Datasource July 2017

DATASOURCE DATA CENTRE MARKET NEWS

NEWS GLOBAL EVENTS

ISSUE 161 JULY 2017

BA’S TOP BOSS CONFIRMS HUMAN ERROR CAUSED COMPANY’S WORST DATA CENTRE INCIDENT IN HISTORY

170 offices, across 25 countries Data centre services

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DATASOURCE 07/2017 Chris Jones Head of Data Centres GVA

NEWS

Every month Datasource reports the news and trends that matter to data centre occupiers around the world.

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GVA is a leading expert in the data centre property and has been for the last 17 years over which time we have transacted around 500,000 m2 of technical space and a gigawatt of energy. We specialise in analysing, acquiring and marketing technical space from development land through to shell & core, operational facilities and colocation suites.

Europe, Middle East and Africa

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ABOUT US 30 About Apleona & GVA Data Centres

Our core services

Apleona brings together the real estate and facility management expertise of GVA and HSG as market leading brands for European data centre property. We are active in over 30 countries across 5 continents with a broad portfolio of services for real estate and facilities we employ around 20,000 people and generate over €2 billion annually.

Our data centre clients are occupiers, operators, investors and developers. They range from government bodies and national carriers, technology integrators and hosting companies to enterprises of all flavours from retailers to investment banks.

How can we help you?

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World ‘These are historic days’. Russian scientist to launch data centre into orbit Device to carry data of 1.5 million people, however, questions remain on what data laws the data centre will have to abide by.

A Russian businessman is readying to launch a data centre into space in August this year, in what is certainly one of the most ambitious projects the data centre industry has seen in recent times. The project is part of a much larger idea which started in 2016 with the announcement of the development of a pacifist nation-state in space.

“Asgardia will become a place in orbit which is truly ‘no man’s land’, ”those involved in the project said during its launch as they hope to gain recognition from the UN in the years to come.

Those interested in entering Asgardia will go through an admission process, and could potentially gain citizenship to the “nation-state”.

Around 200,000 people have registered their interest in becoming a citizen of Asgardia since its announcement. The project is being directed by the Aerospace International Research Center, founded by the Russian scientist, Dr Igor Ashurbeiyli, who is now ready to launch the first piece of infrastructure into space.

That infrastructure happens to be a data centre, which measures only 10x10x20 cm and weighs 2.8Kg. The device will store data from

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1.5 million people. 100,000 will have the ability to store 300KB. A further 400,000 will be allowed to store 200KB and an additional one million people will be given 100KB of storage.

The little green box will be decorated with Asgardia’s nationhood symbols including its flag. A national constitution is also set to be put into orbit with the device.

Ashurbeyli said: “Sixty years after the launch of the first ever artificial satellite, Sputnik, our own space satellite, Asgardia-1 will mark the beginning of a new space era, taking our citizens into space in virtual form, at first.

“Asgardia-1 will contain data stored for free for up to 1.5 million Asgardians on board the satellite. These are historic days, and your names and data will forever stay in the memory of the new space humanity, as they will be reinstalled on every new Asgardia satellite we launch.

“Asgardia-1 is our first, small step which we hope will lead to a giant leap forward for mankind. “It will be our foundation stone, from which we will look to create a network of satellites that will help protect our planet against asteroids, solar flares, man-made space debris, and other space hazards.”

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Tata communications targets $78BN cloud makert, expands in Europe, APAC and Middle East Cloud nodes in Germany, United Arab Emirates and Malaysia join a growing list around the world as cloud adoption speeds up.

Tata Communications has launched three nodes for its IZO Private Cloud service in Europe, Middle East and Asia Pacific in an attempt to support enterprises’ hybrid cloud adoption.

The private cloud nodes in Germany, United Arab Emirates and Malaysia have also been set up to answer localised data sovereignty requirements, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to come into force in May 2018 in the EU. The expansion of IZO Private Cloud in Europe, Middle East and Asia Pacific comes as Gartner estimates the private cloud services market to be worth $77.7bn in total, a value Tata Communications said it wants to capitalise from.

The IZO Private Cloud operates today in 13 different locations. In addition to Germany, UAE and Malaysia, Tata Communications has private cloud nodes in India, Singapore, Hong Kong and the UK. Tata said the new private cloud nodes address the needs of enterprises in industries with stringent regulatory requirements, including aviation, healthcare, manufacturing, media, banking, IT, financial services and insurance, retail and ecommerce.

production subsidiary PLAZAMEDIA; Khimji Ramdas, an Omanbased conglomerate with operations across consumer products, infrastructure, lifestyle and logistics; and SkyLab, a Singaporebased IoT technology solutions provider.

Srinivasan CR, Senior Vice President, Global Product Management & Data Centre Services at Tata Communications, said: “In today’s digital economy, enterprises’ growth is fuelled by cloud-based applications and data.

“Yet, the sovereignty and security of these critical assets is a major concern for CIOs. As a global cloud provider with a local presence, we address these concerns by giving CIOs complete visibility and control over their entire IT estate, across all networks and devices, and empower them to drive organisation-wide digital transformation with maximum agility.”

Tata Communications’ IZO Private Cloud customers in Europe, Middle East and Asia Pacific include Constantin Medien, a Germany-based international media company specialising in sports, entertainment and event marketing, and its media

NVIDIA bets on hyperscale data centre artificial intelligence Technology pillar to new industry partner program is already used in Microsoft’s Project Olympus initiative and Facebook’s Big Basin systems.

GPU maker NVIDIA has launched a partner program aimed at developing cloud computing solutions for artificial intelligence (AI) hyperscale data centres.

The program, named NVIDIA HGX Partner Program, joins together some of the industry’s largest original design manufacturers (ODM) such as Foxconn, Inventec, Quanta and Wistron.

Through HGX Partner Program, NVIDIA has been tasked with providing each ODM with access to the NVIDIA HGX reference architecture, NVIDIA GPU computing technologies and design guidelines.

NVIDIA said that by tapping into its HGX technology, ODMs will be in a position where they will quickly gain the necessary insights to build GPU-accelerated systems for hyperscale data centres.

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Ian Buck, general manager of Accelerated Computing at NVIDIA, said: “Accelerated computing is evolving rapidly – in just one year we tripled the deep learning performance in our Tesla GPUs – and this is having a significant impact on the way systems are designed.

“Through our HGX partner program, device makers can ensure they’re offering the latest AI technologies to the growing community of cloud computing providers.”

Taiyu Chou, general manager of Foxconn/Hon Hai Precision Ind Co., Ltd., and president of Ingrasys Technology Inc, said: “Through this new partner program with NVIDIA, we will be able to more quickly serve the growing demands of our customers, many of whom manage some of the largest data centres in the world.

HGX is the same data centre design used in Microsoft’s Project Olympus initiative, Facebook’s Big Basin systems and NVIDIA DGX-1 AI supercomputers.

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NVIDIA engineers will work closely with ODMs to help minimise the amount of time from design to production deployments.

“Early access to NVIDIA GPU technologies and design guidelines will help us more rapidly introduce innovative products for our customers’ growing AI computing needs.”

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Equinix and Alibaba partner to expand cloud services worldwide

Global switch raises €1BN to finance global data centre explansion Company sets out plans to build eight new facilities with first expansion works set to become operational during Q3 2017.

Large scale data centre operator Global Switch has completed the issuance of two €500m bond offerings raising €1m in order to finance new developments.

The raised bonds are to be used in expanding Global Switch’s footprint across different regions.

The Chinese cloud market is expected to grow at 40% per year through 2020, reaching $20bn, making it a desirable market for many operators.

The company said in a statement that new data centre developments, supported by strong levels of pre-commitment from customers, will be delivered both in existing locations and in new tier 1 markets “to take advantage of the growth in demand from hyperscale customers and customers from China expanding into Europe and South Asia as part of China’s Belt and Road initiative”.

Global Switch’s development strategy includes eight planned data centre developments, with two in new markets: Hong Kong and Shanghai.

Colocation company Equinix and Chinese cloud giant Alibaba Cloud have entered into a collaboration to provide enterprises with access to Alibaba Cloud via the Equinix Cloud Exchange.

Three of the new developments – in Hong Kong, Sydney and Singapore – are under construction, with the first stage of Hong Kong and second stage of Sydney East scheduled for completion and income generation during Q3 2017.

Businesses will be able to access the service via Equinix’s Hong Kong, Silicon Valley, Sydney, and Washington, D.C., International Business Exchange (IBX) data centres.

The provider currently operates ten data centres in connectivity hubs across Europe and Asia Pacific, providing around 300,000 square metres of state of the art technical space.

In addition, Frankfurt and London are also set to join the list of facilities serving as an anchor to accessing the Alibaba Cloud.

The companies did not disclose the date the service will begin from those two locations.

It currently has operations in Amsterdam, Frankfurt, London, Madrid, Paris, Hong Kong, Singapore and Sydney.

Furthermore, Alibaba Cloud Express Connect enables companies to leverage the Alibaba Cloud network in mainland China. Equinix’s collaboration with Alibaba comes as studies from the U.S. International Trade Administration reveal that the Chinese cloud market is expected to grow at 40% per year through 2020, reaching $20bn.

Access to Alibaba Cloud is being used by multinational users looking to expand their cloud-based applications into the region.

Greg Adgate, vice president of global technology partners and alliances, Equinix, said: “As one of the world’s leading and fastest growing cloud computing companies, Alibaba Cloud represents a significant partnership for Equinix as we continue to empower businesses around the globe to build secure, private clouds, without compromising network and application performance.

John Corcoran, CEO of Global Switch, said: “Today’s successful bond issuance is a significant step for Global Switch, which will secure exciting future growth opportunities for the company.

“By pro-actively addressing our near-term debt maturities and putting in place a new long-dated debt maturity profile, with a much lower interest cost, we can further cement our position as the data centre provider of choice for customers in Europe and Asia-Pacific.

“In particular, these new bond issuances help us to fund our exciting expansion plans to meet growing global demand for hyperscale data centre infrastructure, while maintaining our focus on strong long-term operational and financial performance and our market leading investment grade credit profile.”

“We are thrilled to offer direct access in markets across the U.S., Asia and Europe, and look forward to bringing additional markets online in the near future.” Yeming Wang, deputy general manager of Alibaba Cloud Global, said: “The global reach of Equinix Cloud Exchange makes it simple for Alibaba Cloud to access new markets.

“We are pleased to provide greater value and bring our services closer to enterprises by leveraging Equinix’s powerful, on-demand cloud connectivity, and in particular to provide greater connectivity to the Chinese market.”

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EMEA BA’S top boss confirms human error caused company‘s worst data centre incident in history With a bill that could reach £150m, British Airways is conducting an investigation into the event while facing critics from industry and insurance bodies.

One of history’s largest IT meltdowns in the aviation space has reportedly been triggered by human error.

Speaking to journalists at the International Air Transport Associationglobal summit in Mexico, he said IAG has commissioned an “independent company to conduct a full investigation”.

BA’s top boss, Willie Walsh, also says the company outsourced to carry out the job has not been disclosed yet, following rumours that fell over one of the industry’s largest services providers.

Once the investigation has been concluded, Walsh said the group will be “happy to disclose details”.

“[The engineer] was authorised to be in the room, but was not authorised to do what he did,” said Willie Walsh, CEO of the International Airlines Group, British Airways parent company.

The CEO said the company outsourced to carry out the job has not been disclosed yet, putting down any rumours that suggested an engineer working for CBRE Global Workplace Solutions was behind the outage.

Walsh was refering to a technican authorised to enter BA’s Boadicea data centre in Heathrow, London, on Saturday, May 27, 2017, who disconected a power supply at the facility.

When plugging the power supply back in “an uncontrolled and uncommanded fashion”, a power surge caused physical damage to the servers and distribution panels triggering a data centre outage that grounded as many as 75,000 passengers and fully interrupted the airliner’s services for most of that weekend.

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Walsh said: “It is very clear to me that you can make a mistake in disconnecting the power.

“It is difficult for me to understand how you mistakenly reconnect the power.”

The “catastrophic” and “tragic” event at a British Airways’ (BA) data centre in Heathrow, London, occurred after a staff member switched off a power supply unit in “perfect working order”, according to The Times.

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Despite Walsh’s remarks, industry experts are still sceptic that a single power surge could have been the sole cause of an event of such magnitude.

CBRE, who manages the data centre for BA, has also come out to deny the rumours suggesting one of its staff was involved.

“No determination has been made yet regarding the cause of this incident. Any speculation to the contrary is not founded in fact,” the company said.

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Europe‘s major data centre colocation hubs hit nearly 1000MW of supply

IBM opens European nerve centre to fight costly cyberthreats Command centre also set up to easy data location for services in the EU following requirements in the GDPR. IBM Security has opened one of its largest nerve centres built to address growing issues surrounding cybersecurity, as well as expand data location services as the countdown for the introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) continues.

Based in Wroclaw, Poland, and part of IBM’s $200m investment in incident response capabilities, the IBM X-Force Command Center is also set to make use of IBM’s artificial intelligence (AI) cognitive computing solution, Watson.

The centre joins the global network of IBM X-Force Command Centers, which process upwards of one trillion cyber incidents each month, protecting 4,500 clients across 133 countries. The global network is staffed by over 1,400 security professionals.

Q1 of 2017 ends strong with London, Frankfurt, Paris and Amsterdam set for more growth throughout the year.

Europe’s major four colocation hubs of Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam and Paris have experienced a 27% growth in uptake in Q1 2017, when compared to the same period the year before.

An increasing demand for data centre power and an increase in activity by hyperscale giants and other cloud services providers was, according to CBRE, behind the high growth rate.

The combined four markets registered 26.6MW of take-up and 38MW of new supply in Q1 2017. London was responsible for 17.5MW of take-up, 60% of the European total, showing no real impact from Brexit.

The market saw significant further activity by the hyperscale cloud players, which resulted in London’s second-largest quarterly total on record.

In contrast, researchers highlighted that Amsterdam (3.5MW), Frankfurt (3.2MW) and Paris (2.3MW) were relatively quiet in the first quarter.

Researchers have predicted that an expected increase in activity from corporate and enterprise occupiers as the year goes on will provide a more balance to take-up.

Andrew Jay, Executive Director, Data Centre Solutions, at CBRE said: “We predicted a strong 2017 in the European markets and Q1 has certainly delivered for us. Given the momentum built up in 2016 we were not surprised to see a strong start to the year.

IBM said the key areas of focus for the X-Force Command Center in Poland are supporting clients in responding to cybersecurity incidents and serving as the hub in the company’s global network for GDPR services.

Through the centre, IBM will be able to give clients the option of managing their security data via IBM staff and infrastructure in Europe.

The command centre has been established following a report

by IBM which has found that incidents of illegally acquired records has grown from 600 million in 2015 to four billion in 2016.

In the 2017 IBM X-Force Threat Intelligence Index, analysts warned that the problem will be exacerbated, as the number of incidents within the next five years is expected to double.

According to the report, the average total cost of a data breach was at the end of 2016, $4m, with the average cost per breached data record sitting at $158. The cost per record breached ranges from $355 for healthcare organisations to $172 for retail industry and $129 for transportation companies.

Julian Meyrick, Vice President, IBM Security, Europe, said: “The new IBM X-Force Command Center in Poland is a critical investment in helping clients seamlessly respond to cybersecurity incidents as well as prepare for GDPR. “In the centre, insights from IBM’s world-renowned X-Force research team come together with local world-class talent to help clients take an immune system approach to cybersecurity.”

“The key question is whether 2017 will surpass last year’s record breaking 155MW. Our view is that we will have another really strong year of at least 100MW which is astonishing considering that the record take-up prior to 2016 was 78MW. “Q1 came very close to reaching a milestone of 1000MW of supply across the four markets; ending the quarter on 996MW. We expect a substantial amount of further new supply to come on during the course of the year, including new entrants in Amsterdam, Frankfurt and London.”

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Virtus data centres officially part of G-Cloud 9 Provider to extend cloud services in the public sector, covering education, health, central government, emergency services and others.

Infinity hub geared up with Schneider Electric modular edge data centre

UK data centre services provider Virtus Data Centres has been awarded the supplier status with the UK Crown Commercial Service (CCS) as part of the G-Cloud 9 initiative.

The CCS works with departments and organisations across the whole of the public sector to ensure maximum value is extracted from every commercial relationship and improve the quality of service delivery. Its goal is to become the “go-to” place for expert commercial and procurement services.

The new status will allow Virtus to extend access to its Managed Cloud Connect Infrastructure Service (VMCCI), to central government, local government, health, education, devolved administrations, emergency services, defence and not-for-profit organisations, utilising the G-Cloud framework.

The new G-Cloud 9 listing, and enhancements made to the VMCCI solutions, means that publicly funded bodies now have access to a wider array of public and private cloud services.

Darren Watkins, Managing Director, VIRTUS Data Centres, said: “Digital transformation and cloud migration are on the agenda of almost every organisation, public or private, which is driving the need for high quality, innovative, efficient data centre space.

“Our data centres, where the cloud lives, are in high demand by any organisation that wants to improve interconnectivity between people, applications and data.

We are delighted to provide easier, more efficient access to the public sector without the need for long, complicated drawn out tender processes.“

Capita data centre outage throws UK councils into chaos Some clients have had services disrupted for nearly 42 hours due to a power failure.

An outage at one of Capita’s data centres has brought down services of several customers in the UK and Ireland, including some UK Councils and the National Health Service (NHS) Business Services Authority.

The outage started on Wednesday, May 24, at around 22:30, with services being affected for at least 42 hours in some cases.

The incident has affected customers also in Ireland using the Capita Pay360 service, designed for online transactions.

According to a disruption warning placed on Sheffield’s City Council website – which was still online at the time of publishing – the outage was due to a power failure. “An off-site power failure is still causing problems for customers trying to contact us,” it reads.

A Capita spokesman said: “Due to a technical fault in one of our data centres, some clients are experiencing some issues with the availability of their IT services. As soon as the fault occurred, remedial work commenced. Services are now being restored with many now available.

Infrastructure has been designed to meet real-time latency and data sovereignty requirements.

Schneider Electric has deployed a modular edge data centre at Infinity’s London facility set to be used by a “professional services company”.

The kit of infrastructure at the Romford North data centre campus will host a distributed cloud service which requires regional edge data centres to meet real-time latency and data sovereignty requirements.

The collaboration with Infinity enables global enterprises to build, deploy and manage data centre requirements in a Tier IV UTI accredited site with 15MW of available IT capacity.

Infinity’s Romford North site is purpose built for high density, high performance computing platforms and large scale cloud providers.

It has 10,000 sqm of technical space and 15MW of net IT capacity expandable to 20MW. The data centre also offers carrier-neutral connectivity, including BT Openreach, Colt, euNetworks, Level 3, Verizon, Virgin Media and Zayo.

Adrian Barlow, ITB & DC Application Centre Director at Schneider Electric, said: “The partnership with Infinity enables data centre solutions which can be scaled to changing load demands of our customers worldwide.

“With global digital transformation continuing its acceleration, the almost instant demand for more IT capacity in larger increments is becoming critical to technology decisions.”

John Hall, Infinity’s sales and marketing director, added: “We are delighted to be working with Schneider Electric in this collaborative approach during the next phase of Infinity’s incredibly successful Romford data centre.

“The market needs large scale agility to drive business performance and this perfectly responds to customer requirements.”

“The remainder of services are now being robustly tested to enable them to be running as usual shortly.”

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Green Mountain vows to power data centres with 100% renewable energy Company signs the BSR principles joining others including Facebook, LinkedIn, Salesforce, Akamai, Adobe, Oracle, and Digital Realty.

Norwegian data centre services provider Green Mountain has committed itself to power all its IT infrastructure resourcing to 100% renewable energy.

By supporting the principles, Green Mountain said it is committed to the mission of BSR’s Future of Internet Power initiative to power the internet with 100% renewable energy.

Other companies that have signed to the principles include CA Technologies, Facebook, LinkedIn, Salesforce, VMware, Akamai, Adobe, Oracle, Yahoo, eBay, Digital Realty, and others.

Knut Molaug, CEO Green Mountain, said: “As the first colocation provider, Green Mountain provide 100 % real-time transparency and disclosure of all key parameters of delivery, including power usage, carbon footprint, temperatures, power cost to visualise usage and incentivise continuous improvement.

“We support and promote the BSR principles to all of our clients, partners and employees. We are committed to 100% clean and renewable energy in our efforts to remain the greenest data

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Green Mountain operates today two data centres in Norway in Stavanger and Telemark.

The Stavanger data centre functions in a former NATO ammunition storage facility and includes 13,600 sqm of technical space with a maximum power capacity expandable to 26MW.

With that in mind, the wholesale colocation player has signed on as a supporter of the Corporate Colocation and Cloud Buyers Principles.

The principles, which in total amount to six, include options, data, incentives, collaboration, disclosure and advocacy.

centre in the world. Signing the six principles is a natural extension of our efforts and solidifies Green Mountain`s position as a global data centre leader in data centre sustainability.”

To cool down the hub, DC1-Stavanger has a cooling source available from an adjacent deep water fjord.

As for the data centre in Telemark (DC2- Telemark), the hub offers a maximum power input of 25MW and more than 1,000 sqm of current available area of hosting.

To cool the data centre, Green Mountain uses an adjacent water supply which is first used for hydro generation in the mountain.

In a joint statement, Petter M. Tømmeraas, CSO and Svein Atle Hagaseth, Sales Director North America for Green Mountain, said: “We are excited to be recognised as a supporter of Future of Internet Power and the greater BSR network, comprised of more than 250 member companies and partners to build a sustainable world and reach our renewable goals.”

According to Brand Finance, BA is today the world’s ninth most valuable airline brand behind others including American Airlines, Delta, United and Emirates. This represents a drop from a fourth place in 2016.

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Giant 93-acre data centre park comes online in Scotland Development to offer half a million sqf of technical space with plans to power the centre with on-site renewable energy on the cards.

One of the largest data centre campus in the UK has been launched in Scotland to support the country’s digital economy.

At 93 acres, the Pyramids Data Centre site in Bathgate, West Lothian, outside Edinburgh, is being built in three different phases.

It will provide 250,000 sqf of modular and scalable technical space, with the potential for up to 500,000 sqf. As of today’s launch, the data centre is already commercialising 60,000 sqf.

The infrastructure has been designed to support the public and private sectors as they continue their transition to the cloud, developers said.

Steven McGarva, director at Ashfield Land, said: “Having owned the Pyramids for the past year or so and examined a number of options for its future it is clear that we need to invest and be at the heart of Scotland’s Digital economy.

“The need for regional data centres will continue to grow as demand for quicker access to data from businesses and consumers increases and technology improves.”

The Pyramids Data Centre meets all the technical requirements demanded from a Tier 3 facility and is served by an 18MVA power supply and has access to multiple high-speed fibre network providers and Tier 1 long-haul operators.

Roger Weir, director at TRE Asset Management, commented: “The 93 acre campus allows us to provide over 250,000sq.ft of technical space within the existing built environment, plus similar scale within bespoke designed and built data centres located within the site boundary.

Plans are currently being developed to power the centre with on-site renewable energy to improve PUE and reduce power consumption charges.

The Pyramids Data Centre sits in the Pyramids Business Park which was purchased by Ashfield Land in January 2016.

The data centre project is a partnership between Ashfield Land and TechRE supplemented by Cushman & Wakefield, Commsworld, Atkins and 3D Reid.

“This scale and flexibility allows the Pyramids to not only target regional, Edge, requirements, but also to compete with more developed markets such as Ireland and Denmark for much larger Hyper data centre deals.”

Google buys large piece-of-land for potential Denmark data centre Campus larger than 100 football fields has had in the past debates held over the construction of data centre buildings amounting to nearly 1.3 million sqf.

This is not the first time a hyperscale uses a company under a different name to purchase land for future data centre projects.

Facebook, IBM and Apple could be about to get a new companion for their data centre fleets in Denmark as search engine giant Google has confirmed it has acquired a large piece of land to potentially expand its European data centre footprint.

“The City Council is working hard to attract investment to the region, and it has succeeded in recent years. It is fantastic that one of the world’s biggest brands has decided to invest in Fredericia.”

In total, the company has purchased 73.2 hectares of land – equivalent to more than 100 football fields – for 65m Danish Krones ($9.86m as of June 5, 2017). The plot is located in Fredericia, east Jutland, a short car drive from Facebook’s future $100m data centre in Odense.

However the company did not officially unveiled plans to build a data centre on the site, it said the land will provide the company with the space to do so when needed.

Google said: “We purchased a 73.2 hectare site in Fredericia. At present, we have no plans to use the land, but we will ensure this gives us the opportunity to expand our data centres in Europe if our work requires. We do not expect to take any decisions in the near future.”

The land was originally bought by Dublin registered Dapsi International. The company was founded in 2015 by MoonVille Limited and is owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet.

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Mayor of Fredericia Jacob Bjerregaard, said: “I am very pleased that Google has bought a large plot in Fredericia.

Although Google has no immediate plans to build a data centre, a “secret” data centre project has been debated for the same pieceof-land just last year.

It was in July 2016, when the Fredericia Dagblad wrote about a public consultation on a project to build a giant data centre in Fredericia.

According to that consultation, buildings could reach a combined 1,267,342 sqf of construction, with the centres being as high as four to five floors.

In addition, the campus project included a 120,000 sqf engineering and high-voltage power station.

The data centres would be built in different phases, and employ as many as 700 workers during construction making it one of the largest data centre developments in Denmark.

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Yahoo! Installs base in Vienna and Marseille data centres

Aruba unveils 2 million sqf Italian data centre as ‘Brexit shifts the Barclaycentre of the EU’ from the UK One of the largest data centre campus in Europe has been pre-opened by Aruba in Ponte San Pietro, Bergamo.

Located Northeast of Milan, the site boasts 200,000 sqm and has been built to meet colocation and IT infrastructure management needs in the Italian market and surrounding countries.

Speaking to Data Economy, Stefano Cecconi, CEO, Aruba S.p.A, said: “Brexit has shifted the barycenter of the EU to Milan, Paris and Frankfurt, and as such, Milan is now a strategic city for a data centre to serve both the Italian and foreign markets. For example, we have already sold a significant part of the data center to a few large enterprises coming from the US and UK.

European continent proves it is a desired market to one of the world’s largest media companies as Yahoo! invests in expanding its business in the continent.

Yahoo! has expanded its European presence by entering Interxion’s Marseille and Vienna data centres in an effort to bulk up its services in the region.

Mehmet Akcin, Director, Yahoo Global Infrastructure Planning and Acquisition Group, said: “At Yahoo, we are continuously improving our performance to serve more than a billion Yahoo users globally.

“We select strategic locations for our edge locations such as Vienna and Marseille, which gives us the ability to serve our users more reliably, faster and cheaper.”

Richard Craig-McFeely, Digital Media Strategy Director at Interxion, said: “User experience is the key to success in the digital media space.

“The ability to provide audiences with a responsive and reliable experience directly determines the success of a digital service such as social media or OTT video.

“We are thrilled that Yahoo Inc. has chosen to expand their network with Interxion to extend their reach and maintain a high level of user experience.”

“We already have two data centers in the heart of Italy, so this is a natural expansion of our network. Many of our customers ask us to host their infrastructure in the north, close to Milan, because of the accessible and strategic location.

“Besides the reduced limits in terms of space and resources, we also have the flexibility to combine all of these factors in an eco-sustainable way.

The first data centre in the area is up and running, and more than 4MW of power – of the 90MW planned for the whole campus – have already been sold and are fully operational.

It will be fully up and running in the summer, and will officially open on October 5, 2017.

To power the site, Aruba uses energy that comes exclusively from certified renewable sources. In the new area, energy will be supplied via multiple connections to external utilities, a hydroelectric plant and a photovoltaic system, both belonging to Aruba. In addition, there will be a geothermal cooling system.

Cecconi said: “Our aim is to become a global hub for colocation and cloud services. At the moment, we have a network that includes western, central and eastern Europe.

“The Global Cloud Data Center is a cross-country technical campus, created for those who look for a data center inside the territory of the European Community to serve European markets, and in particular, the Italian market.

With Italy having been struck by natural disasters in recent year, namely earthquakes, Aruba highlied that the region in which the data centre campus sits has not experience significant natual events that could harm the business.

Looking ahead, Cecconi said: “IoT, Big Data and the digital growth of companies will all require more and more computing power, and we are seeing a rise in requests from enterprises who do not want to manage their own infrastructure, instead seeking both colocation and cloud services.

“With the present growth of this trend, it is key to have a data centre campus large enough to allow both us and our customers to grow solidly over the coming years from the same location.”

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UK’s 750,000 sqf mega data centre campus in world‘s first deployment

Shortage of judges halts decision on Apple‘s €850M Ireland data centre

Welsh operator bulks up on growing demand for cloud based services following its play on Microsoft Azure.

The UK’s largest data centre campus operated by Next Generation Data (NGD) claims it has become the first in the world to host a cloud-based call recording service.

The deployment has been made by Microsoft Gold Partner TeleWare which has migrated all of its fixed-line cal recording solutions onto the new platform which is based on Microsoft Azure.

TeleWare’s Cloud Call Recording service enables businesses to record both inbound and outbound conversations wherever workers are.

As the service grows, TeleWare has installed a number of racks at NGD in support of its Cloud Call platform and is using NGD’s hybrid cloud infrastructure and its dedicated Cloud Gateway connections into Microsoft ExpressRoute.

The deployment has already stored over 35,000 minutes of voice call recordings per day in the public cloud and which can be accessed by authorised users without any discernible delay.

Rob Corrigill, CTO, TeleWare Group PLC, said: “The exceptional security, resilience and high speed connectivity on offer at NGD’s data centre, combined with a lower cost proposition compared to London data centre options, made using their high calibre facility for our Cloud Call platform a no brainer.”

Steve Davis, NGD’s Marketing Director, said: “We are delighted to be supporting TeleWare with the seamless delivery of their ground-breaking Cloud Call platform.

This is a further example of an international service provider organisation recognising the value of NGD’s secure, resilient hybrid cloud infrastructure and low latency connectivity.”

Based in the Cardiff Capital Region, NGD operates the Tier 3 facility housing up to 22,000 racks.

The hub has 180 MVA of power supply sourced from the local grid and sourced from 100% renewable energy.

Back in December 2016, NGD made one of its major announcements when it revealed it had made the NGD Cloud Gateway available on Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute to ease private connections into the Microsoft Cloud.

This has driven the company’s substantial growth not only from the extended service but also by a major surge in cloud based services from players just like TeleWare.

In March this year, NGD signed up a “major US international bank” to its customer bookings.

Company and opponents will now have to wait another week to hear the final decision from the Irish High Court on the project announced in 2015.

A shortage of judges has forced Irish authorities to postpone the decision on whether Apple is going to be allowed to build or not a €850m data centre in the country.

The project, one of Ireland’s largest foreign investments, was scheduled to be discussed at the Commercial Court in Dublin on June 23. A final decision is now expected a week later, on June 30.

The final verdict on the controversial development in Athenry was set to be announced by Mr Justice Paul McDermott, a judge of the High Court. According to Galway Bay FM, Tim Cook’s company sent out to the court six Apple representatives.

Once the delegation arrived at the court, they were told by the court services that the building was closed due to a shortage of judges. The new data centre was originally announced in February 2015 and was expected to come online in 2017. In August 2016 it received the green light from An Bord Pleanála.

However, objection started shortly after its announcement with locals claiming the data centre would have a negative impact in the local area by increasing traffic and noise pollution as well as affecting the local wildlife, especially bats and badgers who live in the Derrydonnell Forest, adjacent to the proposed construction 500-acre site.

In total, it only took three people to put the 166,000 sqm data centre on standby. This included local residents Sinéad Fitzpatrick and Allan Daly, and Wicklow landowner Brian McDonagh.

The three locals were already met with discordance from other 2,000 residents who marched through Athenry in support of the data centre development in November 2016.

Elsewhere, in October 2016, Apple announced a second large data centre on European soil, this time in Denmark, following Facebook’s investment in the country. Expected to open in 2017, the data centre is being built in Foulum, Central Jutland, and represents a total investment of $950m.

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European centre for weather forecasts ditches UK for Italian-based data centre Member States voted and Bologna is set to be the home for the ECMWF supercomputers from 2019.

The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) has announced it will move its data centre from the UK to Italy following an international competition to find a new home for the organisation’s supercomputers.

“The decision-making process has been long, thorough and at times difficult, and we have already incurred some delays which could have an impact on our computing capability within the next couple of years.

The ECMWF is an intergovernmental body founded in 1975 and supported by 34 states which produces global numerical weather forecasts. However the organisation is moving its computing infrastructure to Bologna, the ECMWF’s headquarters are to remain in Reading, UK. The data centre is to be delivered to ECMWF by 2019.

The decision to set up a data centre in Italy followed months of internal discussions between members. Following the discussions, Member States then tasked Director-General Florence Rabier with entering into discussions with the Italian Government with a view to having a high-level agreement.

After further discussions and votes, representatives of ECMWF’s Member States approved Bologna as the host city for ECMWF’s new data centre.

The decision to move the data centre is part of the ECMWF’s ten-year strategy adopted in 2016 sets goals for Earth system modelling at high resolution. It specifies a target of a 5-km grid spacing for ensemble forecasts by 2025, down from 18 km today.

An intermediate step will be the implementation of a 9 km ensemble in 2020-2021.

These resolution upgrades will require a new high-performance computing facility with approximately ten times as much computational capacity as is currently available to ECMWF, some of which will come from more processors.

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Dr Rabier said: “I am delighted that our Council has decided to support the proposal by Italy to host ECMWF’s new data centre.

This new facility will allow us to upgrade our high-performance computing capability to the levels required to continue to advance weather science.

“We are extremely grateful to all our Member States, who have taken great care to ensure that ECMWF’s best interests would prevail. Of course I want to especially thank the Italian authorities, who have worked tirelessly to ensure that their proposal meets all the required criteria.

“Having our headquarters in the UK and our data centre in Italy will be a new experience which will illustrate perfectly well the truly intergovernmental nature of ECMWF.” Italian Minister of Environment Gian Luca Galletti, said: “This result is a great success for Italy. The new data centre in Bologna will allow ECMWF to continue its important work in studying weather phenomena as a strategic element for sustainable economic progress and citizen security. Now Bologna is at the centre of the global environmental challenges.

“This will further enhance the skills, the ability to innovate, the attractive pole of environmental data which are the heritage of the city. This is the result of impressive teamwork of many Italian institutions, such as the Ministries of Environment, Education, Defence, Foreign Affairs, Economy and Finance, the Emilia Romagna Region with President Stefano Bonaccini, the municipality of Bologna with Major Virginio Merola, and the Alma Mater University with rector Francesco Ubertini.”

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AMERICAS SWITCH TO BUILD $2.5BN MEGA DATA CENTRE CAMPUS IN ATLANTA Atlanta has become the latest region in the US to land a multi-billion Dollar data centre development from provider Switch.

The site, named “The Keep”, is based in the Douglas County and will be Switch’s fourth on American soil.

According to Governor Nathan Deal’s Office, the project is evaluated at $2.5bn and will create 65 jobs.

The data centre campus is projected to measure more than one million square feet at a first stage.

Switch said in a statement: “. The Switch PRIME in Atlanta is projected to be several million square feet with two campus locations as the ecosystem grows.”

To power the site, Switch has announced it is working with local energy providers to power the campus using 100% green energy from new, local, renewable energy resources.

Governor Deal said: “Georgia is committed to remaining on the cutting edge of high-tech innovation, and innovative companies like Switch are leading the way in this trend.

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“Georgia’s robust technology infrastructure and skilled workforce will benefit Switch in building this new data centre and in the company’s future growth. By selecting Douglas County, Switch will enjoy our business-friendly climate and further secure Georgia’s status as the Silicon Valley of the South.”

Dr. Romona Jackson-Jones, chair of the Douglas County Board of Commissioners, said: “Douglas County is thrilled to welcome Switch’s newest Tier IV Gold data centre in our community.

“The Data Center industry is a target sector for the Douglas County Economic Development Authority, as we have proven to have superior infrastructure and talent base to support them.”

Georgia Department of Economic Development (GDEcD) Commissioner Pat Wilson, said: “Technology companies in Georgia are positioned to perform at the highest rate and grow quickly.

“In fact, our more than 17,000 technology companies represent a $113.1 billion economic impact in Georgia. We are very excited to welcome Switch to this booming technology industry and we are well aligned to support their future growth.”

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Candian 500,000 sqf data centre campus opens for business

Florida approves tax exemption for mega data centre developments Only the largest projects are set to receive sales taxes exemptions and they will have to follow strict guidelines while operating in the region.

The US state of Florida has approved sales taxes exemptions for large data centre projects, following months of debates.

The legislation has been approved and signed by Florida Governor Rick Scott, and will be put into force on July 1, 2017.

The move has been described as Florida’s first official tool to attract data centre investment.

The exemption eliminates sales tax and use tax for data centres, infrastructure, equipment, personal property, and electricity.

In order to qualify for the exemption, a company must make a minimum $150m cumulative investment.

Hub of five data centres set to be built in phased out stages as demands grows in coming years.

In addition, the data centre must have a critical load of at least 15MW and a critical load of at least 1MW per each individual owner or tenant in the facility.

A data centre campus with a maximum 500,000 sqf, 80MW of capacity has been launched in Richmond Hill, Ontario.

Furthermore, the data centre must be operational by June 30, 2022, and applications for exemption certificates must be made to the Florida Department of Revenue.

The development was opened by the Fonds immobilier de solidarité FTQ and Urbacon Data Centre Solutions Inc. (UDCS), an owner, developer, operator and manager of wholesale colocation data centres.

In phase one, the DC1 boasts 10 MW of critical power, and is the first to open in a five-building digital campus.

With ground-breaking on DC2 and white space available as of July 1, 2017 in a new 30 MW data centre in downtown Montreal, UDCS said it is responding to demand for interconnected colocation options with its next generation data centres.

The Richmond facilities are designed to achieve a 1.1 or better Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE).

Mancini, President of UDCS, said: “The Canadian market provides unique opportunities to international companies with its lower dollar and security advantages over the U.S. market.

“With facilities in both Montreal and Richmond Hill, UDCS and FTQ are creating a Canadian data centre eco-system right in the heart Canada’s high-tech corridor.”

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Lastly, in order to qualify for the exemptions, operators will be required to report to the Florida Department of Revenue to demonstrate the exemption was utilised to the letter of the law.

The legislation creating the data centre sales and use tax exemption requires a review by the Florida Department of Revenue to assure continued qualification. It also contains a “claw back” provision, if it is determined that the data centre property does not meet the criteria for exemption.

Several of Florida’s larger utility companies already have economic development programs in place to attract heavy users, such as data centres.

In the bill it reads: “The permanent tax exemption certificate remains valid and effective for as long as the data centre described in the exemption application continues to operate as a data centre as defined in subparagraph 1., with review by the department every five years to ensure compliance.

“As part of the review, the certificate holder shall, within three months before the end of any five-year period, submit a written declaration, pursuant to s. 92.525, certifying that the critical IT load of 15 megawatts or higher and the critical IT load of 1 megawatt or higher dedicated to each individual owner or tenant within the data centre required by subparagraph 2. continues to be met.”

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Texas secures $1BN data centre campus investment covering 48 acres Set to be built in the next five years, the campus will be home to five large buildings ultimately accounting to one million sqf of space.

The Sherman Economic Development Corp. has secured a deal that is set to deliver a data centre investment in the State of Texas that could top more than $1bn.

With a population of just over 38,000, the city of Sherman could become the home of one of the largest data centre investments in the state and in the US. The development is also set to join Facebook’s $1bn Texas data centre.

According to the Herald Democrat, the broad of directors at the SEDCO have approved the sale of nearly 90% of Sherman’s Progress Park I to Thea Development LLC.

Plotnik said: “At the end of five years, [Thea Development] will have $1bn in new buildings at that value.

“In addition, they are going to be building a very large substation, as well as redundancy power. These data centres, they rely on power, they rely on water for cooling and they rely on an available site that is close to available gas and power.”

The company acquired 48 acres of land, at a price of $40,000 per acre, totally more than $1.9m.

The new data centre campus sits next to a 758MW power plant in the outskirts of Sherman.

The area is now set to be used for the construction of five large data centre buildings, with one building built per year in an investment of $200m per facility.

The data centre development has been named as Cassini Gateway I, and will amount to one million sqf of data centre space.

Thea Development CEO Margie Guido, said: “Every time you do a Google search or you save your information to the cloud or you watch a Netflix movie, you are hitting a data centre somewhere.

“The industry is growing rapidly and this area has a lot of great resources and we believe it is very, very attractive for data centres.”

In total, the development is expected to create 150 jobs, with a “likely” average wage of $80,000 to $90,000 according to SEDCO President, John Plotnik.

Digital realty to buy DuPont Fabros in $7.6BN mega-merger Transaction unanimously approved by the boards of directors of both operators, includes expansion plans for 163MW of extra data centre power.

operates more than 3.2 million gross sqf and 278MW of critical load capacity.

William Stein, Digital Realty’s Chief Executive Officer, said: “This strategic and complementary transaction significantly enhances Digital Realty’s ability to support the growth of hyper-scale users in the top U.S. data centre metro areas, while providing meaningful customer and geographic diversification for DuPont Fabros.

Global data centre services provider Digital Realty has entered into a definitive agreement under which rival DuPont Fabros will merge with Digital Realty in an all-stock transaction.

The transaction, including debt, has been valued at $7.6bn, giving the great data centre REIT race top traction, breaking recent records within the colocation M&A space.

Expected to be closed in H2 2017, the closure of the M&A is subject to customary closing conditions. The combination of the two companies is expected to create an opportunity to realize up to $18m of annualised overhead savings.

Both company stocks soared, with DuPont Fabros heading towards a record high in the company’s history. Digital Realty said the acquisition will help the company in servicing the wider North American market where cloud services demand continue to grow.

Digital Realty has today 145 properties across 33 global metropolitan areas. The merger of DuPont Fabros into the company’s portfolio will help the provider augment its reach across Northern Virginia, Chicago, Silicon Valley and Canada.

In total, DuPont Fabros will add to the Digital Realty list of data centres, 12 purpose-built, in-service facilities. DuPont Fabros

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“The combination is expected to generate both operating and financial benefits, and I’d like to congratulate Scott Peterson, Mark Walker and their team on successfully negotiating the largest transaction in our company’s history, a combination that we believe will enhance our ability to create significant long-term value for both sets of shareholders.”

DuPont Fabros has in recent months announced several expansions of its own fleet of data centres and currently has six development projects under construction.

The projects are located in Ashburn, Chicago, Santa Clara and Toronto, all metro areas where Digital Realty has an existing presence.

All developments are expected to be delivered over the next 12 months. In addition, DuPont Fabros owns land holdings in Ashburn and Oregon, which will support the future delivery of up to 163 megawatts of incremental capacity, along with 56 acres of land recently acquired in Phoenix.

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Uptime Institute‘s president opens up on Switch‘s new data centre Tier ranking

AWS to build new data centre for US Government Department of Veterans Affairs, NASA JPL, Defense Digital Service, United States Air Force, United States Department of Justice to make use of new cloud region.

Amazon’s cloud business arm AWS has announced it will expand its data centre footprint to better serve Washington DC and the overall US Government IT needs.

The second AWS GovCloud region was announced by Jeff Barr, Chief Evangelist at AWS, in a company blog post.

“AWS GovCloud (US) gives AWS customers a place to host sensitive data and regulated workloads in the AWS Cloud,” he said.

“I am happy to announce that we are working on a second Region that we expect to open in 2018. The upcoming AWS GovCloud (US-East) Region will provide customers with added redundancy, data durability, and resiliency, and will also provide additional options for disaster recovery.”

Two of the largest names in the data centre industry have clashed over data centre standard rankings.

Earlier this week, US-provider Switch announced the Tier 5 Data Center Standard aimed at expanding the existing Tier ranking’s scope and challenging standards-body Uptime Institute.

Switch’s announcement was backed by some former Uptime Institute executives, including former CTO Vince Renaud who said various industry metrics “have become stale”.

Following the controversial launch, Uptime Institute’s president, Lee Kirby has spoken out about Switch’s attempt to disrupt the sector.

“As an unbiased advisory organisation, it is Uptime Institute’s mission to empower organisations to better design, build, maintain and optimize their business-critical infrastructure, networks and operations in order to drive business growth,” Kirby said.

“We would also add that any non-profit driven and funded by a private entity with a specific agenda of its own is not an unbiased organisation.”

The executive said that over 20 years of activity, the Uptime Institute has certified over 1000 data centres in over 85 countries and defended that the organisation provides vendor neutrality, global consistency, and the necessary depth of data centre expertise needed to efficiently design, build and manage IT infrastructure.

The second region follows from the very first one launched in 2011 which is located on the west coast of the US. The new region will be isolated and meet US government compliance requirements including International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), NIST standards, Federal Risk and Authorisation Management Program (FedRAMP) Moderate and High, Department of Defense Impact Levels 2-4, DFARs, IRS1075, and Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) requirements.

Barr said: “Government agencies and the IT contactors that serve them were early adopters of AWS GovCloud (US), as were companies in regulated industries.

“These organisations are able to enjoy the flexibility and costeffectiveness of public cloud while benefiting from the isolation and data protection offered by a region designed and built to meet their regulatory needs and to help them to meet their compliance requirements.”

Some of AWS’ Federal (US) Government customers include the Department of Veterans Affairs, General Services Administration 18F (Digital Services Delivery), NASA JPL, Defense Digital Service, United States Air Force, United States Department of Justice.

He said: “The Uptime Institute Tier Standards continue to grow, expand and innovate. Based on performance objectives and behaviours, the Tier Standards are flexible and embrace the market’s latest technology developments.

“New technologies and applications that have been certified

by Uptime Institute range from cooling and water compressors to new standards for management and operations, and sustainability innovation with Efficient IT. “Because every data centre is different, with varying complexities and issues based on variables like local characteristics or build parameters, Uptime Institute’s Tier Standards are designed to be highly flexible in their approach, avoiding the need to be rewritten as the topology expands.”

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Switch expands Las Vegas 2 million sqf hyperscale data centre campus Clients sitting in the Nevada hub include AWS, eBay, DreamWorks, Intel, HP, PayPal, Hulu, Machine Zone, Boeing, Warner Brothers, NASA, Verizon and others.

Giant data centres builder and operator Switch has opened a new building in its Last Vegas campus, adding more than 350,000 sqf to the two million sqf development.

The modular Las Vegas 10 data centre also adds to the Core Campus site 40MW of power, which accounts now to 315MW. Switch said the new data centre building was added to the campus following strong demand for colocation services from the company’s existing and new clients.

futurist who has invented and patented one of the highest rated data centre systems to handle the massive growth of the internet of absolutely everything.

Switch’s clients include Amazon Web Services, eBay, Marvel, Shutterfly, FOX, Amgen, Lionsgate, Zappos, Intuit, DreamWorks, Intel, MGM, HP, State of Nevada, PayPal, Hulu, Machine Zone, Boeing, Warner Brothers, NASA, Verizon and many hundreds more.

“The internet doesn’t stop growing and neither does Switch.

We expect to continue to meet the incredible growth demands of our clients, not only at The Core Campus in Las Vegas, but across the country.”

Switch Executive Vice President of Data Center Services Lesley McVay, said: “Switch founder and CEO Rob Roy is a technology

Switch’s launch of the new data centre building comes days after the company launched its biggest assault on data centre standards to date.

Carter Validus spends $500M on data centre acquisitions With seven acquisitions, the non-traded real estate investment trust is building up an extensive portfolio in North America with high leasing rates.

Carter Validus Mission Critical REIT II has invested $166m in the acquisition of a data centre in Atlanta, Georgia, bringing the organisation’s capital expenditure on data centres to $511.3m since December 2016.

The nine floors building is commonly known as the American Cancer Society Center and is located in Atlanta-downtown.

Michael A. Seton, President of CV Mission Critical REIT II, said: “This acquisition expands our presence in the Southeast and contributes to our portfolio’s diversity by tenancy and geography; we look forward to working with the tenants at 250 Williams.”

The data centre has an occupancy rate of 87.8% which has been leased by 12 tenants, including the Global Headquarters of the American Cancer Society.

Other using the site for their IT services include “several well-known names in the data centre industry”, the company said.

The property is located within a few blocks of Carter Validus Mission Critical REIT, Inc.’s Peachtree Data Center facility and Colo Properties Atlanta, LLC’s 56 Marietta Street data centre.

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John E. Carter, Chief Executive Officer of CV Mission Critical REIT II, said: “Our expertise as a trusted real estate buyer led us to this unique opportunity and we could not be more thrilled to be the new owners of 250 Williams.

“From its credible tenant mix to its plethora of value-add opportunities, we are excited for the value we believe this property brings to our portfolio.”

The 250 Williams Atlanta Data Center includes one million square feet of office and data centre space.

Each floor of the centre can support data centre loads and the ceiling heights throughout the building are 14 feet or greater, allowing for additional data centre occupancy.

CV Mission Critical REIT II’s property management affiliate, Carter Validus Real Estate Management Services II, LLC, will serve as the building’s property management company.

Carter Validus latest data centre acquisitions are; Georgia ($166m), Virginia ($85m), Los Angeles ($79.5m), Connecticut ($58.9m.), Massachusetts ($37m), Chicago ($33.1m), South Carolina ($19.2m), North Carolina ($16.4m) and Arizona ($16.2m).

“Through this process, which is currently underway, we have learned that access was gained through a recent change in asset access settings since June 1, 2017.

“We accept full responsibility, will continue with our investigation, and based on the information we have gathered thus far, we do not believe that our systems have been hacked.”

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Amazone ‘interested’ in opening Chile data centre challenging Google‘s regional footprint

Equinix scales out AWS cloud interconnection footprint Operator is working towards getting the largest share possible of the $6.5bn Latin American data centre market by betting on interconnections.

The world’s largest data centre operator Equinix has added AWS Direct Connect to its data centre footprint in São Paulo, Brazil.

The Brazilian campus has now become the 15th within the Equinix portfolio to offer such service.

AWS Direct Connect allows companies to connect their customer-owned and managed infrastructure directly to AWS, establishing a private connection to the cloud.

Equinix has explained that such connection can reduce costs, increase performance, and deliver a more consistent network experience.

The São Paulo campus consists of four data centres comprised of 145,000sqf of colocation space.

Intercontinental connectivity and energy generation projects mains attractors to AWS which could soon announce the new development.

The world’s largest public cloud provider Amazon has shown an interest to expand its data centre fleet in South America with a facility in Chile.

Chile’s Ministry technical head Sebastian Beeche told Reuters, the company could build a facility in Patagonia and that President Michelle Bachelet is to hold meetings with the cloud provider on Tuesday to discuss the topic while visiting Amazon’s headquarters in Seattle, US. The company, which already operates data centres in Brazil, has reportedly been attracted to Chile by its relative economic and political stability and the cooler climate, said Beeche.

One of AWS’ main competitors in the world, Google, have already invested in the country and run a large data centre in Quilicura.

Chile is also becoming an interesting market as the country secures different infrastructure investments crucial to the setup of large data centre facilities, such as renewable energy power generation and fiber connectivity.

Currently on the cards, is an expansion of the fiber optic network linking the country in Patagonia to China. Amazon has also shown interest in the project, according to government sources.

They are home to more than 1,000 companies, comprising a dense concentration of financial services firms, cloud service providers, digital content providers and social media platforms.

Equinix’s addition of AWS Direct Connect in Brazil comes at a time when the whole Latin American market is expected to grow at double-digit rates for the next four years, reaching an estimated growth of 25.8% by 2019, reaching a total of $6.5bn, according to IDC. A report by Frost &Sullivan has also noted that the region’s data centre market is reaching maturity with user confidence in outsourced infrastructure on a growth path.

Kaushik Joshi, Global Managing Director, Strategic Alliances, Equinix, said: “We are excited to add the 15th AWS Direct Connect site to our global footprint of data centres offering this critical cloud interconnection.

“As the cloud market grows at such an impressive pace in Latin America, we feel it is imperative to offer our global customers the ability to fully realize the benefits of the cloud.

“With access to AWS Direct Connect service now available in Brazil, we are empowering our customer base in that key region to achieve improved performance of cloud-based applications.”

With the addition of São Paulo, Equinix now offers the AWS Direct Connect service in Amsterdam, Chicago, Dallas, Frankfurt, Los Angeles, London, Munich, Osaka, Sao Paulo, Seattle, Silicon Valley, Singapore, Sydney, Tokyo and Washington, D.C./Northern Virginia.

The cable could stretch more than 20,000 Km, making one of the longest in the planet, at an estimated cost of $550m to $650m, government telecoms undersecretary Rodrigo Ramirez.

A final decision on the project is expected later in the year, as Chile and China continue discussions over the project and Chile reaches out to other countries in the region that might benefit from such cable.

A second cable connecting different parts of Chile, set to become the world’s most southerly such cable, has had its construction contract awarded in September 2016, and is set to be subsidised with $96m.

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ASIA PACIFIC Singapore home to Google‘s first Southeast Asia cloud region Company operates a local data centre since 2013, but is now expanding its resources to cut back latency.

Customers set to use the platform from Singapore include BBM Messenger, Carousell and Go-Jek.

Google has launched another cloud region, this time in Singapore, where the total number of customers utilising the giant’s Cloud Platform (GCP) has increased by 100% in the last year alone.

The Singaporean cloud base is Google’s first in Southeast Asia and third across the Asian continent.

The cloud region was brought online by Google Cloud’s chief Diane Greene at the company’s APAC headquarters in Singapore.

Greene said: “We have been building and operating cloud infrastructure for a long time, and our goals have remained the same for past 15 to 16 years – to make it easy to build and run great software, and acquire, manage and learn from data on a global scale reliably and securely.”

The main goal of the Southeast Asia region is to cut latency, with Google saying that performance testing shows 51% to 98% reductions in round-trip time (RTT) latency when serving customers in Singapore, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok compared to using other GCP regions in Taiwan or Tokyo.

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The Singapore cloud region was launched with two availability zones and services including compute, big data, storage and networking. Google operates a data centre in Jurong West, Singapore, since December 2013, after acquiring 2.45 hectares of land in September 2011.

Matthew Talbot, CEO of Creative Media Works, the company that runs BBM Messenger Consumer globally, said: “We are excited to be able to deploy into the GCP Singapore region, as it will allow us to offer our services closer to BBM Messenger key markets.

“Coupled with Google’s global load balancers and extensive global network, we expect to be able to provide a low latency, high-speed experience for our users globally.

“During our POCs, we found that GCP outperformed most vendors on key metrics such as disk I/O and network performance on like-for-like benchmarks. With sustained usage discounts and continuous support from Google’s PSO and account team, we are excited to make GCP the foundation for the next generation of BBM consumer services.”

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IBM launches Australian data centre PoP run

by Digital Realty Big Blue bets on cognitive computing and cloud services in the Asia – Pacific region to drive adoption of services amongst one of the world’s booming markets.

Colocation, hyperscale demand forces construction of Australian data centre campus expandable up to 200 acres

Digital Realty has won one more contract with IBM as the company turns to the data centre operator to run its new data centre presence in Australia.

A new point-of-presence (PoP) in Sydney is the fourth established by IBM in the country, following two other hubs in Sydney and one in Melbourne, all operated by Digital Realty.

The fourth PoP is located at Erskine Park, an 8,010 sqm facility with 6MW of power and an N+1 free air cooling architecture.

IBM will be using the facility to strengthen its services in the region, including its Bluemix hosted cloud service and Watson, a powerful cognitive artificial intelligence platform which the company has named as one of its three main growth pillars for the future.

Tony Armfield, vice president cloud for IBM Australia and New Zealand, said: “More and more Australian organisations are tapping into the IBM cloud to gain a competitive edge in the cognitive era thanks to IBM’s combination of industry expertise, cognitive solutions and a data-first approach.”

IBM originally established a presence in Australia in 2014 when the company invested $35m to rent racks from Digital Realty in Sidney and Melbourne to provide its SoftLayer cloud services.

The high demand for cloud services and cognitive computing has recently also driven IBM to open four other data centres in the US. IBM’s global cloud investments come as worldwide spending on public cloud services and infrastructure is expected to reach $203.4bn by 2020, a 21.5% CAGR, according to IDC. The company has increased its global footprint to more than 55 sites in 19 countries spanning six continents. In the US alone, the company has 22 data centres.

Telstra and Schneider Electric enter project as partners to help build Australia’s first Tier III data centre park.

Construction of a new data centre campus in Australia has broken ground in answer to demand for colocation services and hyperscale capacity. The project, named Pulse DC, is being developed by construction and engineering firm FKG Group, and has been priced at A$40m ($29.75m as of June 5, 2017).

The Tier III data centre buildings are located close to Toowoomba, Queensland, in a piece of land owned by FKG which could be used to further expand the site’s capacity, according to the company.

The campus sits in an area which accounts to 46 power stations within 100Km. Constructors have also said the fact the land is 500 meters above sea level will heal reduce energy consumption and consequently costs.

At an initial stage, data centre buildings are being built on a 29-acre piece of land. However, the plot measures a total of 200 acres which could be used to build more data centres. The first phase of the project is expected to become operational in early 2018.

FKG’s executive chairman Gary Gardner, said: “We are seeing major international companies making significant commitments to colocation and hyperscale data centre capacity in Australia right now, which is why we are excited to be developing a data centre that meets that brief.”

Also involved in the project are Telstra and Schneider Electric which have partnered with FKG. Telstra has been tasked with helping with the sites connectivity through its regional network, whilst Schneider Electric will bring its energy management and automation portfolio into the development.

Gardner said: “The likes of these companies will bring investment in infrastructure, jobs, skills, knowledge, and commercial horsepower, which will help grow businesses in the area.”

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Alibaba cloud data centres heading to Indonesia and India Race to build the largest cloud footprint in Asia heats up with Alibaba following recent announcements from rivals such as Oracle.

China’s largest cloud operator, Alibaba Cloud, has set out plans to build two data centres in India and Indonesia as the company continues to bet in the Asian market as Western rivals up their regional investments.

According to Canalys, Alibaba was at the end of 2016 the world’s fifth largest cloud infrastructure operator, only behind AWS, Microsoft, Google and IBM. The two new data centres are to be located in Jakarta and Mumbai and are expected to be operational before the end of the company’s fiscal year, ending March 31, 2018.

The facilities are to serve the markets where they sit in by providing a “full suite” of cloud services. Simon Hu, senior vice president of Alibaba Group and President of Alibaba Cloud said: “Establishing data centres in India and Indonesia will further strengthen our position in the region and across the globe.”

Both India and Indonesia have seen in recent months a growth in their data centre investments, mostly driven by a growing adoption of mobile technologies as well as the appearance of several cloud-based businesses and governments’ plans to build smart cities, especially in India, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi has put forward a $15bn program for urban digital modernisation.

In Indonesia, Alibaba said the data centre is to be built in in line with the Indonesian government’s “1,000 Start-ups Movement” scheme. The scheme has been put in place to support 1,000

companies by 2020, with the goal of reaching a combined valuation of $10bn.

Alibaba has also partnered with the Global Cloud Exchange, a Reliance Communications subsidiary, to provide customers direct access to Alibaba Cloud Express Connect via GCX’s Cloud X Fusion platform.

The Chinese’s giant data centre footprint accounts today to 17 facilities in locations including mainland China, Australia, Germany, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates and the United States. The company has also said it plans to build data centres in Malaysia aimed at small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

Alibaba released its financial results for the fiscal year 2017 last May with revenues topping $22.99bn, fuelled by its cloud business, similarly to what has happened with AWS. Alibaba Cloud revenues jumped 121% to $968m with paying cloud customers increased by 70% to 874,000.

Australian Gov’t pulls out secret defence data from global Switch‘s data centres Acquisition of 49% of the data centre operator

by Chinese investors sparks worries amongst the nation’s politicians.

The Australian Government has set out an expenditure plan of $200m to move its Department of Defence data from Global Switch’s data centres following a large investment by Chinese corporations and institutional investors.

According to ABC Australia, the sensitive and intelligence files will be moved back to a government-owned data centre, despite Global Switch guarantees that the data is secure in its data halls based in Ultimo, a suburb of Sidney.

Sidney has now said it plans not to renew its contract with Global Switch which expires in 2020, in “an entirely appropriate decision,” according to Australian Government Treasurer Scott Morrison.

Morrison said: “[The Government] acted to ensure the integrity of our foreign investment process when it came to that data centre.

“They [Global Switch] got a very clear message from the Government about how the Government would feel about [the Sydney data centre] being incorporated into that global deal.”

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In a statement to the broadcaster, Global Switch’s Asia-Pacific group director Damon Reid, said: “We do not provide IT services to customers, nor do we have access to customer data.

“Our customers lease space which they fit out with their own secure cages with their own servers. Global Switch operates under the highest levels of security and our shareholders are restricted from physical access to the data centre.”

The Chinese investment happened back in December 21, when a group of corporate and institutional investors acquired a 49% stake of the British data centre operator in a $2.97bn transaction.

The lead investor and sponsor of the consortium is Jiangsu Sha Steel Group, the largest private steel maker in China and a member of the Fortune Global 500 list of the world’s biggest companies.

Other investors include AVIC Trust, a joint venture asset management company owned by AVIC Capital and OCBC of Singapore, and Asian institutional investors such as Essence Financial and Ping An Group, which are funding their investments through their respective private equity funds.

Global Switch operates two data centres in Sidney, comprising 786,000 sqf of area.

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18th –21st September 2017 Gartner Symposium ITXPO Cape Town, South Africa VISIT WEBSITE

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International enterprises, local providers, investment agency and power supply companies meet to network and collaborate in the next stage of Ireland’s successful hosting of IT infrastructure.

15th –16th November 2017 Data Centre World – Paris Paris, France VISIT WEBSITE

21st September 2017

As the gateway to Europe Ireland holds a unique position as being home to the EMEA headquarters of many large tech companies and can now serve as connector between the United States and Europe.

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27th–28th November Gartner Data Centre Infrastructure & Operations Management Summit London, United Kingdom

30th October 2017

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Datacloud Nordic, Oslo, Norway Datacloud Nordic brings together all-important contacts to promote your products and services to a highly targeted audience.

The forum highlights the unique value of locating or oursourcing data centre, cloud and IT infrastructure across the important and fast growing nordic region.

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AMERICAS 26th–27th September DatacentreDynamics – Mexico Mexico City, Mexico VISIT WEBSITE

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1st– 5th October 2017 Gartner Symposium ITXPO Orlando, FL VISIT WEBSITE

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23rd–26th October 2017 Gartner Symposium ITXPO Sao Paulo, Brazil

26th September 2017 DatacenterDynamics Colo + Cloud, Dallas, TX DCD >Colo + Cloud is the global IT business and technology leadership forum for those who offer 3rd-party hosting, colo, telco, cloud data center, and managed services provision.

This conference is for all senior executives involved in the commissioning, design, build, and operation of colo, cloud, and telco data center capacity.

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Gartner Data Centre Infrastructure & Operations Management Summit, Las Vegas, NV

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ASIA PACIFIC 19th –20th July 2017 DatacenterDynamics Webscale Bangalore, India VISIT WEBSITE

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11th– 12th October 2017 Data Centre World Asia Singapore

DatacenterDynamics Hyperscale China Beijing, China An international event for professionals involved in the design and delivery of hyperscale digital infrastructure that supports the zetta-byte economy.

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30th October– 2nd November 2017 Gartner Symposium ITXPO Gold Coast, Australia

DCD>Hyperscale is a full-throttle, full-stack infrastructure ecosystem strategy and operations (StratOps) conference.

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ASIA PACIFIC 31st October – 2nd November 2017 Gartner Symposium ITXPO Tokyo, Japan VISIT WEBSITE

9th November 2017 DatacenterDynamics Enterprise Mumbai, India VISIT WEBSITE

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13th –16th November 2017 Gartner Symposium ITXPO Goa, India

DatacenterDynamics Converged, Hong Kong The continuing evolution of Hong Kong’s digital landscape in the realms of Cloud, connectivity, data centre and outsourcing, presents new opportunities for organisations looking to align their IT infrastructure with their strategic needs.

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+44 (0)20 7911 2525 chris.jones@gva.co.uk

+49 6102 45–3628 juergen.bieser@apleona.com

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