.”
For Craig, we are only at the cusp of the change that the data centre industry will witness. He asserts that, in the very near future, the usual quick-fix air cooling methods will not be able to keep pace with the technology being deployed.
“I genuinely think that, in five years’ time, we will be in the midst of an avalanche of change. People will be accelerating towards those more holistic understandings and solutions – and customers will be driving that demand much more significantly.
“The young generation, who really care about sustainability, will be budget holders.”
TITLE: CEO LOCATION: ILKLEY, ENGLAND
David Craig is CEO of Iceotope. Having worked his way up through Unisys and IBM in global procurement roles, he moved on to lead the commercial integration of Prudential Assurance and Scottish Amicable. Moving on from the merger to turnaround a leading British refrigeration company and start a consultancy, which he sold three later to Amey. He was then invited to join a late 1990s tech boom disaster, which then became Scotland’s third
As the younger generations rise to positions of higher influence, ESG as an industry priority will only increase. By this point, as Craig asserts, the companies that have not successfully met these standards will struggle to survive, simply because they waited too long to innovate.
Sustainability and high performance - the competitive edge of immersion cooling As you can imagine, an instrumental factor driving Iceotope’s technological innovation is sustainability. Iceotope’s step away from air cooling has allowed it to achieve green standards that knock its competitors out of the water.
“Everything in data centres, today, has been designed to be cooled by air.
“As a result, it's pretty low density and horrifically inefficient – servers typically run at pretty low utilisation rates to prevent them from throttling. So, they use up large amounts of land, as well as huge amounts of electricity and water resources.”
In comparison, Iceotope’s technology can improve environmental performance across a number of key areas.
“If you just think about data centres, if our technology was deployed across the majority of the industry, we would reduce the usage of billions of litres of water. The industry consumes enough water to hydrate 10% of the world's population today – that could be returned to people who could drink it.
“However, the impact becomes broader when you step right outside it. If the whole industry got about 30% more energy efficient, you're dealing with the levels of 50MT-of-carbon-a-year reduction.”
To that end, Iceotope’s technologies deliver sustainable cooling in adaptable, bespoke and highly practical solutions. They offer cooling solutions that can be tailored to meet each site’s specific needs, balancing sustainability with optimal performance.
“We have a whole set of benefits that the technology itself delivers: less space, less cost, less energy, and less water – and people get that.
“The key thing that we do to help is actually engage with, listen to and deliver the solutions that they need, as opposed to saying, ‘This is what we've got, here's your fridge, where would you like it? It’s white’. Instead of trying to bend them to us, we are bending us to them.”
“When you do that, you are much more aligned with the customer. It means that we listen to them, and we adopt their thinking into what we develop.”
Improving cooling solutions may sound like a small step, but alleviating the restrictions imposed by air cooling can reap huge rewards. It promises to not only help data centres achieve a more efficient way of
“
I really think there is a moral case for growth, but we have to conduct growth in a moral way”
operating, but to drive higher performance across countless global industries.
“As businesses start to understand how much cheaper and more effective life can be in a chassis-based liquid cooling world, they will accelerate towards it. You paint a picture of a world in which you are using a quarter of the physical space to do your processing, plus half of the energy and virtually no water.”
Beyond the immediate benefits that this will bring in terms of sustainability and business costs, adopting advanced cooling solutions also has the power to transform the way that data centres are run, modelled and implemented, in an increasingly technologically-advanced world.
“If your processes are completely silent or you're not deafening your staff, you can run data centres in city centres. You can run them on the 33rd floor of an office block. You can transform the type of land that you use – using more brownfield than greenfield – fibre can be where the people are, and the data can be processed as close to people as possible.”
As well as the practical advantages, this shift opens up huge possibilities for data and its utilisation.
“We can accelerate the rate and pace at which we adopt AI and those kinds of technologies. And, if you think about the onset from there, adopting AI in healthcare will massively enhance the rates of survival and early diagnosis; it will massively reduce the amount of time that nurses waste on triage and A&E.”
And that’s just one example. This technology can enhance all industries, expanding their capabilities, increasing their efficiencies and making our vision of smart cities a reality.
“
In five years’ time, the young generation who really care about sustainability will be budget holders. And I think you'll see a whole set of people struggling to survive, because they just waited too long to innovate”
“The more that we can transform perceptions of high-performance computing from a wacky thing in the corner to a mainstream high performance that’s powering smart cities, autonomous vehicles, advanced healthcare, advanced retail, then you start to really move forward.”
Alongside this, another benefit of Iceotope’s technology is that servers can be made much smaller than conventional air coolants.
“If they're much smaller, they're also much cheaper with fewer precious metals,
fewer raw materials, fewer component placements, and fewer inventory movements,” Craig explains.
“Actually, the whole supply chain becomes much simpler and much cheaper, while also adding value and margins back in for those who make the devices.”
According to Craig, data centres at large continue to use a completely extractive model.
Iceotope’s cooling solutions achieve up to 40% less CO2 emissions 96% less water 40% less power usage (per kW of ITE power)
“Most of what has been done is quite incremental – and that's understandable, because there's a lot of risk in the business; you don't want your data centre to fail or to go down, and changes are expensive.”
“It’s totally understandable that you have that kind of constraint sitting there. But I think this is one of those times that occurs once in a generation, where incrementalism becomes potentially quite dangerous, in the sense of actually what the impact could be on our competitiveness. Because there is no
DAVID CRAIG ICEOTOPE TECHNOLOGIES
“
You cannot cost-reduce your way to success. You have to manage costs carefully, but if you're just cutting, you won’t have the space and time for innovating. And it's the innovators that drive things forward”
doubt that ESG is going to be a very, very strong factor in the future.”
In short, adopting sustainable technologies is no longer a choice.
“There's a rising generation of people half my age and less, who really passionately care about the environment. They will be making buying decisions and they will be consumers. And I think they will hold greenwashers to account.
The global drive for sustainability –and the responsiveness of the global data centre industry – has effectively set a pace of change. If not followed, data centres are risking nothing less than the future of their business.
“If we stay in this incrementalist, safe world where we're not joining the dots, it's a dangerous place. Joining the dots and grabbing that vision is what the companies who’ll make a serious impact on the future will be playing towards.”
So, as we look to a hugely promising future for data centres and their increasing role within economies, businesses and societies, Craig has high hopes that the demand for innovation will actually make data centres a solution to aid the world’s net-zero targets.
“I really think there is a moral case for growth, but we have to conduct growth in a moral way.
“We have an obligation to go beyond the balance sheet and do these things because they will make fabulous, fabulous differences to our future. So more technology, moving faster, please. And I think that's why those who remain afraid to change will be caught in a set of perfect storms.”
As Europe’s key data centre markets impose tighter restrictions on new builds, can data centres successfully fulfil the scrupulous sustainability criteria?
WRITTEN BY: JOSEPHINE WALBANK
Following the terms established by The Paris Agreement in 2020, the EU provided its own nationally determined contribution (NDC) emissions target. In it, the target was set to reduce emissions by at least 55% (from 1990 levels) by 2030.
As with almost all of our sustainability targets, the goal set by the EU and its Member States is very much in its make-orbreak phase.
As a result, we are seeing a rise in government sustainability-led restrictions, regulations and legislations, many of which are directly addressing the data centre industry.
The rapid growth of the data centre industry is, in terms of customer demand, relatively unchallenged.
Without a doubt, there are still threats to the sector’s growth. But, these are coming in from sources that, even 20 years ago, the industry could not have predicted.
Sustainability targets have driven monumental changes, not just across companies, but also at national levels. And, largely unsurprisingly, data centres have been in the firing line.
In order to ensure that they achieve their emissions targets, an increasing number of European countries and regions have introduced restrictions – or outright bans –on new data centre builds.
At the start of 2022, the Dutch government imposed limitations upon new hyperscale builds, and even enforced a temporary outright ban on new hyperscale projects for nine months.
"Our space is limited, so we have to make the right choices," outlined the Planning Minister Hugo De Jonge, in a letter to the House of Representatives.
"Hyperscale data centres take up a lot of space and consume a disproportionate amount of available renewable energy. That is why the cabinet wants to prevent hyperscale data centres being built throughout the Netherlands."
As a result, hyperscale data centres – larger than 10 hectares and with a consumption of 70MW or higher – have been hugely restricted in the Netherlands.
In fact, as far back as 2019, Amsterdam has been imposing temporary bans and new environmental legislations on companies seeking to build new data centres there.
Likewise, in Ireland, data centre building has been a recent highly contentious topic.
In response to a series of alarming reports, which revealed that data centres were set to consume 70% of Ireland’s power by 2030, the Irish government introduced a new data centre policy, designed to put data centre plans under much closer scrutiny.
The agreed principles within the government statement include ‘preferences’ for data centres that ‘make efficient use of our electricity grid’, utilise renewable energy sources, and have decarbonisation integrated into their design.
And, according to the report, “Data centre developments that are not consistent with these principles would not be in line with government policy”.
These examples are reflective of a wider drive to push back on new data centres across Europe, either at legal level, on the ground at consumer levels, or both.
Obviously, the rapid growth of the data centre sector will require extensive new builds. And, if these cannot be achieved, then not only will companies be prevented from tapping into new markets and increasing their profits, but data centres run the risk of losing the faith of their users. After all, if the cloud isn’t actually ‘endless’ and companies are no longer able to entrust all of their data storage to colocation providers, then this relationship could quickly turn sour.
Seemingly, no companies are immune from these regulations – even the largest global giants have found it difficult to find loopholes in the system.
Most famously, in July earlier this year, Meta had to permanently cancel its plans to build a new hyperscale data centre in Zeewolde, the Netherlands.
Interestingly, this came after the initial announcement from the Dutch government actually excluded Facebook’s Zeewolde data centre.
After an extensive back-and-forth period of delays and restarts, Meta officially ended its plans to build the Zeewolde data centre.
The project – which would have become the largest data centre in the Netherlands, spanning five data halls and consuming 200MW when complete – was cancelled because there was simply too much pushback for the company to manage.
As a result, the world’s data centres are now being forced to place sustainability far, far higher up the priority list.
“I am not suggesting that this is going to be easy – it absolutely isn’t. But, we are going to have to change our approach to planning and the way we deal with the local community – we only have to look at recent blocks on new data centres in Ireland, Netherlands and Singapore, and the outcry about water use in the US and the Netherlands. We are going to have to deal with the impending energy reporting requirements under development in
the EU and possibly extended to other jurisdictions,” warns John Booth, Chair of the Data Centre Alliance, Managing Director of the Carbon3IT Ltd green IT consultancy.
“We are, in short, going to have to become more collaborative and become good neighbours.”
Sustainability’s unwavering consequence – is the industry doing enough to fulfil these regulations?
So, as more restrictions and limitations are set to be introduced in the future, is it possible for expanding data centres to pivot to sufficiently meet these high requirements?
“Sustainability is at the heart of every discussion in the data centre industry.
In Ireland, while data centres contribute to 2.2% of total carbon emissions, they are increasingly in the spotlight when it comes to sustainability,” says Garry Connolly, Chairman of GconnTec and Host of the Bits, Bytes & Banter Podcast.
“That scrutiny drives a meticulous approach to creating sustainable solutions at every layer of the data centre ecosystem, from equipment manufacturing to construction, to operations. Every point on the job has to be the most sustainable solution it can possibly be.”
“Much as we saw in the early days when data centres pulled from best practices of previously established industries in Ireland – i.e. pharmaceuticals, semiconductor, etc – we will see the same in reverse,” Connolly adds.
However, Booth’s argument is that policies like these have caused a marked rise in instances of ‘greenwashing’.
“Have data centre designers and their clients grasped this new paradigm? Well, on the surface it appears that they have, but when you start digging, what you find is varying degrees of greenwashing. Yes, they are trying, but is it sufficient? Is it really addressing the problem? Does it show a lack of ambition?” Booth asks.
“A few years ago, I visited a data centre built in 1977 and, later that year, one built in 2019. To the casual observer, there would appear to be no significant difference between them, so either the 1977 facility had been ‘very’ forward thinking in its design or designs have stagnated.”
And so Booth warns that, if the industry is to successfully preserve its current growth rate, sustainability strategies need to be considerably more sophisticated.
“The ‘Data Centre of the Future’ needs to be so much more than the tinkering
described above, the ‘let’s do the absolute minimum we can get away with’ design philosophy – there is so much more that they could be doing.”
“The data centre needs to be at the heart of a ‘smart city’, it needs to be the hub of a microgrid. We need to be using our electrical systems to provide ‘energy flexibility’ services to the grid and local prosumers; we need to be sending our waste heat into district heating systems, urban farms, swimming pools etc. The building itself needs to be built from sustainable materials. We need to get a blank sheet of paper and go back to fundamentals,” Booth urges.
datacentremagazine.com 49 WRITTEN BY: TOM SWALLOW
PRODUCED BY: LEWIS VAUGHAN
Sustainability is about forward thinking. The assessment of past, current and future activities provides a holistic view of emissions in the supply chain and social impact among communities, but switching present planning to foresight mitigates emissions and reduces costs.
This is the primary goal of Black & Veatch from both an internal and external perspective as it works with clients to achieve environmental, social and governance (ESG) compliance without compromising on profit. A mindset shift is in order, and firms in the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) industry must build a circular economy into their projects from the concept phase.
Experts from Black & Veatch are working collectively to drive sustainability within their organisation as a case study to share with clients and help them overcome similar changes. Embedding sustainability into project planning requires commitment to the cause, education from professionals, and the necessary digital tools to manage energy and material sourcing.
This report features industry insights from key personnel at Black & Veatch who are invested in its activities and translate the company’s achievements into professional services for its core industries.
Amanda O’Dell and Ajay Kasarabada of Black & Veatch are making sustainability known across the company and among its construction and engineering clients Sustainability has been ingrained in Black & Veatch’s DNA for more than a century, whose strong environmental credentials predate the term ‘carbon footprint’ by 70 years.
Black & Veatch is an employee-owned global engineering, procurement, consulting and construction company, headquartered in Overland Park, Kansas, with a century’s work in sustainable infrastructure.
“Since 1915, we have helped our clients improve the lives of people around the world by addressing the resilience and reliability of their most important infrastructure assets,” says Amanda O’Dell, Corporate Sustainability Manager.
A lot has changed since Black & Veatch was founded, not least the meaning of the term ‘value’. Back then, it meant merely the cost of a product or service. But in today’s world, ‘value’ references a firm’s reputation and behaviour as much as it does price tags.
ESG compliance is of monumental importance, with investors, stakeholders and customers all expecting best practice corporate behaviour in this area.
"We’re advocates of environmental stewardship,” says O’Dell, who has the task of ensuring compliance across the business. “This includes optimal use of natural resources and ESG management across business operations.” O’Dell also says ESG and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) both shape relationships with suppliers.
“Providing equal access to all types of suppliers is important at a very human level, but it also has a profound socioeconomic impact,” says O’Dell.
She goes on to cite data suggesting that while women and those from marginalised communities are well represented in the realm of small firms, this is not the case in the wider business world.
“While 99% of US companies meet the definition of a small business, 50% of those are either woman or minority-owned — representing only 7% of the total revenue of all US businesses.”
Addressing this is critical for Black & Veatch and something it echoes through its engagements with its clients. Not only does this have an impact on underrepresented groups and brings small businesses into the fold, but diversity creates a more competitive supply chain — more resilient to industry disruptions — and breeds innovation among businesses.
The Sustainable by Design initiative is a commitment by Black & Veatch to develop long-term infrastructure in a sustainable way, in aid of improving quality of life while increasing economic activity sustainably.
Through the Sustainable by Design commitment, the company will adhere to various long-term objectives that shape its approach to an equitable, sustainable industry. Following the transformation of its organisational structure, Black & Veatch will leverage this to implement the framework to reach its goals:
• To utilise pre-qualification survey data to evaluate potential and existing vendors’ environmental, social and governance (ESG) practices, and ensure they adhere to Black & Veatch's sustainability vision
• To continuously update its sustainability policy to reflect its 2023 commitments
• Train its team of professionals on the corporate sustainability programme
• Establish feedback loops with clients to assess the value of the programme
• Drive sustainability as a mandatory practice across all projects
• Develop a leaner use of materials and increase recyclability
All professionals — engineers, consultants and construction members — will adhere to these objectives to ensure the longevity of its projects in adherence with the company’s climate goals. Black & Veatch recognises that, through this commitment, each and every individual within the organisation has the ability to contribute to a better world: preserving life, protecting the environment, and considering the lasting impacts of infrastructure.
To see the Sustainable by Design commitment in action, click here.
With its long track record of sustainability experience, Black & Veatch is well-placed to support clients on their ESG journeys.
The company’s Director of Environmental Solutions, Ajay Kasarabada, handles client-focused ESG strategy, helping businesses embed compliance into commercial processes.
“When it comes to sustainability on the project execution side, we can test on our own projects first, and then share what we learned with our clients,” says Kasarabada. “We implement our own policies and processes for designing and engineering projects, as well as how we procure equipment and use it in construction.”
AMANDA O’DELL CORPORATE SUSTAINABILITY MANAGER, BLACK & VEATCH
This provides Black & Veatch with firsthand insights to share, allowing its clients to leverage sustainable sourcing with a procurement and construction strategy that has already been applied in their industry. The result: manufactured goods are produced with lower carbon emissions, staff are treated fairly throughout the supply chain, and transport emissions are reduced.
Kasarabada also notes there has been a shift away from the previous industry strategy — cost optimisation and profitability — to a triple-bottom-line approach that also includes a social and environmental impact.
“This now comprises a major portion of our client process,” he says. “Profit is important, but there is more emphasis on the importance of having a sustainable mindset towards construction.”
He adds: “The biggest challenge is investment in sustainability and ESG. This does not directly result in a price increase of suppliers’ products, because price is dictated by market forces. They have to think about how they justify cost in terms of impact.”
“We’re advocates of environmental stewardship. This includes optimal use of natural resources and ESG management across business operations”Amanda O’Dell
TITLE: CORPORATE SUSTAINABILITY MANAGER
INDUSTRY: ENGINEERING LOCATION: UNITED STATES
Amanda O’Dell is a Corporate Sustainability Manager at Black & Veatch. She has worked as an engineer and sustainability specialist in the infrastructure industry for over eight
years. O’Dell develops and leads Black & Veatch’s corporate sustainability programme and ensures ESG goals are set, tracked and met. She provides leadership and diverse analytical support for Black & Veatch’s sustainability programmes and focuses on industry-specific approaches to implementing continuous improvement programmes in support of the companies’ sustainability commitments.
TITLE: ASSOCIATE VICE PRESIDENT AND DIRECTOR, ENVIRONMENTAL SOLUTIONS
INDUSTRY: ENGINEERING
LOCATION: UNITED STATES
Ajay Kasarabada is an Associate Vice President and Director, Environmental Solutions at Black & Veatch. Kasarabada has worked at the company for 23 years and brings in an ecosystem of experience, from planning to implementation, that comprises air quality and GHG emissions, distributed generation and renewable energy, electrification and decarbonisation road
mapping applied across various industrial sectors. The environmental solutions team’s vision is to bring their clients global experience and local knowledge to help create business value with innovative and right-sized solutions for their environmental, sustainability and
Cindy Wallis-Lage and Kristie Deiuliis of Black & Veatch on how resilience comes from an integrated approach to ESG Sustainability goes beyond ESG; it has become a staple for internal and external business operations. It is an ongoing process, one that relies on continuous outreach, education, and partnerships aligned with ESG goals.
As a trusted group of advisors and innovative thinkers, Black & Veatch’s approach to client support comes from
within the business as ESG takes precedence over all aspects of its operations.
“It's beyond just focusing on renewable energy and clean fuels as energy sources,” says Cindy Wallis-Lage, Executive Director, Sustainability and Resilience at Black & Veatch. “It also involves looking at water projects, broadband projects, smart cities, environmental projects and food production, such that we are holistically driving sustainability improvements.”
Sustainability is a corporate social responsibility, but resilience is something that companies can and should integrate into their operations. Black & Veatch offers its clients insights into how they can assess their value chains and make sustainable decisions in EPC with consideration for renewable energy and new technologies, all of which must integrate in alignment with sustainability principles to achieve costefficiency and long-term resilience.
“We have an incredibly strong value proposition and services and solutions that help our clients navigate the technology options before they commit to a path forward. An important role Black & Veatch plays in this exploration is to create a strategic and tactical fact base from which our clients can assess commercial viability, risk mitigation and opportunities to monetise their priorities,” says Kristie Deiuliis, Managing Director, Decarbonization Strategy & Planning at Black & Veatch.
The company has a key role to play in supporting its clients and devising its sustainability solutions in-house puts Black & Veatch in a great position to manage the onboarding and overall success. When it comes to making sustainable business decisions, Black & Veatch clients are made aware of the benefits of workforce alignment. This means alignment with their sustainability strategies and their ability to adopt new solutions to facilitate their company’s vision.
KRISTIE DEIULIIS MANAGING DIRECTORSTRATEGY & PLANNING, BLACK & VEATCH“We have an incredibly strong value proposition as well as services and solutions that help our clients navigate technologies”
“When you ask them to define sustainability, you will get many different answers because we all look at it through the lens of our own experiences,” says Wallis-Lage. To follow up, she explains that organisations must figure out how to “create a common understanding of what they’re trying to achieve at the high level, which is what I’m trying to make sure we’re doing at Black & Veatch.”
Black & Veatch emphasises and demonstrates the importance of a skills audit. Without the necessary skills in place within its clients’ organisations, implementing sustainability transformation will result in them being caught up at the first hurdle — meaning without the necessary skills in the workforce, they will struggle to put their visions in motion.
“To get people to align to sustainability goals, it is really important that we establish the purpose,” says Wallis-Lage.
“It involves an understanding of the ‘why’ and then making sure that we're providing all of the skill sets, knowledge and thought leadership that we need to help our clients achieve what they need.”
Over the next 12 months, Black & Veatch will help its clients in this area while leveraging new technologies to ensure alignment of focus across their teams and integrating sustainable principles into their everyday working lives.
Cindy Wallis-LageTITLE: EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
INDUSTRY: ENGINEERING
LOCATION: UNITED STATES
Cindy Wallis-Lage is an Executive Director at Black & Veatch. In September 2022, Wallis-Lage announced her retirement after 36 years of working for the company. She served as President of Black & Veatch’s water business and is a member of the board of directors. An active champion of water’s true value and its impact on sustainable communities, she has been focused on enterprise-wide client sustainability and resilience.
Wallis-Lage joined the company in 1986 and is well known in the industry
TITLE: MANAGING DIRECTOR - STRATEGY & PLANNING
INDUSTRY: ENGINEERING
LOCATION: UNITED STATES
Kristie Deiuliis is a Managing Director at Black & Veatch, leading decarbonisation strategy and planning initiatives. She is focused on business model transformation, investment strategies, regulatory impacts and technology implementation for Fortune 500 companies and energy asset owners/ operators across multiple industries. With 27 years in the energy industry, Deiuliis leads strategic initiatives, driving the development of economic policy,
for her expertise in the treatment and reuse of water and wastewater resources. Wallis-Lage has been involved in more than 100 projects globally in both the municipal and industrial sectors. She joined the Black & Veatch board of directors in 2012 and currently serves on the board of directors for the US Water Alliance and on the leadership Council for Water For People. WallisLage earned a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Kansas State University and her master’s degree in environmental health engineering from the University of Kansas. She also serves on the Engineering Advisory Council at Kansas State University.
low-carbon fuels and technologies, and risk assessments for a broad range of global top-tier clients. Her experience spans energy industry domains, including wholesale and retail (regulated and competitive) markets, distributed energy resource business models, market entry and expansion strategies, and business case investment strategies for companies seeking to pivot or accelerate specific goals.
JC Alonzo of Black & Veatch explains why reactive sustainability is more costly than a forward-thinking approach
The built environment must become more sustainable. For this to happen, more consideration must be given to the design phase of every construction project. Then, design and construction firms can actively shape their industry's operations through a circular economy.
Climate change affects many facets of life, and the built environment is subject to increased risk of natural disasters. As a result, companies must first change their approach to consider the effects of building
design for efficiency, resiliency and social and economic impacts.
Organisations are often torn by the cost of sustainable development and stuck in the process of designing first and implementing sustainable initiatives later. Black & Veatch supports clients by encouraging a more proactive approach and puts responsible sourcing and design at the forefront of every project.
A reactive approach to sustainability costs time and money
Organisations struggle with implementation and timing of when to implement sustainability into their projects. JC Alonzo, Senior Environmental Sustainability Specialist at Black & Veatch, says when sustainable principles are applied at the beginning of a project to encourage
emissions reduction, localisation of material sourcing, and building energy efficiency, then long-term project costs are optimised.
“We help our clients mature. As their organisational impact awareness matures, they realise that they can incorporate environmental and resilience concerns into their project design and planning phases earlier to build better projects while simultaneously experiencing a minimal increase in project price,” Alonzo says.
Black & Veatch is committed to sharing this knowledge and helping clients preplan sustainability. Measurement against current and completed projects is one way of educating organisations on what they can
INDUSTRY: ENGINEERING LOCATION: UNITED STATES
JC Alonzo is a Senior Environmental Sustainability Specialist at Black & Veatch and aids clients with the implementation of environmental goals in sustainability, resiliency and comprehensive plans and programmes. Alonzo utilises a standards framework, Envision®, from the Institute of Sustainable Infrastructure, to integrate and measure sustainable indicators on infrastructure projects. He has led verified award-winning water, power and transportation projects through environmental impact discussions, planning, design and construction. In addition, Alonzo supports Black & Veatch’s internal sustainability programmes and works across the
As utilities around the world face the consequences of the climate crisis, Black & Veatch’s global advisory practice helped California’s San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) establish an action plan to address the public and regulatory pressures driving governments, businesses and utilities alike to develop the most-viable pathways for economywide decarbonisation.
Black & Veatch provided technical advising, subject matter expertise, and economic and power market modelling services to SDG&E as that utility developed The Path to Net Zero: A Decarbonisation Roadmap for California to meet the state’s goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2045.
The study’s creation can be broken down into two main portions followed by a third: demand-side modelling and supply-side modelling, followed by reliability testing. Modelling determined the cost-optimal mixture of technologies needed to satisfy the state’s increasing energy demand while meeting decarbonisation targets. This informed the plan for upgrades and development to the state’s infrastructure systems, which was tested multiple times against the industry standard for reliability to ensure it could hold up to real-world demands.
As SDG&E and California inch closer to their 2045 net-zero goals, this roadmap stands as a model for other utilities and states as they also work to upgrade power systems and lower emissions.
achieve — and it’s a clear goal for many of them — but to get to the heart of their goals, Black & Veatch targets ESG at the concept phase.
“Almost all of our clients have statements and reports that set out their goals and efforts, but few have mapped
all those goals to include their project impacts,” says Alonzo.
“We introduce them to Envision, an infrastructure rating tool we use to measure and track their resource use, to identify how they can cut their emissions and energy consumption, and then to focus on resilience both in the short- and long-term.”
Aligning projects to company ESG goals means reducing impact on specific classes of individuals, minimising the use of virgin natural resources, eliminating greenhouse gas emissions, and cutting the process of importing water. Also, it’s important to consider waste and the end-of-life procedure for materials as the circular economy influences project design.
“When organisations accept full responsibility for their impacts, I think we're going to see a hopeful, new normal,” says Alonzo. “While this doesn't necessarily end the world's problems, it will help us buy time to innovate and prepare for a future with fewer virgin resources.”
Maryline Daviaud Lewett from Black & Veatch provides her views on necessary developments in infrastructure and technology as we shift to e-mobility
The switch to battery-electric vehicles and fuel-cell technology is a global conversation right now, and both traditional organisations and newcomers in the transport industry are putting more resources into electrification as a strategy for sustainability. It’s important to understand that the effects of electric vehicles (EVs) apply to all industries beyond traditional automotive brands — much like the overarching topic of sustainability. Providing the necessary expertise to facilitate the switch for clients, Black & Veatch is working with clients to incorporate electrification into their daily
operations. All things are considered — including the challenges of long-distance transport on the ground, overseas and in the air — as well as the required infrastructure to support localised transport, which is transitioning towards a more systematic approach.
As Director of Business Development at Black & Veatch, Maryline Daviaud Lewett works with clients to advise on all aspects of transitioning to zero-emission vehicles, from financing projects to executing major infrastructure developments.
“We need to build the charging and clean fueling infrastructure to support the vehicles. Our clients are often surprised by how long that can take,” Daviaud Lewett says.
While electrification is paramount in the emissions crunch, the delayed delivery of EVs plays into the hands of developers as there is still work to be done before charging and infrastructure are ready for fully-electric transport.
“How long the infrastructure takes to build depends on the size of the hub and charging system, as well as how many hubs their fleets need. Eight-to-nine months is a minimum, ranging as long as 18 to 24 months. Access to power and adequate power supply are vital to EV charging
TITLE: DIRECTOR OF BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
INDUSTRY: ENGINEERING
LOCATION: UNITED STATES
Maryline Daviaud Lewett is a Director of Business Development at Black & Veatch and leads sales and partnerships in distributed infrastructure and sustainable transportation. Daviaud Lewett and her team have extensive experience in design and engineering, procurement and construction of electric vehicle charging infrastructure networks, fuel-cell vehicle filling station networks and behind-the-metre energy storage. She has over 20 years of experience in the cleantech, life sciences and software industries. Daviaud Lewett holds a master of business administration degree in sustainability management from the
In a time when data centres are multiplying rapidly—requiring significant water input while scarcity rises—developing technologies to mitigate water use in data centres is paramount. At the Port of Stockton in northern California, Nautilus Data Technologies’ (Nautilus) commercial floating watercooled data centre combines efficiency with resourcefulness in the use of its patented TRUE™ (Total Resource Usage Effectiveness) technology that mitigates wasted water and energy.
Black & Veatch conducted a third-party due diligence report and commissioning oversight for the seven-megawatt facility and verified that the cooling, electrical and machinery systems functioned as designed. By using recirculated water
from a nearby ocean, river or lake to cool the data centre environment, the water body becomes a heat sink. Therefore, the facility consumes no water, produces no wastewater, and requires no refrigerants or water treatment chemicals, cooling towers or computer room air handlers.
The technology uses less than one-third of the power that traditional computer room air-conditioning would use for cooling and has a low validated power utilisation effectiveness for a commercial data centre of its size. By siting the data centre on a barge, Nautilus also can reduce the facility footprint by up to 60%, and that modular build design allows Nautilus to deploy additional facilities in the same area, using the same connectivity and much of the backbone infrastructure.
COMMISSIONING FOR THE WORLD’S FIRST ZERO-WATER CONSUMPTION DATA CENTRE
sites and if not present, can take time to develop,” says Daviaud Lewett.
“More recently, material and procurement, in general, have experienced much longer lead times to get the necessary equipment on site.”
Taking care of electrification at the source Sourcing is a key factor in adopting alternative mobility methods. While the application of autonomous driving provides efficiency benefits, the underlying issue of decarbonisation is renewable energy. Sourcing renewable energy is a critical part of decarbonising the energy supply
chain and must be dealt with to ensure that charging is a truly sustainable solution. Alternatively, hydrogen shows major benefits for decarbonisation, particularly in heavy goods transport.
“We are looking at the future of zero emissions involving a mix of technologies,” says Daviaud Lewett. “There’s no single technology that will dominate; different technologies are applicable to different market segments.”
Technology is also a key enabler of decarbonisation, with applications in energy management and the distribution of fleet charging. Energy management through technology means reliance on automation and artificial intelligence (AI) to manage the vehicles on the road and their energy usage. Charge distribution is displayed through lastmile delivery and software solutions provide welcome benefits to logistics firms as they make the transition to electric.
Sustainability brings industries together in ways they never knew coincided. To make actionable progress toward fulfilling sustainability goals, businesses must also ensure partnerships are strong and targets are clear.
Organisations must consistently re-evaluate their supply chains to ensure that all emissions are measured and analysed, they account for all waste products, and that this data proves useful in design and planning of major infrastructure.
Through industry expertise, experience with first-of-a-kind projects with some of the world’s largest companies, and collaboration with stakeholders, Black & Veatch helps businesses reach operational goals and create an enduring sustainability framework.
he data centre market continues to grow at a pace that is unprecedented in both its speed and global scale.
But one of the main factors holding this growth back – and, unless things change, will continue to escalate until it threatens to actually diminish the sector – is the talent shortage.
Women, for one, are grossly underrepresented in the data centre sector. But, as recruiting new talent rises to the top of the priority list, how can we put diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) targets into meaningful practice? And can reducing the gender gap really be the win-win solution that we all hope it to be?
The ever-pressing data centre sector talent shortage
In a sector that has no shortage of demand – and no trouble attracting new customers –issues have arisen from other areas, largely fuelled by the rapid pace of growth.
The talent shortage is, without a doubt, one of the largest threats to the future of the data centre industry.
In the 2021 Uptime Institute Annual Data Centre Survey, 32% of respondents said that they were struggling to retain staff, with almost half (47%) finding it difficult to simply find qualified candidates for their open jobs.
Furthermore, the disproportionately ageing talent pool indicates that talented individuals in the sector will retire, long before there are enough suitable candidates to replace them.
All in all, these problems are going to get a lot worse before they get any better.
The importance and value of diversifying the talent pool
Despite all of these glaring issues – the majority of which have been widely published for the best part of a decade -–the data centre sector has been notably slow to respond. And so, although things are beginning to progress, representation in the industry remains low.
According to Uptime Institute reports, over 75% of surveyed data centre operators said that their workforce consists of a maximum of 10% women, while almost a quarter don’t have any women in their design, build or operations teams.
“No longer can organisations simply expect to poach talent from their competitors – there’s a need to start thinking differently,” says Andy Davis, the Director of DataX Connect.
“The data centres sector has a retiring workforce, and this creates two challenges: a talent shortage, but also a sector embedded in historic ways of thinking. We need fresh ideas in the sector, and this can only happen if we attract more candidates from outside of it.”
“Everyone likens it to the Einstein quote about the definition of madness – you can't solve a problem with the same mindset that created it. So, we need people from different backgrounds. We need different thought processes to drive change and make the world a better place,” agrees Samantha Humphries, Head of Security Strategy EMEA at Exabeam. Expanding the variety and
– you can 't solve aproblem with the same mindset that create d i t ”
perspectives of those contributing to your organisation has been proven to improve business performance in a number of key areas.
“Not only do businesses with a diverse workforce outperform competitors by 35%, but also, women in tech give you the competitive difference. One of my clients, by actually hiring more women, obtained more contracts and more partners; there are more and more companies out there who want to partner up with companies with the same values,” explained Paulina Laurie, Head of Women in Tech at the Frank Recruitment Group.
The main blockades to better DE&I standards – recruiting more diverse talent In order for data centres to attract new DE&I talent, there are a number of longstanding hurdles that need overcoming.
Although the issues are not present on a company-by-company basis, there is a lot of work that individual companies can do in order to help resolve the situation.
The girls that haven’t been alienated from a technological career at school are often ousted during the recruitment process, where they are treated differently by management – largely through unconscious bias.
“Unconscious bias is a big topic right now, particularly in the workplace. 95% of our brains operate on an unconscious level, and that plays out in the recruitment process”, explained Angie Vaux, Founder and CEO of the Women in Tech Forum.
For instance, affinity bias leads interviewers to lean toward candidates that look like them, share their background, or that are generally similar to themselves, who they think they have a high chance of getting on with.
“So, if companies are looking to attract more diverse candidates into the company, they need to look at the whole end-toend process, from the images that you
are using on the website, through to the job descriptions, using inclusive language, the requirements of the job role, and then making sure that your hiring managers are aware of unconscious bias,” advises Vaux.
Pepper these values across your company branding, your company statements and all of the digital content that you publish. Explain your specific company benefits, and feature the stories of women in your team across your outlets.
“Culturally, as an organisation, ask ‘What are you doing to attract women? What are the policies that you've got? What are your maternity benefits?’,” Vaux recommends.
“What are your values as a company? What's your purpose? What are you doing around sustainability and social impact? If you're looking at attracting a particular group, look at what you're doing as a company to attract that talent.”
Implementing long-term DE&I solutions – retaining diverse talent Then, arguably the most important question to ask is what is your company doing to retain talent?
Talent retention is a critical step that many companies fall short on. So much so, that 50% of women drop out from the IT industries by the age of 35. As a result, just one in 20 of women in tech will reach a senior leadership level.
“DE&I should be part of the culture of the organisation, not simply something considered during the hiring process. You have to have a culture that identifies with the talent pool you are looking to attract,” says Davis.
The absence of role models and mentors in the industry is one widely cited problem,
as – alongside the gendered nature of the role, and its widespread label as ‘a boy’s job’ – this makes it extremely difficult for women to envision their future progression within the role.
“I think the challenge that companies face today is to ensure that, once people are in the workforce, they are supported with the tools, the platforms, the mentorship, and the allyship to be successful,” added Vaux.
“The more we can showcase role models and show that women can reach the top, the more we're inspiring the next generation and helping others to break through the glass ceiling”.
So, how can we find mentors? Laurie advises businesses and individuals that, “if you are looking for a mentor, no one is too famous and no one is too high up”.
“If you want to reach out to someone who is like driving an initiative in Silicon Valley, or is heading up one of the industry’s biggest companies, do it. Because they will be thrilled to get this email, and will often actually go on to mentor you,” added Laurie.
But these mentors and sponsors don’t necessarily have to be women. In fact, since men represent such a large proportion of high-level STEM roles, it can actually be highly advantageous – both for individual women and the situation as a whole – for men to step up as mentors, too.
“A lot of men, particularly white males, feel very much like the world's against them right now. But, actually, white male allies have a huge role to play in being an ally to the next generation,” added Vaux.
“Think, ‘How can I, as a white male, be an ally to women and other minority groups, and how can I use my position of privilege to support others?’. And I think that when you flip that feeling on its head and use it to do good, everybody wins.”
AD FEATURE WRITTEN BY: JOSEPHINE WALBANK PRODUCED BY: JASON WESTGATE
As far as sustainability pledges go, Trane Technologies’ is amongst the most impressive. With commitments including reducing one billion metric tonnes of carbon emissions from its customers’ footprint by 2030, the company is definitely here to rock the boat. And, for a rapidly expanding sector that is completely dependent on electricity, this optimism and pioneering spirit are both very welcome traits.
Trane Technologies takes a distinctly bold approach to sustainability, not only making it a core part of its company identity, but fixing its sights on being a flag-bearing market leader.
“Our aspirations are to make sure that we're always a step ahead of where the industry is going… my goal is to increase our pace and speed, to get us to a point where we are starting to future-proof our business and lead the market into those
future solutions”
explaines Miles Auvil, the Global Vertical Market Leader for Data Centers at Trane Commercial.
Quite rightly, the entire data centre sector is prioritising the concept of ‘future-proofing’. It’s not enough to build dependable, efficient services – we also
need to ensure that the solutions we build now are investments that can continue into the future.
However, is it actually possible for data centres to decarbonise at the same pace as the sector’s growth? Auvil certainly believes so.
“We are one of the leaders of the pack”
The three stages of decarbonisation
Decarbonisation is – especially in the data centre sector – a process that requires multiple steps, a nuanced analysis and a long-term focus. For Auvil, it’s best outlined in three stages.
“Decarbonisation is a natural journey we take with our customers, the first step being
optimisation. That really plays a big part, not only in existing builds, but also in designing new builds.
“Many of our customers have a large, ageing fleet of data centres – many in the hundreds – and a lot have done what I would say is the easy, simple payback work of energy-efficient upgrades,” Auvil comments.
Trane Technologies encourages its customers to see that throwing money at the problem isn't always the best way to achieve a solution.
“We're taking the approach that there is more to be done and showing them that there are other ways of achieving energy efficiency, without
“What is termed in the industry as ‘cloud wars' is very much a reality, and that is spurring a dramatic surge in demand for data centres”
MILES AUVIL GLOBAL VERTICAL MARKET LEADER FOR DATA CENTRES, TRANE COMMERCIAL
capital-intensive projects. So, we look at things that can be fixed possibly on the same day that we visit and do the assessment via a concept called retro-commissioning.”
“We also look at ways that we can provide some of these solutions as a service, with funding from ESG investors.
“That’s the strategy for existing data centres. For new builds, the optimisation perspective prioritises efficient systems and continues to push the leading edge.”
The second decarbonisation step, Auvil outlines, is electrification and, specifically, the electrification of heat.
“As we increase temperatures and data centres, the wasted heat coming out of these facilities is becoming more valuable to our customers.
“In Europe, specifically in the Nordics and Denmark, you'll see that there are several data centres with chillers that leverage heat recovery or heat reuse,” Auvil explains.
“They take some of that waste heat, and apply it to heating buildings or heating district systems. That hasn't been as well adopted here in North America. But, because the ramp up of valuable heat coming out of the data centres is continuing to increase, it is becoming increasingly attractive for industrial manufacturing enterprises where process heating is required, as well as
TITLE: GLOBAL VERTICAL MARKET LEADER FOR DATA CENTRES
COMPANY: TRANE COMMERCIAL INDUSTRY: TECHNOLOGY
LOCATION: RHODE ISLAND, US
Alumnus of West Virginia University, Miles Auvil is a leader in sales, design and service of missioncritical infrastructure. He’s built a 22-year career specialising in data centre design, energy management lifecycle and energy savings performance.
In 2020, Miles joined Trane Technologies as the Vertical Market Leader for Data Centers. He leads a consulting team, designing and implementing precision cooling solutions that save energy, maximise uptime and accelerate speed-to-market.
Previously, as a Siemens national sales manager, he specialised in maintaining data centres and designing energy-efficient infrastructure. He also held escalating positions at Schneider Electric, focusing on federal energy projects and sustainability services.
1913 Year founded 18K+
Number of employees
domestic hot water applications for large condos or apartment buildings.”
The last category is broader and encompasses decarbonisation as a whole. For that, heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) plays a pivotal role.
Heating, ventilation and air conditioningits role in the wider sustainability picture For data centres’ sustainability strategies, HVAC systems are arguably the factors that hold the most ‘make or break’ potential.
“The HVAC systems consume 30 to 40% of the overall energy within a data centre facility. It's the single largest category and has the greatest room for efficiency improvements,” Auvil comments.
When it comes to HVAC, there are three key stages to data centre decarbonisation: water consumption, energy efficiency and refrigerants.
Firstly, the current climate crisis is driving huge changes in the industry’s use of water cooling solutions.
“We're seeing global and domestic water shortages, and some extreme droughts.
GLOBAL VERTICAL MARKET LEADER FOR DATA CENTRES, TRANE COMMERCIAL
“Decarbonisation is a natural journey we take with our customers, the first step being optimisation”
So, the industry has made a very clear signal that they want to get away from evaporative cooling, which can consume millions of gallons in a month,” Auvil explains.
“A large part of what we're starting to provide more for our customers is aircooled chillers, which operate on a closed loop and have zero water consumption. There has been a massive shift in the market over the last year or two. We believe that will be a trend we'll see for many years, assuming we're going to stay in drought status across many regions of the world and here in North America.”
Another challenging aspect of HVAC is the fact that it is one of the largest energy consumers in the data centre environment. So, a primary focus for Trane Technologies is looking at ways to improve the consumption and energy efficiency of these systems.
“This can be done through a number of ways. In existing facilities, we can optimise the older systems that are there, and in new facilities, we can design the most energy-efficient chillers and solutions for
“We're taking the approach that there is more to be done and showing them that there are other ways of achieving energy efficiency, without capital-intensive projects”
MILES AUVIL
GLOBAL VERTICAL MARKET LEADER FOR DATA CENTRES, TRANE COMMERCIAL
our customers, so that they can reduce that energy footprint.”
The third pillar revolves around the types of refrigerants used.
“Obviously, the HVAC world is heavily dependent on synthesised and chemicalbased refrigerants, a lot of which have had high global warming potential signatures. So the industry is working to advance the adoption of newer, low-GWP refrigerants as fast as possible, and as responsibly as we can.”
“We work hand in hand with a large pool of refrigerant manufacturers which allows us to both improve the efficiency of our products and reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of the refrigerants that we choose to use,” explains Auvil.
“Those partnerships are critical, especially in today's environment of supply chain challenges.”
The support of ESG investors and Trane Technologies’ partners
Data centre sustainability standards extend far beyond the immediate sector. It's a priority for companies spanning industries across the globe. As a result, ESG investment funds are increasingly funding green data centre projects.
“It's interesting. ESG investors want to invest, period. They have a lot of capital
MILES AUVIL GLOBAL VERTICAL MARKET LEADER FOR DATA CENTRES, TRANE COMMERCIAL
“The industry is working to advance the adoption of newer, low-GWP refrigerants as fast as possible, and as responsibly as we can”
available, and they see these projects as being highly profitable.
“But, from a data centre-specific perspective, they like data centres because the electrical load is a very stable, predictable load for energy modelling. And that gives investors a very high level of confidence when making investments around potential energy savings and operational savings; it becomes a safer investment, from their perspective.”
Auvil explains how Trane’s partnerships help the company to stay nimble, ensuring that it is always at the top of the technology landscape and scanning game.
Trane also works with ESG investors, including Brookfield, partnerships that enable them to “access customers who may not otherwise have capital to perform some of these sustainability and decarbonisation projects”.
These partnerships are essentially bringing money to the table, providing savings to the client and executing projects that may otherwise have been put on hold, as the capital may otherwise have been preserved for building new facilities, rather than renovating existing ones.
“This model enables us to give them capital to go and tackle their older facilities, where you can have the greatest decarbonisation impact.”
Data centre decarbonisationa pipe dream, or the next step? There is no doubt that the demand for data centres is increasing, and the pace is accelerating to one that, for many, is unprecedented.
So, given this rapidity of growth, is an effective degree of decarbonisation even possible?
“It is absolutely possible. Even a year ago, I would've never used the word decarbonise
GLOBAL VERTICAL MARKET LEADER FOR DATA CENTRES, TRANE COMMERCIAL
when talking about a data centre. But, in the last six months, the concept has really grabbed traction,” Auvil states.
“A lot of people immediately assume electrification of heat is the only way you decarbonise, but that is highly inaccurate.”
“Optimising the facilities is still meaningful, especially anything that's older than five or ten years. And, globally, there still is a large fleet of those sites.”
Auvil explains how HVAC systems form a pivotal part of this ongoing process. “There's a desire in the industry to not just look at the low-hanging fruit in the optimised category, but to understand the GWP level of refrigerants. A highly, highly valued topic within our customer base right now is their approach to refrigerant management. And the last piece of it is going to be the developmental aspect of the reuse of these facilities’ waste heat.”
“Heat resuse has been adopted in a small way in Europe, but we expect that to change drastically. As this industry moves towards using immersion or direct
liquid cooling, this will have a profound impact on the temperatures coming out of the data centre and make them highly monetisable when it comes to reusing that heat elsewhere in adjacent buildings, campuses, or districts.”
“There's a desire in the industry to not just look at the low-hanging fruit in the optimised category, but to understand the GWP level of refrigerants”
THE PROS, CONS AND MANAGED SERVICES
HE With cloud adoption hallmarked as a critical digital transformation area, we explore how managed cloud services can help businesses get there, faster
With cloud adoption hallmarked as a critical digital transformation area, we explore how managed cloud services can help businesses get there, faster
According to the Equinix 2022 Global Tech Trends Survey, 47% of respondent global technology companies say they plan to use the cloud to facilitate their global expansion plans.
Furthermore, 71% of global IT leaders said they plan to move more business functions to the cloud. Of the survey’s respondents, 50% plan to move more of their businesscritical applications to the cloud, and almost half (49%) intend to move security functions to the cloud.
As you can see, the market is ripe for the move. And, for those without a knowledge of the cloud or its deployment, managed services are becoming an increasingly valuable solution.
Managed cloud services give businesses access to cloud computing networks without requiring them to actually learn how to manage the cloud’s infrastructure and its accompanying tools.
“One reason for the explosive growth of cloud is that on-premise infrastructure simply isn’t as compatible with remote working as the cloud, so businesses are increasingly migrating over,” explains Jon Lucas, the Co-Founder and Director at Hyve Managed Hosting.
By paying for a managed cloud services provider to manage the cloud on their behalf, companies are able to quickly and seamlessly deploy the technology in their operations.
Outsourcing in this way can be either done on a partial or complete basis, and the service can span public, private and hybrid clouds.
A cloud maintenance service provider will offer flexible services, allowing the client to decide which of their IT functions can be managed in-house and which to pass on to the service provider.
Managed cloud services can include the management of computing, storage, networks, and operating systems; architecture guidance; managing of the
tools and application stacks running within the cloud infrastructure; system monitoring, alerting, and reporting; security and compliance management; and even the management of ecommerce or digital experience platforms (depending on the client’s specific requirements).
For many businesses, the cost of managed cloud services is easily outweighed by the costs and time that they would otherwise have to invest into teaching their teams how to manage cloud infrastructure, alongside all the required tools and application stacks.
“The cloud’s ability to facilitate and help accelerate business growth has seen it become the ultimate IT-as-a-commodity”
FABRIZIO GARRONE ENTERPRISE SOLUTION DIRECTOR, ARUBA ENTERPRISE
Utilising managed cloud services can give businesses an invaluable competitive edge, as they are able to deploy the cloud at speed, with precision, and across all the key areas of their business.
“Like it or not, cloud services are now an essential part of business operations”, Lucas states.
One of the primary benefits of using managed cloud services is the way that it allows businesses to navigate the complexity of the cloud to a remarkably high degree of success.
“The main advantage of opting for managed cloud services is that it allows the
pros of cloud solutions to be maximised for each individual business,” explains Fabrizio Garrone, the Enterprise Solution Director at Aruba Enterprise.
“By opting for a managed cloud solution, companies can easily grow in whichever way is most optimal for them – be it horizontally by adding or removing cloud servers as needed, or vertically by increasing or reducing the individual parts of a server –and adapt their IT infrastructure according to their needs at any time.”
These services enable teams to tap into all of these benefits without having to invest the extensive costs and time needed to reach the level of training that would otherwise be required.
“The cloud is not a panacea, right? It doesn’t fix everything. If you have a poorly designed, overly complex or overly integrated system on-prem, it's still going to be a poorly designed, overly complex and overly integrated system in the cloud, too,” advises Cris Downey, the Director of Technology Services at Rotary International.
“People without the right skill sets, not settling the processes or poor security practices are just going to be exacerbated when they're in the cloud.”
So, for companies without a prior understanding of the cloud and its deployment, utilising these services allows them to focus on the areas within their skillset, while the opportunities of the cloud are seamlessly opened up to them.
“Managed cloud has the added benefit of freeing up internal resources to support the mounting challenges currently facing businesses, which include growing workloads, a lack of in-house resources due to the IT skills gap, and the growing sophistication of cyber attacks,” Lucas explains.
These are among some of the huge advantages to cloud computing that, when working with a managed cloud provider, businesses with no prior cloud experience can introduce to their operations.
“A big part of modernisation is driving the company forward with agility, cost efficiencies and improved reliability. And the cloud has really enabled us to do a lot of those things,” says Russ Soper, the Chief Information Officer at Finastra.
Furthermore, once the initial transition has been undertaken, cloud technology offers easily scalable solutions to parallel your business growth.
“You've already moved those systems out to something that can take advantage of that scalability. So, once you've made that leap, you're already taking advantage of everything that the cloud can bring forward,” adds Downey.
Despite commonly cited concerns about the vulnerability that these services create, security can be effectively enhanced through a managed cloud service.
“Bespoke cloud solutions require bespoke security strategies; managed providers are experts in cloud security and can advise
organisations on how best to secure their data,” Garrone comments.
“Meanwhile, providers that operate with state-of-the-art, Tier 4 data centres will be able to secure data to the highest standard that companies might not be able to meet with their own on-premise cloud infrastructure.”
“All major cloud providers have evolved to provide a level of protection that’s, quite frankly, a better level of protection than is maybe cost-effective to deploy in on-prem legacy environments,” adds Soper.
“Like it or not, cloud services are now an essential part of business operations”
JON LUCAS CO-FOUNDER AND DIRECTOR, HYVE MANAGED HOSTING
“Outsourcing allows
to focus valuable time and resources on delivering
growth and developing new
for
On the flipside, handing over control is one of the most commonly cited issues that companies have with these services.
“In our experience, one of the main hesitations for companies considering managed cloud services is often the perceived lack of control over resources and greater security concerns due to a lack of access control,” Garrone explains.
“However, there’s a full spectrum of management options when it comes to cloud, and each business will need something slightly different when it comes to their cloud computing solution.”
So, what are the market opportunities and how can opportunistic providers utilise them?
“The size of the managed cloud services market is expected to grow from US$86.1bn in 2021 to US$139.4bn by 2026, as companies look to reap the benefits of outsourcing cloud management,” explains Lucas.
As such, it’s hardly surprising that an increasing number of public cloud providers have recognised the demand for managed cloud services and responded by adding automated tools to their offerings.
“The cloud’s ability to facilitate and help accelerate business growth has seen it become the ultimate IT-as-a-commodity,” says Garrone.
“The biggest market opportunity right now is for building bespoke services that give organisations exactly the level of flexible control over operations in the cloud that they are looking for and need.”
PRODUCED BY: LEWIS VAUGHAN WRITTEN BY: GEORGIA WILSON
Acelebrated pioneer in the sustainable development of ICT services, CSC is committed to promoting climate targets across its entire operations. As such, through supporting the green transition, reducing its carbon footprint, and achieving positive green growth, CSC aims to minimise the environmental impact caused by its activities.
The company is working in collaboration with UPM and AMD enhancing its data centre in Kajaani/Finland to offer worldclass energy efficiency. “The key to energy efficiency is for all the energy consumed by data centres to be spent on meaningful activities i.e. computing power with low PUE. And the waste heat generated by the DC operator is used sustainably. This also lowers the energy cost significantly,”
Jukka-Pekka Partanen, Hannu Havanka, and Andrew Dieckmann discuss their collaboration in Kajaani to create a safe, secure, and energy-efficient ecosystem
explains Jukka-Pekka Partanen, Data Center Ecosystem Director in CSC - IT Center for Science.
A modern business park in Kajaani, based on an old UPM paper mill, hosts more than 40 customers including data centres. Kajaani Data Center Program has ambitions to further grow its customer base with both national and international clients.
“We want to create a synergy of benefits within the ecosystem for the data centres and the companies related to them. We also want to expand and deepen the knowledge on invocation of data, machine learning, and artificial intelligence (AI), as well as support Kajaani and the wider Kainuu region’s visibility, reputation work, internationalisation and business,” explains Partanen.
Founded in 1971, CSC - IT Center for Science is a Finnish centre of expertise in information technology. It is owned by the Finnish state and higher education institutions. CSC’s mission is to provide high-quality ICT expert services – internationally – for higher education institutions, research institutes, culture, public administration, and enterprises.
CSC’s Kajaani Data Center Program was created to attract new national and/or international data centre customers to Kajaani, as well as create synergy benefits as part of its ecosystem for the data centres; expand and deepen its knowledge on invocation of data, machine learning and artificial intelligence; and support Kainuu’s visibility, reputation work, internationalisation and business.
Founded in 1996, UPM is a large Finnish forest industry company. UPM provides a variety of products made from wood. Due to the structural changes in paper making, many of the organisation’s paper mill facilities are
empty. UPM aims to implement new ways of operating on these premises. UPM Is dedicated to creating a future beyond fossils.
While its core business isn’t real estate, after closing its paper mill activities, UPM has grown dedicated to developing its real estate into locations suitable for other usages.
Founded in 1969, AMD has driven innovation over 50 years in high-performance computing, graphics and visualisation technologies–the building blocks for gaming, immersive platforms and data centres.
AMD employees are focused on building leadership high-performance and adaptive products that push the boundaries of what is possible. Billions of people, leading Fortune 500 businesses, and cutting-edge scientific research institutions around the world rely on AMD technology daily to improve how they live, work, and play. For more information about how AMD is enabling today and inspiring tomorrow, visit the AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) website, blog, Facebook and Twitter pages.
Creating a safe, secure, and energy-efficient ecosystem
Working collaboratively, CSC has developed a strong partnership with UPM and AMD to develop a safe, secure and energy-efficient data centre ecosystem to Kajaani.
“AMD believes strongly in environmental sustainability and energy efficiency improvement efforts. We have announced an ambitious goal to achieve a 30 times increase in energy efficiency for AMD processors and accelerators from 2020-2025,“ says Andrew Dieckmann, Corporate VP & GM for the Data Center GPU Business Unit at AMD. “We are also dedicated to creating a future beyond
COMPANY: CSC
LOCATION: KAJAANI, KAINUU, FINLAND
Jukka-Pekka Partanen works at CSC - IT Center Ecosystems and is based in Kajaani. He has been at CSC over 10 years and, before that, spent almost 20 years at Nokia Mobile Phones.
Partanen has been involved in the Finnish data centre industry for the past 10 years, being one of the founds of the Finnish Data Center Forum association and an active board member until recently. In that role, Partanen has worked with a range of colleagues on the global research infrastructure scene, as well as with major international data centre operators and investors.
Most recently, Partanen has been focusing on growing the Kajaani Data Center Ecosystem, where LUMI - one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world - is leading the way. The Ecosystem programme is supported by the city of Kajaani, the Kainuu Region, and local partners.
“The waste heat generated by the DC operator is used sustainably. This also lowers the energy cost significantly”
ANDREW DIECKMANN CORPORATE VP & GM FOR THE DATA CENTER GPU BUSINESS UNIT, AMD.
TITLE: CORPORATE VP & GM FOR THE DATA CENTER GPU BUSINESS UNIT
COMPANY: AMD
LOCATION: GREATER SACRAMENTO
As general manager of the Data Center GPU team, Andrew is responsible for the overall business management, Product Management and Strategy, Product Marketing, Business Development and Business Operations teams. Andrew has spent his 20+ year professional career defining and building products for the data centre market, including compute, memory and storage solutions that help to power many of the leading cloud services and data centre technology platforms. The data centre GPU team at AMD is focused on providing the world’s leading accelerator solutions, powering the world’s biggest AI clusters and HPC supercomputers enabling new scientific discovery and AI advancements that will provide tools, capabilities and innovation previously not thought possible.
“AMD believes strongly in environmental sustainability and energy efficiency improvement efforts”
fossil fuels. Sustainability is at the core of our company,” adds Hannu Havanka, Vice President of Real Estate in UPM Kymmene Oyj.
As part of their joint efforts on this front, the three are supporting the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking, which harnesses and develops top-of-the-range supercomputers to boost Europe's scientific excellence and industrial strength, and to support the digital transformation of the EU's economy.
One such supercomputer is located at Kajaani. “LUMI was ranked third on the Green500 list, published on 30 May 2022. The supercomputer was built on world-class environmental sustainability and costefficiency criteria. It helps the European ICT sector to drive the greener, more costefficient operations necessary to reach the EU’s ambitious climate targets and pave the way for the green transition. With the smallest possible environmental burden and lowest cost for European taxpayers, LUMI is beyond compare,” says Partanen.
The LUMI system leverages a coherent CPU and GPU interconnect using AMD Infinity Fabric™ technology, which offers high-speed, low-latency interconnect, a unified memory for applications and boosts efficiency.
“Applications using HPL code leverage this coherent interconnect to run the serial portions of the code in the CPU, with the parallel portions of the code on GPUs ensuring an efficient use of both the high performance of the AMD EPYC™ CPU cores and AMD Instinct™ GPU compute units. This also helps intelligently manage the data movement, thus simplifying programmability and easing the adoption of GPUs for HPC applications,” explains Dieckmann.
He continues: “The LUMI system also has a downstream NIC directly attached to each
of the Instinct MI250X GPUs that operates at 25Gbps, permitting low-latency messaging from GPUs to off-node, helping to overlap computation and communication, thus efficiently using the system and improving overall performance. These innovations are critical to deliver a system that can deliver 152PF of peak and 62.7 GFlop/W, achieving the #3 spots in both the Top500 and Green500.”
Partanen adds: “The LUMI supercomputer is a really unique data centre investment in Kajaani. It is a top modern and efficient project that was completed in the agreed timeframe and budget. Kajaani is a proven location suitable for data centres and data centre ecosystems. As a proof, LUMI data centre has already won three international competitions in the most innovative project category.”
TITLE: VICE PRESIDENT REAL ESTATE COMPANY: UPM LOCATION: VANTAA, UUSIMAA, FINLAND
Hannu Havanka is the Vice President Real Estate of UPM Kymmene Oyj, a Finnish-based listed forest company acting globally. Mr. Havanka is an experienced realestate professional and has, through his career, worked as a developer, investor and corporate real estate in global perspective including investments and workplace development projects.
“We are also dedicated to creating a future beyond fossil fuels. Sustainability is at the core of our company”
HANNU HAVANKA VICE PRESIDENT REAL ESTATE, UPM KYMMENE OYJ
A unique data centre ecosystem with world-class solutions and services, CSC, AMD and UPM strongly believe in the capabilities of the Kajaani site and the opportunities it can provide to drive business growth.
“We have a proven data centre ecosystem at Kajaani. There is plenty of room for those in the data centre business sector to grow in our park facilities, where we offer world-leading speed-to-market delivery – thanks to the brownfield site – and a smooth permitting and planning process,” says Havanka.
As both interest and visibility grow in the Kajaani area, CSC is dedicated to growing businesses related to its programme, finding new operators that can benefit from hosting a part of their footprint in the Kainuu region, Finland.
Such benefits and opportunities of operating in the Kainuu region include:
• Cost efficiency - inexpensive electricity and reimbursement from waste heat utilisation.
• World-class references - such as the LUMI EuroHPC project.
• One of the most eco-effective data centres in the world - small carbon footprints and surplus amounts of renewable energy are in increasing demand.
• Data - extremely effective connection.
• Supply of HPC environments - CSC has strong knowledge alongside a track record of reliability and excellence in this area.
• Unique ecosystem - offering professional partner expertise, dedicated education, and RDI.
“We want everyone to understand the opportunities and benefits that can be gained from housing their data centres at our base in Kajaani. Our data centre ecosystem with the LUMI EuroHPC supercomputer as its public reference significantly strengthens Finland's – and especially Kainuu’s – role in the European and global high-performance computing ecosystem,” says Partanen.
He concludes: “At the same time, it will strengthen the national and international status of Kainuu’s ICT and Data Center services. Kainuu now has the opportunity to take advantage of the new prospects and build its data centre ecosystem to a new improved level. Now is the perfect time to attract new operators, to establish their presence as the world’s best data centre location.”
CSC:
AMD: UPM:
threaten to halt the sector’s expansion plans in the very near future.
Addressing the world’s e-waste is of paramount importance to everyone involved in the sector, if we want to ensure that we improve sustainability standards, address materials shortages and future-proof the sector.
What is the current state of the world’s e-waste problem?
According to UNU reports, 53.6Mt of e-waste (an average of 7.3 kg per capita) was generated globally in 2019. This figure represents a 21% rise in just five years.
Projections show this volume is set to reach 74.7Mt by 2030, meaning that global e-waste will almost double in less than two decades. Furthermore, current estimates suggest that less than 20% of the world’s discarded
This means that the issue extends beyond that of the sheer volume of waste that this will add to the world’s landfills. Due to the presence of lead and other toxic materials, e-waste currently makes up around 70% of the world’s surface-level toxic pollution, too.
Media
Keeping data centers at optimal temperatures using U.S. sourced, inorganic materials with innovative technology. Durable and sustainable evaporative media designed to keep the cloud going.
As these devices degrade, their hazardous components are exposed and allowed to seep into other areas.
Despite the obviously pressing nature of this issue, governments have been surprisingly slow to act.
America, in particular – which dominates the world’s data centre sector with more than five times the number of data centres as the second largest market – has exceptionally limited e-waste regulations in place.
In fact, only around half of American states currently regulate companies' e-waste, and there are also no federal laws in place to manage the lifecycle of electronic equipment.
The most common sources of e-waste created by data centres include racks, computing equipment, monitors, circuits and any other electrical components within the infrastructure.
Accelerating the pace of the problem is the fact that this equipment isn’t just disposed of when it’s out of action. No – due to the exceptional pace of innovation in the sector, many data centres dispose of working equipment simply because it is out of date and, therefore, deemed obsolete.
But this is not an approach that can continue.
“For colocation providers, this focus on sustainability means customers will want more insight into what is happening in their space,” advises Kevin Brown, the Senior Vice President for EcoStruxure Solutions in the Secure Power Division at Schneider Electric.
“And they will want to dive into more granular levels of data to understand their energy consumption and carbon footprint.
cooling solutions will reduce the risk of quality equipment being discarded before its time.
The development of smart thermostats, for instance, use the IoT and in-built sensors to balance temperature maintenance with
“Data centre operators can also reuse their equipment through sustainable SuperMicro’s 2021 Data Centers & The Environment study, only 28% of companies
globally reuse or repurpose their IT hardware internally, but the method is growing in popularity, with companies like Microsoft or Google implementing circular models for their servers,” states Marcin Bala, CEO of Salumanus.
For example, life cycles can be extended by repurposing older hardware into back-up equipment, rather than having them run 24/7.
Equally, for custom services, plans for future re-use can actually be incorporated into the design of new equipment. If you partner with an IT asset disposition (ITAD) operator, and use their guidance when designing the equipment, you can maximise the re-usability of its constituent parts. And, for parts that cannot directly be reused, they can still be optimised for repair and resale.
Studies show that the carbon contribution for an average 1MW data centre includes 33,000lbs of emissions from its plastic, 73,000lbs from aluminium and 377,000lbs from steel. As such, re-using materials –either as whole units or its separate parts – as much as possible is the best way to minimise energy emissions.
If the parts cannot be reused, equipment should still be designed so that it only uses recyclable equipment. Reusing is the best-case-scenario, but the emissions created by recycling materials is just a fraction of that caused by manufacturing using virgin materials.
One highly effective way to improve your internal e-waste recycling programmes is to choose a specialist partner waste disposal company.
“After wiping all data from the equipment, data centre operators
should partner with waste management companies that operate a ‘zero waste to landfill’ policy. This means all IT equipment will be processed and recycled accordingly,” Bala recommends.
It is imperative that you choose a waste management company that offers a local service. Wherever possible, avoid partnering with a company that ships waste overseas, as this not only generates high levels of emissions, but it can also lead to the materials being dumped.
So, ask your potential contractors for certifications and proof of their recycling processes, and then discuss the wastereduction initiatives they can devise with you.
Then, when you do have to replace your equipment, prioritise sustainable replacements. For example, one solution that is being increasingly deployed in the industry is the strategic consolidation of storage systems, to simplify data centre sites.
“One way to reduce the amount of power consumed is to dramatically simplify the data centre by consolidating the number of storage arrays in operation,” advises Gareth Beanland, UK&I Country Manager at Infinidat.
“Thanks to advancements in enterprise software-defined storage technology, there is no longer any need for 25 or 50 different older arrays, each running one application or workload, when all of those applications and workloads can fit on just one or two modern enterprise storage platforms.”
This will not only massively reduce the amount of equipment required, but it also enables data centres to reduce their power consumption and cooling expenditure, minimise manpower requirements, and utilise space more effectively.
WRITTEN BY: ALEX TUCK
PRODUCED BY: LEWIS VAUGHAN
By connecting communities in the US southeas to the world, they are enabling massive economic growth
DC BLOX provides secure, reliable Tier III data centres and robust connectivity to businesses in growing markets, with a particular focus on the southeast of the United States.
Passionate about driving progress in communities where the foundational infrastructure for the digital economy is limited, CEO Jeff Uphues says that it has been a “really exciting journey” since they were founded eight years ago.
“The whole premise behind us was to serve local mid-size markets that didn't have the critical infrastructure, like some of the bigger cities like LA or New York had done. We've always been in the southeast and around the Atlanta market.”
Systematically putting in data centre after data centre throughout the southeast required purchasing more landed markets and then integrating them all together within a private, dark fibre or high-bandwidth connectivity solution.
This fabric of interconnected data centres is designed to “serve locally and connect globally on behalf of our customers”, adds Uphues, and the approach “brings the market to major new levels of connectivity”.
DC BLOX took a ‘bottoms up’ approach in first looking at the markets, size, and growth, as Uphues explained.
“When you take the landscape around the southeast United States, you've got some real growing cities here. You've got Charlotte, Atlanta, Nashville; other markets like Greenville and Charleston in South Carolina,
JEFF UPHUES CEO, DC BLOX
and Birmingham and Huntsville in Alabama. Not to mention many cities throughout Florida. The southeast is a fast-growing environment and there are great economic incentives for businesses to move here. You don't have these harsh cold winters either, so it's ideal for infrastructure,” said Uphues.
Uphues is proud of the services DC BLOX provides, as they understand that businesses are facing increasing challenges that have a profound impact on their ability to compete and grow in their markets.
Infrastructure is considered vital to the way businesses operate and deliver services and must connect customers to infrastructure in their markets and across the globe. With the pandemic accelerating digital transformation – mass migrations to the cloud, increased mobility and big data –increased agility is required.
With the urgent need for new physical and network infrastructure, DC BLOX works with businesses as well as with state and local governments to build that infrastructure, and to develop the workforce and culture to grow their tech economies.
Myrtle Beach Cable Landing Station –a hurricane-proof gateway to the world
In a hyperscale landscape dominated by the major cloud companies in terms of internet transit and capacity, the industry has seen a shift from the telco internet – birthed from the likes of AT&T and Verizon – to the next generation of cloud services. As these cloud services needed to be distributed further outside of core markets, the cloud internet emerged.
One of the ways the cloud internet expands is internationally through subsea connections. DC BLOX were able to win the Myrtle Beach project with a large hyperscaler, one of a number of initiatives that DC BLOX are involved in alongside hyperscalers.
“Of all the cable landing stations on the eastern seaboard of the United States, Myrtle Beach was directly halfway between New York and Miami, and it's a centralised place that had many core benefits: there's not a lot of barrier islands to go around; the shelf of the subsea floor is a little shallower in areas before it drops off into deep water; it is close to the burgeoning data centre and communications hub of the southeast US, and, aside from hurricane-proofing the building – which is common in Miami – it has a great climate”.
GENIUS Modular Data Centers are purpose-built, compact, economical, energy-efficient and quick to deploy with an impressive speed to market of five to eight months. GENIUS delivers the flexibility of a stick-built data center for edge or colocation providers while enhancing cloud computing operations, reducing carbon footprints and lowering CapEX costs.
Learn more >
As part of the philosophy of serving locally and connecting globally, Uphues explained that DC BLOX took the added step of building a dark fibre ‘backbone’ extending directly from Myrtle Beach, running by Charleston and Augusta, all the way into Atlanta and landing in Lithia Springs, “where there's a lot of hyperscale data centres being built”.
“We've done this by building a multi-duct conduit and dark fibre system that allows us to connect our cable landing station all the way through to core hyperscale data centres and key points of exchange along the way, like Digital Realty and Telex in downtown Atlanta, or some of the hyperscale data centres that are out in Lithia Springs.”
Uphues describes it as “the expressway from the ocean floor all the way into Atlanta. DC BLOX presses the ‘easy’ button for our customers, not only having data centres
along the way, but now owning this dark fibre that allows us to create a unique capacity for providing connectivity”.
“We have this single purpose to serve locally and connect globally on behalf of our customers. Though we have customers with locations in Germany or AsiaPac, we never truly lived our purpose and vision until we won the Myrtle Beach project,” said Uphues.
DC BLOX continues to expand, currently running five core data centres with the CLS and a seventh recently announced and many more to come – all to a modular infrastructure that’s right-sized for the market acting as connectivity exchanges that serve those markets.
“Just like you have core exchanges within larger markets, we've just extended those into the edge markets we serve.
Then, through this dark fibre, we are interconnecting all our sites together so all along the route, you have what we'll call ‘gateways’ functioning as access points for content to be deployed.”
Uphues continued: “They become connection points for rural cooperatives and cities to connect into that provides the capacity and Internet transit services needed to connect their local broadband networks from their communities to the world. So, in essence, our ability to empower the edge is also helping to bridge the digital divide in our region. It's an exciting time and we've got a lot ahead of us.”
With predictions suggesting there’ll be a need to double the size of network capacity in the next five-to-eight years, Uphues reflected on the core infrastructure that is needed. He asked: “How many conduit systems are available in the ground, where they can pull more cables or pull more fibre from, and how many fibres are available in the existing conduit systems?”
As part of the services that they focus on at DC BLOX, the first is the core infrastructure of data centres; the second is the interconnectivity between those data centres, as well as the interconnectivity between cloud companies and major connectivity exchanges; and, thirdly, high capacity data storage for customers that don't want to put data into the cloud, either because the data sets are too large and distant,there are latency issues, or interactiveness with the cloud is cost prohibitive.
These large storage arrays contain videos and images, genomic research and healthcare data, and lots of other data sets that are kept local in one of the markets, with network connectivity available between data centres to distribute and protect data where it is needed.
In partnership with global hyperscale partners, DC BLOX is redefining the hyperscale Cable Landing Station with its new facility in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, which is set to open in the second quarter of 2023. The CLS will be located in the International Technology & Aerospace Park (ITAP).
Download ebrief for Myrtle Beach CLS
To conclude, Uphues suggested that many people in the data centre business today have come out of the real-estate business and are still just real-estate focused. While he acknowledges that they founded the industry, this was primarily just to erect a building filled with computers containing storage and power.
“The DC BLOX team is made of technology industry veterans. We have always taken the approach that this is, at the end of the day, a technology service that you're buying; whether you're renting a cabinet of equipment in a building, you’re moving data to a public cloud provider, or you are backing up your mission critical data
INDUSTRY: IT SERVICES LOCATION: UNITED STATES
Jeff Uphues leads DC BLOX where he is responsible for setting and leading the company’s strategy, vision and execution in designing, building, and operating a fabric of interconnected, highly secure, Tier III-rated data centres across the US southeast.
Jeff is a 30-year veteran in the information technology industry having held C-suite leadership roles for Liquid Web, Cbeyond, Bandwidth, ACSI Network Technologies, MCI and WilTel.
Jeff is a graduate of the Harvard Business School, Rice University’s Jones School of Business Executive Education programme in Finance and Accounting and completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Texas at Arlington.
JEFF UPHUES CEO, DC BLOX
“THE
BLOX TEAM IS MADE OF TECHNOLOGY INDUSTRY VETERANS”
off-site . We are no longer selling services to facilities managers or CFOs, we’re selling into CIOs and CTOs. You’ve got to understand strategic IT – it’s not just a realestate business anymore.”
DC BLOX engages in the markets and contributes to them, too, minding local social and environmental concerns, to ensure the business maintains a higher purpose.
“In every market that we go into, we attempt to use local contractors. When you build a data centre, there's lots of different contractors you use. We try to take a percentage of our entire construction cost and say, ‘who are the disadvantaged and minority-owned businesses here that can help provide us services?’. We want to help the community and help them grow their business.
“Every market that we have is passionled by the executives and the people that we put there. So we hire local people with a connection to the community,” said Uphues.
There are many wide-ranging causes that DC BLOX supports, including women's shelters, food banks, and tech infrastructure – in the form of giving away thousands of computers through partner organisations and volunteering to help where needed.
“A laptop means the world to somebody when they have connectivity to explore it. This group then provides training classes to them, partnering with school systems. Our values are foundational to how we serve our markets and have a real impact on our culture.”
According to Uphues, the pandemic has taught us all that there's a lot to be said about having personal connections to the people with whom you work.
“It's taught us how to be more interconnected and stay that way. The growth of the cloud internet is happening everywhere. The remaking of the interstate and the additional capacity that is available is helping us to stay connected to each other locally and globally”.
It’s no secret that the global data centre sector is flourishing.
In fact, having been valued at $187.35bn back in 2020, the global data centre market is projected to achieve a value of $517.17bn in just ten years, with a 10.5% CAGR from 2021 to 2030.
Across the world, new markets are emerging, expanding and tapping into their slice of the pie.
So, to get a better sense of how (and where) this industry growth will occur, we’ve delved deeper into the top 10 data centre markets that are leading the charge.
As the global data centre industry enjoys consistent, accelerating growth, we take a look at the main markets that are benefitting from the rising demand
Number of data centres | 33
As the world’s second-most populous country, India was bound to have a place in this top 10. However, what may be more surprising is its relatively low ranking, considering its population size.
Maumbai only ranks 10th in this list because India has a markedly low internet literacy rate. According to Cloudscene, despite having the world’s 7th largest nominal GDP, India’s internet literacy rate is just 26%.
Mumbai has the largest share of India’s 133 data centres, making it a key contributor to the rapidlygrowing Asian data centre market.
Number of data centres | 119
As of 2022, Canada ranks as the world’s fifth largest data centre market, with over 300 sites. Almost half of these are located in Toronto, making it the largest slice of the Canadian market.
The most successful data centre providers in Toronto, as listed by Cloudscene, include Allied, TR2, Cologix, TR1 and Neutral Data Centres.
This market dominance is largely driven by the fact that Toronto is one of Canada’s largest cities and financial hubs.
Number of data centres | 155
This Texan city is a major commercial hub in the region, with a GDP of over US$450bn, which, in turn, fuels its growing data centre sector.
It’s also worth noting that this is the first American city on the list. America is, currently, the country with the world’s largest number of data centres. And, out of America’s 2751 data centres, Dallas alone has 155.
Australia also ranks highly in Statista’s list of the countries with the highest number of data centres, securing 7th spot with its 272 sites.
Of these, 89 are located in Sydney, making it the country’s largest data centre industry.
The city’s flourishing data centre market is largely driven by its size (being the capital of New South Wales and the city with the largest population in Australia), its high GDP (US$250bn), and advanced network fabrics.
Number of data centres | 104
Singapore’s technological sector is experiencing rapid expansion, consequently garnering the interest of tech companies across the world.
And, thanks to its Next Generation National Broadband Network (NGNBN), Singapore is one of Asia’s fastest-growing data hubs.
What’s more, with the lowest city-state corporate tax rate in the APAC region (17%), this growth rate is set to retain its impressive pace.
Number of data centres | 46
According to the Central Statistics Office (CSO), Ireland’s data centres accounted for almost 4,000GWh in 2021, representing a 265% increase from that of 2015. From 2020-21 alone, this figure rose by 32%.
Ireland is one of the largest and most rapidly expanding global data centre markets, and Dublin is right at the heart of it, with a staggering 46 out of Ireland’s 49 data centres being located in the capital.
Number of data centres | 120
Number of data centres | 124
As with all of the other capital cities on this list, Amsterdam is the Netherlands’ leading data centre market.
This impressive market presence is largely down to its pioneering fintech sector, high GDP (over US$320bn), and the creation of the Amsterdam Internet Exchange, the world’s second-largest data transport hub.
The key players in Amsterdam’s data centre industry are AM7, AM5, AMS 9, Nikhef Amsterdam and Global Switch Amsterdam West.
In terms of global data centre markets, Germany ranks in second place (after America) with 484 data centres.
Of those, over a quarter (124) are located in Frankfurt.
Beyond being a major city, a key factor driving Frankfurt’s leading German data centre market position is the fact that it is the base for the European Central Bank and FWB Frankfurter Wertpapierbörse (the country’s largest stock exchange), too.
FRANKFURTNumber of data centres | 196
In terms of data centre numbers by country, the UK ranks third overall – after Germany. However, with its 196 data centres alone, London easily secures second place as a city market in and of itself.
London absolutely dominates the UK data centre market, with more than four times the number of data centres in its nearest rival city, Manchester.
And this is hardly surprising – London is England’s financial, commercial and technological hub, and a container for the country’s burgeoning technology boom. In fact, according to Cloudscene, the technology sector is growing at a rate 2.6 times faster than the rest of the UK economy.
This growth is in turn driving the growth of the London data centre market at an equally rapid pace. Currently, the sector’s main players are TELEHOUSE London, Interxion, Equinix and VIRTUS Data Centres.
A BizClik
Showcase your values, products and services to your partners and customers at FINTECH LIVE LONDON 2022.
Brought to you by BizClik, FINTECH LIVE LONDON, the hybrid event held between 1st-2nd November is broadcast live to the world and incorporates three zone areas of FinTech LIVE, Crypto LIVE plus InsurTech LIVE in to one event.
With a comprehensive content programme featuring senior industry leaders and expert analysts, this is an opportunity to put yourself and your brand in front of key industry decision makers.
From keynote addresses to lively roundtables, fireside discussions to topical presentations, Q&A sessions to 1-2-1 networking, the 2-day hybrid show is an essential deep dive into issues impacting the future of each industry today.
Global giants and innovative startups will all find the perfect platform with direct access to an engaged and active audience. You can’t afford to miss this opportunity.
See you on: 1st-2nd November 2022
Get tickets Sponsor opportunitiesNumber of data centres | 250+
Based on sqft and MW capacity, North Virginia and Ashburn represent the largest data centre market in the world.
In fact, due to the concentration of data centres in the area, North Virginia and Ashburn are known as ‘Data Centre Alley’. This reputation is made even more impressive when considering the fact that America completely dominates the world’s data centre industry.
Ashburn, in particular, has a remarkably high proportion of hyperscale data centres (meaning that what it lacks in numbers, it more than makes up for in size and capacity).
Northern Virginia also hosts AWS’s largest cloud cluster and is home to some of the largest data centre operations for Meta, Google and Microsoft.
The presence of pioneering industry representatives – such as the North Virginia Tech Council – have helped fuel this market’s exceptional growth and keep the pace sustainable.
With 137 hectares and 340MW of resources, Data4 has a volume of land reserves and power capacity that is unique in the European market.
From small scale origins in a slightly under-performing region of the sector, in 2014, Data4 rapidly aligned itself with the newly-emerging global data centre trends. It developed a strategy around three pillars of growth: Scalability, Quality and Sustainability.
Alongside this, its strategy of acquiring large, scalable campuses placed it in prime position to ride the wave of the rapidly growing European data centre market.
We spoke to Adam Levine, the Chief Commercial Officer at Data4, about the factors that drove Data4’s successes, its ongoing European expansion, the company’s future plans, and how this strategy is being shaped by sustainability.
Utilising a sleeping giant of the Tier 1 data centre markets as a springboard to becoming France’s largest data centre provider
Data4 owns, operates and invests in largescale data centres across Europe. But, despite now having claims in major European markets, it all started out in one of the sector’s more forgotten regions.
According to Levine, in the early days of Data4, France
Adam Levine, Chief Commercial Officer, reveals how Data4 has transformed the French data centre sector from outlier to key player in the European market
was perceived as the “country cousin” of the other major European markets of Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam and Dublin.
“I think it's key to point out that we're in what’s historically considered to be a Tier 1 market, but that it has been regularly under-performing compared to the other FLAP-D markets.
ADAM LEVINE CHIEF COMMERCIAL OFFICER, DATA4 GROUPParis hadn't really seen the level of growth that its competitors had, and so, “it was perceived as a bit of an outlier”.
This was a key part of Data4’s success as, when they started out in Paris, it was very much a market with a lot of potential but without much going on.
“And we had this huge campus of 111 hectares and a hundred megawatts. I mean, we didn't think we'd fill this campus in 50 years, let alone in the time that we're doing”, Levine reflects.
A rapid expansion, from single market, single tenant, to a pan-European, multiproduct business Data4 is geared to take full advantage of this market boom, with its Paris campus currently underway to become a 250 MW site. Now, the company is planning to further consolidate its position as a market leader in its core markets, which are Paris, Milan, Madrid and Warsaw.
“IT'S THE CHALLENGES THAT GET YOU OUT OF BED. IT'S WHAT MAKES IT INTERESTING”
But, it wasn’t always this way. “It's very easy to sit and think yeah, this is great. But when I joined Data4 eight years ago, we sat down with a white sheet of paper and said ‘Okay, what are we doing here? How are we gonna make this thing work?’. And two years later, we were still struggling to sell a couple of hundred kilowatts and a few racks,” Levine recalls.
“And when things are going so well, you do kind of forget that a little bit. But at the same time, it's still in your DNA, it's part of everything you do.
“When you look at the most successful businesses, they have always come *this* close to failing. And I think remembering those beginnings is what keeps you hungry and makes you never want to just sit back on your laurels and accept what you've got. I think if it has always been easy, it's hard to get motivated to keep it going. What keeps us going is that we remember how hard it was to get here. And we never want to go back to that position.”
Now, as the Paris data centre market takes off, Data4 is right in the heart of the action. In fact, Paris’ data centre industry is doubling every year, and has been maintaining this pace for a few years. If we look back to the growth spurt that Frankfurt and London went through a few years ago, it’s clear that Paris is on the cusp of the same upward trajectory.
TITLE: CHIEF COMMERCIAL OFFICER INDUSTRY: DATA LOCATION: LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM
Adam Levine has 18 years of experience at the highest levels in the domain of IT hosting.
He began his career in the real estate sector with HRO before specialising in the IT hosting sector with CBRE.
In 2007, Adam Levine was appointed VP Sales, then VP Business Development and Strategic Alliances (EMEA), at Digital Realty Trust, a global operator of Data Center solutions, where he worked for 7 years in direct collaboration with major enterprises, IT and telecommunications sector players thereby establishing Digital Realty as a major player in the European market.
Adam Levine joined DATA4 in 2014. As the Group Chief Commercial Officer in charge of the new-markets development strategy as well as the group’s organic revenue growth, he has spearheaded the growth of the company to its current position across 5 European markets with over 160 customers in 27 data centers.
of resources across Europe
Hectares across EuropeGenerale Prefabbricati S.p.A. is specialized since 60 years in design & build concrete precast distinctive buildings. Generale Prefabbricati is now proudly leading as responsible of the concrete precast and civil works at new upscale Data Centers on progress campus erection in Italy and France.
Thanks to its internal design and engineering team, Generale Prefabbricati has developed a bespoke smart concrete precast turnkey seismic resistant construction system provided with in situ concrete foundations, infrastructures, civil and completion works.
Since its inception in Paris – and the success that this strategic positioning achieved – the company has expanded across Europe.
In 2013, Data4 acquired a site in Milan, in 2018 it expanded to another site in Madrid, and then in 2021, they set up a site in Warsaw.
During that time, Data4 has transitioned from a single tenant, single market start-up to a pan-European, multi-product business.
Their growth strategy involves going to tier two cities (non-capital cities) in the core market countries that Data4 already has a strong position in (namely, France, Spain and Italy). In order to fully utilise these markets – where they have already built up a strong reputation, leadership structure and talent pool – they will continue to consolidate their position in these locations.
In terms of new markets, Data4’s expansion plans will see them working in new markets such as Frankfurt in the very near future. They are continuing to evaluate and re-evaluate where the market is extrapolating, where it is going, and then looking for growth opportunities across Europe accordingly.
Although this seems like a series of pretty standard steps, in reality, it’s a strategy that is relatively rare amongst data centres.
“ALTHOUGH IT'S VERY EASY TO SAY THAT WHEN THE TIDE RISES ALL BOATS FLOAT, WE'VE BUILT A BEAUTIFUL SHIP HERE AT DATA4 AND IT'S TREATING US ALL VERY WELL”
ADAM LEVINE CHIEF COMMERCIAL OFFICER, DATA4 GROUP
“I think that there is a tendency in the data centre industry – and a tendency in the business world itself – for companies to be headquartered somewhere, whether it's Tokyo, Seattle, London, Paris, Dublin, or wherever, and for that to be the centre of their universe.”
ADAM LEVINE CHIEF COMMERCIAL OFFICER, DATA4 GROUP“What we've tried to do is to understand that every country is different. Every country has its own specificities and ways of doing business. And so, what we've done is rolled out a lot of the decision making and power structure in our organisation to the regions. So, we have strong regional organisations with country managers; they very much drive and own their own regions,” says Levine.
“We very much believe that, as we grow, one of our strengths is to have this scalable, repeatable model to use whenever we go to a new location.”
According to Levine, the pandemic pushed a lot of other companies to reconsider the way that they centralise their operations.
“What I think we're seeing now is that, post-pandemic, a lot of other companies are moving in that direction, because the days when you could run a region from, say, Shanghai, Tokyo, Dublin or New York are kind of gone. Companies have now realised that
“I DON'T THINK YOU CAN TALK ABOUT HOW WE'RE PLANNING FOR THE GROWTH IN THE FUTURE, WITHOUT TALKING ABOUT SUSTAINABILITY”
that was not really a scalable model. And the fact that people, all of a sudden, had to stop travelling for two years, meant that they were forced to diversify and push decisionmaking out to the regions.”
Now, some of the larger cloud providers are beginning to introduce big shifts in their organisational structure, to move away from the centralised approach.
Equally important to Data4 is its partner
ecosystem – a critical contributor to its future success. The company has created a marketplace, as Levine calls it, that allows
customers to buy and sell services with each other.
“The idea of the marketplace is that it creates an environment where the customers don't want to leave because, as long as they can continue to sell their own products and services within that environment, it creates that virtuous circle where they will remain forever,” commented Levine.
The Grupo Generale Prefabbricati has also proved to be an invaluable long-standing partner for Data4. This partnership, and Generale Prefabbricati’s industry expertise, was key to Data4’s successful expansion into the Italian market.
“They've been a fantastic partner”, said Levine. “Don't forget Italy was very much the second market for us. We were a French company with strong links to the French market and French suppliers, and Grupo Generale then gave us those connections to the Italian market.”
Now, the relationship with Generale Prefabbricati has grown from working with Data4 as a vendor, to becoming the company’s key Italian partner. In fact, Grupo Generale very quickly became a key supplier and partner in France, as well.
“We've been working with them since the inception of our Milan campus. They're a great example of someone that starts out
as a vendor, who is then intelligent, flexible and agile enough to grow into becoming a key partner.”
Data4’s approach to growth, expansion and sustainability Across all sectors spanning the world, sustainability is a question at the forefront of everyone’s minds.
And nowhere is this more apparent than in the data centre industry. Balancing rapid expansion with future-proofing the sector itself is no mean feat.
“If you were to go back five years, I don't think anybody foresaw the scale at which this thing would take off. I think we all knew it
was always going to be big, but the scale has been insane. And so, the way we're preparing for that is through sustainability,” says Levine.
Data4Good is Data4’s corporate responsibility programme, which consists of four main pillars.
“We’re promoting digital responsibility and looking to reduce the environmental footprint of our activities. We are looking to be a committed player at the heart of our ecosystem. Not just at the data centre level, but to give back to the communities. To invest in education, in the environment and in the local environment in which we operate. And then, ensuring good working conditions for our employees.”
Alongside this, Data4 has also signed up to the Climate Neutral Data Center Pact – a pledge of industry players and trade associations of data centres in Europe committed to achieving climate neutrality by 2030 – and has implemented a circular economy approach across its operations.
“We look to inject a view of sustainability on everything we do, throughout the life cycle of the data centre, its design, construction, operation and end of life.”
By developing a life cycle analysis of its data centres, Data4 can now accurately
calculate the global environmental footprint of its data centres, from inception to end of life (or from cradle to grave, so to speak).
Sustainability is absolutely imperative to Data4, and its extensive eco-conscious innovations include the use of low-carbon concrete, lithium ion batteries, and an equipment waste recycling programme.
For Levine, beyond being a part of the company’s ethos, company expansion cannot exist without sustainable focus.
“Our customers are pushing us to be a lot more conscious and to measure our environmental impact. We're having to measure this, not just for ourselves and our own sense of responsibility, but our customers are pushing us to.”
“I'm fairly sure that, in the next round of contracts that we've got coming down the pipeline, we will have strong, solid commitments with financial penalties revolving around waste recycling, carbon footprint, carbon utilisation and so on.”
“So, I don't think you can talk about how we're planning for the growth in the future, without talking about sustainability.”
“IF YOU WERE TO GO BACK FIVE YEARS, I DON'T THINK ANYBODY FORESAW THE SCALE AT WHICH THIS THING WOULD TAKE OFF”
PRODUCED BY: LEWIS VAUGHAN
LLate 2021 saw WIOCC - the leading player in the deployment of carrier-scale, futureproofed network infrastructure into Africa - announce US$200mn in funding to launch a new pan-African data centre operator through WIOCC Group company Open Access Data Centres (OADC). Along with this announcement, OADC revealed its plans to invest US$500mn over the next five years in deploying and operating a network of world-class data centres across the continent.
Just over six months later, OADC’s newly appointed CEO, Ayotunde Coker, shares his plans to drive Africa’s digital ecosystem forward: “We want to build at speed, expanding the market and delivering customer-centric value propositions. In Africa, the future is cloud. If you consider the business model for mobile telephony in Africa, its success was ensured by a pay-as-you-go charging model. The cloud is the most effective way to deliver technology solutions to customers – and again, is based on a pay-as-yougrow, pay-as-you-go, pay-as-you-need model.”
“We see significant growth and further opportunity in the hyperscale cloud data centre market. Our new facility in Lagos, for example, is being built in phases to match demand, but can ultimately scale to over 20MW, capable of supporting over 5,000 racks. However, not every location requires facilities of this size. In more regional business hubs, a medium-sized data centre (or ‘midi’), circa 200 to 400-rack facilities, for instance, is more appropriate, and for smaller edge workloads, edge facilities of up to 150kW critical power support services, applications and network extension closer to the network edge; so, uniquely in Africa, we are doing all of this.”
OADC’s newly appointed CEO, Ayotunde Coker, shares his vision for Africa’s future and the role OADC will play in the country’s transformation
Coker was appointed to guide and lead the OADC initiatives that will play a major role in accelerating Africa’s digital transformation, through construction and operation of a pan-African network of Tier-III certified data centre facilities. The organisation is rolling out its unique core-toedge open-access data centre ecosystem, comprising a combination of hyperscale, regional and edge data centres.
Upon his appointment, Coker said: “I am delighted to be leading OADC in transforming Africa’s digital capabilities, developing vibrant interconnected ecosystems based on deployment of worldclass, open-access digital infrastructure at strategic interconnection points throughout the continent. An opportunity for Africa to leapfrog the world.”
Now, the innovative CEO is firmly engaged in delivering OADC’s plans for Africa’s transformation and is excited by the opportunity presented to him at OADC, as he notes: “The key thing with WIOCC being the leading player in the deployment of carrier-scale, future-proofed open network infrastructure into Africa is that it opens up options for interconnectivity between data centres and right through to the point of use. There is great synergy there. Looking towards the future, WIOCC and OADC have been chosen to land the new >100Tbps Equiano and 2Africa undersea cables at different points in Africa. I think that's a really great achievement, and an excellent anchor point in terms of building out Open Access Data Centres.”
With 35 years of international experience across Europe, the USA, Asia and Africa, Coker knows the importance of giving customers best-in-class services: “Quality is very important in what we do. With many, many years in the industry – particularly in Africa – it has become clear to me that we have to build with quality moving forward. It is so important that the quality is there from the beginning.”
“We will set new standards for excellence in client delivery and service, whilst also setting new standards for the interconnection of digital ecosystems to ensure quality across the continent. In this it is vital to have the support of a great team. I am delighted with the team we have in place, and I will continue to bring in talent in key areas to ensure we are able to deliver on this promise. We will continue to invest in sustainable engineering, sales and marketing, and to move quickly to address new client requirements. We know exactly
TITLE: CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER
INDUSTRY: DATA CENTRES
LOCATION: NIGERIA
Dr Ayotunde Coker is one of the leading players in the development of the data centre industry in Africa and is Chairperson of influential industry group, the Africa Data Centres Association.
Before joining OADC as Chief Executive Officer, Dr Coker led Rack Centre to becoming a household name in Nigeria and a leading brand in Africa, with global recognition and numerous prestigious international awards.
Throughout a distinguished international career as a technology and
business leader, Dr Coker has held senior positions in finance, energy, management consulting and UK Government. He holds an MSc from Cranfield Institute of Technology and a PhD (Honoris Causa) from ESCAE University. His achievements have been recognised by numerous awards, including the Distinguished Manufacturing Alumni Award (Cranfield Institute of Technology) 2020, and in the same year, he was recognised as one of the Global Top 30 Edge Computing Leaders by Data Economy Magazine.
“It has become clear to me that we have to build things with quality moving forward. It is so important for the quality to be there from the beginning”
DR AYOTUNDE COKER CEO, OPEN ACCESS DATA CENTRES
what we need to do to put the right scale of facility into the right locations. And we can bring it all together for clients in a very flexible way through the unique core-toedge architecture we're putting in place, that includes open interconnection across the continent,” adds Coker.
Technology is crucial to the success of OADC as it looks to transform Africa’s digital ecosystems. Its OADC Durban facility and 23 edge data centres are already operational, with new core sites coming online shortly in Cape Town, Johannesburg and Lagos, Nigeria.
“We're going to see the Internet of Things (IoT) becoming much more important, especially to organisations operating at the edge. Businesses need to have much more creativity in doing things efficiently, and that's where IoT can help. As well as supporting this, we also anticipate implementing artificial intelligence in optimising what we do and how we do it,” says Coker.
OADC has said that it plans facilities in up to 20 countries across Africa, including: Accra, Ghana; Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire; Cape Town & Johannesburg, South Africa; Kinshasa, DRC; Lagos, Nigeria; and Mombasa & Nairobi, Kenya.
“But, to implement this technology properly, we need to start with the intent, create the context, set the outcomes, and only then we will be able to maximise operational efficiency. Innovation in operating models is a subject at the forefront of my thoughts, especially considering the environment that we're working with. Simply accepting and maintaining the status quo is not always good enough.”
To bolster its technological capabilities and accelerate its journey to a connected Africa, OADC relies on its partners for support. Coker is firmly invested in harnessing enduring partnerships: “As we are building ecosystems
DR AYOTUNDE COKER CEO, OPEN ACCESS DATA CENTRES
“We're going to see the Internet of things (IoT) becoming much more important, especially for those operating at the edge”MISSION STATEMENT
right across Africa, we work with a variety of organisations – be they technology partners, interconnect partners, carrier partners and so on. It's going to be a really exciting combining a whole range of partnerships in different parts of the delivery value chain.”
As an example, the company has partnered with Saradan for its expertise across the entire data centre ecosystem: “They bring excellent experience on the engineering front - they've been there, done it before, and they really bring valuable insight into what needs to be done. That 'right first time' quality really has been my experience of working with them.”
Key to successful partnerships is excellence. “Excellence is something we encourage and will continuously strive for within OADC”- and Coker expects this from
OPEN ACCESS DATA CENTRES
“The quality of client interaction has to be such that every touchpoint is an outstanding experience”
those he partners with, too: “We have the same expectations for them as we do of ourselves.
Cultural alignment helps, but a collective ability and desire to learn from each other is also helpful. I also think open graciousness is key; something I really do believe in.”
OADC plans to open its second core data centre in Nigeria later this year. On a four-hectare site in Lekki, Lagos – the largest data centre campus in West Africa - the US$100mn, Tier III-quality facility will have up to 20MW of capacity and 7,200 sqm (77,500 sq ft) of white space, with further expansion potential subject to demand. The Equiano subsea cable lands directly into this data centre.
The culture of excellence Coker is cultivating within OADC is designed to ensure that it delivers a truly innovative and client-centric data centre experience; one that puts its clients at the centre of Africa’s digital transformation.
“The quality of client interaction has to be such that every touchpoint is an outstanding experience, something we work at continuously and embody in our culture. Our client comes first; working with us has to be a totally different experience compared to any other operator, so those are the expectations I put in place here at OADC. We have to underpin the delivery of this expectation through the people we employ, ensuring that every single person in this organisation has the ability and desire to delight each client, and they have to be fully engaged in that process.
DR AYOTUNDE COKER CEO, OPEN ACCESS DATA CENTRES
“Sustainability also gives us the opportunity to continuously innovate”
Our passion is not for the short-term sale, but for the long-term relationships forged through outstanding client experience” explains Coker.
Coker does, however, recognise that there will always be scope for improvement and that mistakes may be made for OADC to improve in supporting to the best of its ability Africa’s transformation: “It's a constant learning experience. When it doesn't go right the first time, we also have to be good at fixing issues very, very quickly. Sometimes, when things don't go right, the speed and quality of your response can result in an outstanding client experience. It’s important to learn and build a virtuous cycle of that learning. In fact, the next innovation might come out of lessons
learned from what didn't go right the first time. We must also understand that was acceptable yesterday is no longer good enough today. A spirit of learning and striving for relentless continuous improvement is how we will achieve the bar of excellence we are setting for ourselves.”
At the heart of OADC’s ambition is the organisation's sustainability ambitions. With many organisations across the world planning to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, the data centre industry must increasingly design facilities that conserve energy, are energy efficient and use renewable energy sources.
“There are some things all companies can do to become more sustainable – take online meetings, for example, which can drastically reduce carbon emissions otherwise generated by travel - but that’s not enough by itself; we have to go beyond that.”
“We are recruiting a Head of Environment, Sustainability & Governance (ESG) to be primarily responsible for ESG and the sustainability agenda at OADC,” adds the CEO. “This will give us focus at the senior level, as well as providing us with a focal point for our engineering, innovation and processes in terms of sustainability. We plan to fully embed the resulting principles in our culture to ensure that what we do is inherently sustainable.”
He concludes: “Sustainability also gives us the opportunity to continuously innovate. A lot of what we will do, and the technology we use to implement our sustainability agenda, has yet to be invented or put into full production, particularly in the environment in which we operate. Our key opportunity is to optimise everything we do for the benefit of our clients and the environment in which we operate; it's an exciting time for OADC.”
