Datasource October 2017

DATASOURCE DATA CENTRE MARKET NEWS

NEWS GLOBAL EVENTS

ISSUE 164 OCTOBER 2017

MICROSOFT TO BUILD POWER STATION AS DUBLIN STRUGGLES TO POWER BOOMING £10BN DATA CENTRE INDUSTRY

170 offices, across 25 countries Data centre services

300+ specialists

Transacted over

500,000m2 1 gigawatt of IT space and power

Operating and managing

>100,000m2

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DATASOURCE 10/2017 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.

4 World 9

GVA is a leading expert in the UK data centre market.

We specialise in analysing, acquiring and marketing technical space from development land right through to shell & core, operational facilities and colocation suites.

Since 2000 we have transacted 500,000 m2 of technical space and a gigawatt of energy.

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We work for a full spectrum of public and private sector clients from government entities to investment banks and from data centre providers to property developers.

32 Europe, Middle East and Africa 33 Americas 34 Asia Pacific

ABOUT US 38 About Apleona & GVA Data Centres

Our core services

Under the Apleona umbrella we have a platform of over 20,000 people across Europe generating annual sales more than €2 billion. Our data centre team comprises approximately 300 experts and offers a broad spectrum of advisory, operational and transaction services to our real estate and facilities management clients.

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OCTOBER 2017

WORLD Google now has cloud data centres in all global regions apart from Africa Whilst new regions are brought online, Google suffers one of its largest disruptions in recent times with Search, Drive, Gmail, Maps and YouTube going down.

“Hosting applications in europe-west3 can improve latency by up to 50% for end users in Germany, Switzerland, Austria and eastern Europe, compared to hosting them in Belgium. European companies east of Frankfurt should see better app performance when using the German region.”

Google has launched online two more cloud regions with the opening of data centres in Frankfurt, Germany, and Sao Paulo, Brazil, its first region in South America. With the opening of the Brazilian region, the company has narrowed down its geographic coverage gaps, with only the African continent missing out on a Google Cloud region.

As for the Sao Paulo region, ‘southamerica-east1’, this is expected to have similar effect in both Brazil and neighbouring countries including Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia.

Each region adds to the company’s data centre portfolio three hubs, bringing the total amount across 12 regions to 36 data centres, or zones as the internet search company calls it. Frankfurt is Google’s first region in Germany, and the third in Europe after Brussels and London. Finland and the Netherlands are also set to added to the map fairly soon.

In a blog post the company said: “The new German region, europewest3, joins europe-west1 in Belgium, offering another location in continental Europe and making it easier to build highly available, performant applications using resources across both regions.

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However, whilst most Google Cloud regions are announced through a blog entry on the company’s blog or through a launch event as the one hosted in London for the London region, the Sao Paulo region was brought online without any warning.

And while Google was adding new cloud regions to its global platform, its Search, Drive, Gmail, Maps and YouTube websites seem to have gone down in a number of countries worldwide, as shown in the G Suite Status Dashboard throughout September 12.

Google said later in the day that it had resolved the issue which hit the web on the same day – and nearly at the same time – as the Apple’s launch of its three new iPhone lines, including iPhone X.

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Google signals end of one cloud fits all with world’s first tiered cloud network Global private fiber network with over 100 points of presence is put to work to help customers deliver their digital projects while saving money.

Google has plans to shake-up the public cloud market with the introduction of the world’s first tiered cloud network.

The company has unveiled Network Service Tiers Alpha for the Google Cloud Platform (GCP), a tiers scheme in which users can use its cloud network for cheaper prices if they are willing to operate with slightly less network performance and availability in some cases.

For the launch, the company has created two different tiers: a Premium and a Standard.

“If your user traffic originates from a different region, their traffic will first travel over transit (ISP) network(s) until it reaches the region of the GCP destination.”

The Premium Tier delivers traffic over Google’s global private fiber network with over 100 points of presence (POPs), which the provider claims to be the largest of any public cloud provider.

However, the true market shaker is the Standard Tier, which delivers network connectivity at a lower price than the Premium Tier by delivering outbound traffic from GCP to the internet over transit (ISP) networks instead of Google’s network.

“Similarly, we deliver your inbound traffic, from end user to GCP, on Google’s network only within the region where your GCP destination resides,” Prajakta Joshi, Product Manager, Cloud Networking, said in a company blog post.

However, the lower cost also means that users will experience a lower network performance and availability when compared to the Premium Tier.

Urs Hölzle, SVP Technical Infrastructure, Google, said: “Over the last 18 years, we built the world’s largest network, which by some accounts delivers 25-30% of all internet traffic.

“You enjoy the same infrastructure with Premium Tier. But for some use cases, you may prefer a cheaper, lower-performance alternative. With Network Service Tiers, you can choose the network that’s right for you, for each application.”

Data centres of the world ready for next 5 years of demand, but skills gap is major concern 7 in 10 data centre organisations say they have trouble recruiting candidates for data centre and facilities roles.

news is many organisations are not facing a data centre and facilities skills shortage at this time.

The large majority (60%) of data centres worldwide say they are ready with enough floor space and power capacity to sustain market demand for at least the next five years.

However, infrastructure readiness seems to be ahead of a skilled data centre work force as more than 70% of organisations admit to have trouble recruiting candidates for data centre and facilities roles, according to 451 Research’s Voice of the Enterprise: Datacentre Transformation survey.

Respondents also said that while the total number of IT employees is expected to decline over the coming 12 months, most organisations will see the number of personnel dedicated to data centre and facility tasks stay the same or increase. This solid outlook was most often attributed to overall business growth (63% of respondents), but more than a third of organisations also pointed to demand from projectdriven growth.

73.7% of organisations said that recruiting for data centre and facilities is at least moderately difficult. Respondents pointed to three common reasons: current candidates lack skills and experience, salary asking prices are too high, and a lack of candidates in the organisation’s region.

Christian Perry, Research Manager and lead analyst of 451 Research’s Voice of the Enterprise: Datacentre Transformation, said: “The good

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“Those who do have recruitment challenges say they most often train existing staff to learn new skills due to the dearth of available talent.”

Only 19.2% of the surveyed organisations facing these skills shortages said they would use managed service providers to fill the gaps. While this limits the opportunity for traditional MSPs and infrastructure vendors to offer value-added services, it creates opportunities for them to assist customers with training, for example providing education on eco-friendly HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) technologies.

Similarly, only 20.5% of the organisations that face skills shortages plan to move spending to public cloud, compared with 42% that said spending will not be impacted by those shortages, and 32.1% that said they will spend more on talent.

However, 451 Research analysts found differences between organisations that have more generalists than specialists across their IT team. Perry said: “When IT teams consist primarily of generalists, they are more likely to invest to secure talent compared with specialist-heavy firms.

“We find that siloed organisations tend not to be in a significant period of IT team transition, whereas generalist firms are transitioning to become even more generalist-heavy. This can backfire when personnel leave or retire, forcing them to scramble to find specialist skills in facilities, for example.”

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Uptime Institute Launches Edge Data Centre TierReady Scheme

Global server revenues hit $14bn pushed by APAC data center expansions

Schneider Electric, Compass Data Centers and Huawei first to obtain certificate for prefabricated and modular data centres.

The Uptime Institute has launched the “TIER-Ready Program” in a bid to advance deployments of edge data centres backed by industry certification.

The design-assessment program is aimed at prefabricated and modular data centres used by companies pushing computing to the edge.

According to the company, modular data centres that carry TIER-Ready status will demonstrate the same high level of performance once installed and certified at their intended deployment site.

The TIER-Ready program enables manufacturers to work with Uptime Institute to validate the specific designs of their pre-built solutions.

Customers of these TIER-Ready solutions will enjoy reduced time and cost for a Tier Certified data centre.

At launch, TIER-Ready solutions are available from different manufacturers, including Schneider Electric, Compass Data Centers and Huawei.

Lee Kirby, President, Uptime Institute, said: “Prefabricated and modular data centres have been on a growth trajectory for the past several years as organizations strive to bring business services closer to their constituents. As distributed technologies such as IoT and edge-computing become commonplace, these services must be delivered without incurring the traditional risk associated with remote infrastructures.

“The TIER-Ready program simplifies and speeds the certification process, while reducing costs for both the manufacturer and the end-user.”

Earlier this month, Uptime Institute announced the launch of Uptime Institute Research, a new research organisation aimed at bringing together informed, practical and forward looking information and insights to global data centre professionals and stakeholders.

The research group has been established to offer services to enable members of Uptime Institute’s global community to access an ever-growing body of primary research from Uptime Institute Research and its global network of engineers, data centre operators and partners.

Kirby said: “The complex hybrid infrastructures now forming in most companies must be able to provide the needed levels of business services, regardless of where those services are derived.

“Everywhere you turn, there are major innovations being seen in practice including cloud computing, automation, Hyper-Converged infrastructure, IoT as well as unique power generation or distribution and advanced cooling designs.”

China accounts for the largest number of new build-ups which have helped drive the server market towards a 2.8% growth in Q2 2017.

The server market has continued to deliver consistent growth with revenues increasing 2.8% in Q2 2017 topping $13.94bn for the period, according to Gartner. The growth of $384m, when compared to Q2 2016, was fostered by Dell EMC, Cisco and Huawei, which registered positive growth margins when compared to other rivals such as HPE or IBM. In percentage terms, Huawei has outshined every other business, with server revenues increasing 57.8% in Q2 2017 from Q2 2016, reaching $845.54m revenues and a market share of 6.1%. Huawei’s grow reflects the expanding data centre industry in the Asia Pacific region as new data centre developments drive the acquisition of server hardware up across the continent, especially in China.

However, Huawei is far from the first market shareholder, HPE, which with $3.2bn server revenues amounts to 23% of the market share at the end of the second quarter of 2017. Nonetheless, HPE’s revenues dropped 9.4% in the last quarter, when compared to the same period the year before. In second place is Dell EMC which is still building up on the back of the multi-billion Dollar merger carried out last year between Dell and EMC. The group grew revenues by 7% from $2.59bn to $2.78bn, with market share of 19.9%.

In third place is IBM, which saw the deepest revenue downfall, with figures pluming 21.5% to below the $1bn revenue mark (Q2 2016: $1.2bn; Q2 2017: $963m). Cisco follows with a shy growth of 0.9% and revenues topping $866m. Huawei comes in next with the industry’s largest revenue jump. Lastly, in a category simply labelled as ‘others’, revenues grew 10% from $4.8bn in Q2 2016 to $5.28bn in Q2 2017.

In server shipments, Dell EMC maintained the No. 1 position in the second quarter of 2017 with 17.5% market share. HPE secured the second spot with 17.1% of the market. Inspur Electronics experienced the highest growth in shipments with 31.5%, followed by Huawei with 26.1% growth. All in all, server shipments grew 2.4% Q2 2017 vs Q2 2016, from 2,757,697 to 2,823,688.

Jeffrey Hewitt, research vice president at Gartner, said: “The growth for the quarter is attributable to two main factors. The first is strong regional performance in Asia/Pacific because of data centre infrastructure build-outs, mostly in China. The second is ongoing hyperscale data centre growth that is exhibited in the self-build/ ODM (original design manufacturer) segment. “x86 servers increased 2.5 per cent in shipments and 6.9 per cent in revenue. RISC/Itanium Unix servers fell globally for the period — down 21.4 percent in shipments and 24.9 per cent in vendor revenue compared with the same quarter last year. The ‘other’ CPU category, which is primarily mainframes, showed a decline of 29.5 per cent in revenue.”

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OCTOBER 2017

Rackspace acquires ALL of Datapipe’s 29 data centres Headquartered in Jersey City, NJ, Datapipe was founded in 2000 and employs today 825 staff servicing hundreds of customers across regions.

Multi-cloud managed services company Rackspace has entered into an agreement to acquire hybrid cloud and colocation provider Datapipe, including its infrastructure consisting of 29 data centres.

The acquisition, Rackspace’s largest to date, comes as customers requested for more multi-cloud capabilities, with industry surveys suggesting that the majority of businesses run their applications across three or more clouds.

“With the acquisition of Datapipe, we’re very pleased to expand the multi-cloud managed services we provide our customers, while also opening doors to new opportunities across the globe.”

Through the acquisition, expected to close in Q4 2017, Rackspace will gain customers including the US Departments of Defense, Energy, and Treasury, as well as the UK Cabinet Office, Ministry of Justice, and Department of Transport.

Robb Allen, founder and CEO of Datapipe, said: “We are very proud of the business we have built and the innovations and successful customer outcomes we have been recognized for, and the future of Datapipe will be even brighter in combination with Rackspace.

In addition, the company will also gain capabilities around professional services, software and tooling that will help serve enterprise customers as well as managed services on the Alibaba Cloud.

“Customers need guidance using public cloud infrastructure from Alibaba Cloud, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, and Microsoft Azure. They also need help navigating the use of private clouds, managed hosting and colocation solutions, often in combination, as they move critical applications out of their corporate data centres.

As for the data centre business, the fleet includes 29 sites, across the US (Chicago, Dallas, Kansas City, New York, San Jose, Sao Paulo, Seattle, Washington DC), Europe (Amsterdam, Frankfurt, London, Moscow) and Asia (Hong Kong, Shanghai, Singapore).

The acquisition of Datapipe will help Rackspace boost its offerings in regions where the company currently has a small footprint, including the West Coast of the US, Brazil, mainland China, and Russia.

Joe Eazor, CEO of Rackspace, said: “Our customers are looking for help as they spread their applications across public and private clouds, managed hosting, and colocation, depending on the blend of performance, agility, control, security, and cost-efficiency they’re seeking.

“The combination of complementary capabilities and resources from both of our companies will create the world’s leading provider of multi-cloud managed services.”

Both companies are privately held, with Rackspace owned by affiliates of certain funds of Apollo Global Management, LLC (NYSE: APO) and certain co-investors. The majority owner of Datapipe, Abry Partners, will receive equity in Rackspace.

Brian St. Jean, Partner at Abry, described this transaction as “a measure of our confidence in the bright future of Rackspace when combined with Datapipe.” No additional terms or details of the transaction will be publicly disclosed.

Data centre infrastructure equipment revenues hit $30bn, Microsoft, Dell EMC, Cisco and HPE lead sector Cloud service revenues continue to grow by over 40% per year, enterprise SaaS revenue grows by over 30%, and search/social networking revenues grows by over 20%.

The Q2 market leader in private cloud was Dell EMC, followed by HPE and Microsoft. The same three vendors led in the non-cloud data centre market, though with a different ranking.

Capital expenditure on data centre infrastructure equipment has reached $30bn in Q2 2017 with public cloud infrastructure accounting for over 30% of the total, despite spending on all data centre hardware and software growing by just 5%.

The slow growth in the all data centre hardware and software vertical is overshadowed by the 35% jump in increased spending on public cloud compared to Q2 2015, according to Synergy Research.

On the private cloud segment, revenues grew 16% in Q2 this year when compared to the same period two years ago.

However, spending on traditional, non-cloud data centre hardware and software has dropped by 18%.

Original design manufacturers (ODM) in aggregate account for the largest portion of the public cloud market, with Cisco being the leading individual vendor, followed by Dell EMC and HPE.

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Other leading vendors in the market are IBM, VMware, Huawei, Lenovo, Oracle and NetApp. John Dinsdale, a Chief Analyst and Research Director at Synergy Research Group, said: “With cloud service revenues continuing to grow by over 40% per year, enterprise SaaS revenue growing by over 30%, and search/social networking revenues growing by over 20%, it is little wonder that this is all pulling through continued strong growth in spending on public cloud infrastructure.

“While some of this is essentially spend resulting from new services and applications, a lot of the increase also comes at the expense of enterprises investing in their own data centres.

“One outcome is that public cloud build is enabling strong growth in ODMs and white box solutions, so the data centre infrastructure market is becoming ever more competitive.”

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Industry relief as ‘death of the data centre’ hailed as not a threat, debate should instead focus on what data centres will be needed in the future “This ‘death of the data centre’ talk is often seen as ridiculous,” says industry analyst after former Facebook’s VP comments on the development of new chipsets send stocks down across all the major US data centre REITs. The data centre industry was hit by an earthquake after comments made by an influential venture capitalist and hedge-fund owner sent the stocks of all American data centre REITs down with the premise that future processor technology will result in the end of the data centre provider industry.

The industry was quick to react with many taking to the usual social media channels including LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, some agreeing and some disagreeing.

The comments were made by none other than 41-year-old Chamath Palihapitiya, founder and CEO of the VC firm Social Capital, who has also served as Facebook’s VP from 2007 and 2011.

According to Seeking Alpha, citing Bloomberg, Palihapitiya was commenting on the news that Google may have developed its own chip that can run 50% of its computing on 10% of the silicon.

Wallage said: “Some co-location players remain stuck in the mindset that Tier III, downtown, ‘traditional data centre hubs’ will meet all demand. Furthermore, that their 10-15 (or even 20) year old sites can continued to be retro-fitted and remain attractive.

He said: “We can literally take a rack of servers that can basically replace seven or eight data centres and park it, drive it in an RV and park it beside a data centre.

“What exactly that future demand will look like is difficult to predict – however, one example of the present challenge is the focus of many telcos on edge computing compared with the ‘lip service’ paid to it by many co-lo players.

“Plug it into some air conditioning and power and it will take those data centres out of business.”

The market view sent stocks down, and according to Seeking Alpha, this was the scenario after the comments were made public: Digital Realty Trust (NYSE:DLR) was off 3.6%, while DuPont Fabros (NYSE:DFT) was 3.4% lower. CoreSite Realty (NYSE:COR) was down 3.5%, and QTS Realty Trust (NYSE:QTS) was down 3%. CyrusOne (NASDAQ:CONE) ias 2.4% lower and Equinix (NASDAQ:EQIX) was down 2.1%.

Palihapitiya would later react to the market’s take on his view: “It is not going to happen overnight, but investing is not about overnight, and if you can see the train wrecks coming you can take advantage of them.”

“We are already seeing newer players offering far more flexibility in their data centre designs and builds, optimising solutions for different verticals and requirements, and realizing that many data centre requirements need a mix of proximity, more cost-effective locations and networked sites.

“So data centres will continue to evolve and those who adapt to market demands through whichever technologies are adopted, will remain among the longer term winners.”

Wallage’s comments mirror the discussion that has been happening at many data centre and cloud events around the world and the views of several industry leaders.

Reacting to the panic generated, analysts have now come out to explain what the industry really needs to worry about, in an attempt to ease the markets.

The need to innovate on a business roadmap level, rather than on the technology stack, seems to be the key for survival of data centre providers.

Steve Wallage, MD of BroadGroup Consulting, said: “To old hands in the industry, this ‘death of the data centre’ talk is often seen as ridiculous in a world of soaring demand for data and given the lack of churn in the industry, importance of reliability and security, and such revolutionary technology claims historically failing to make much impact.

Edge computing, as mentioned by Wallage, is indeed a good example of a new business stream, whose technology is already available, but deployments are sometimes faced with cultural barriers in boardrooms.

“Some of these arguments have validity and the development of data centres has tended to be evolutionary and based on proven technology, rather than revolutionary, but the industry needs to avoid complacency and understand better some of the new technology on the horizon.”

However, while the analyst plays down the fear of the disappearance of the data centre provider industry, he warned that market players have instead to discuss more on what sort of data centres will be needed in the future and where they need to be located.

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Just like the ongoing debate surrounding the end of the mainframe, data centres providers will most unlikely be killed off based on the current state of adoption, growth and ever souring demand.

However, just as the business models used in the past do not function today, today’s strategies will become obsolete as market consolidation and grow occurs. As Data Economy has previously put it, data centres are tomorrow’s oil refineries, and this is a market that – independently of being colocation, wholesale, retail, private or public cloud – will not disappear, but transform.

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EMEA Data centre colocation supply tumbles across Europe in Q2, London and Paris lead fall Analysts warn the market is not slowing down, but is changing with the expansion of competing regional locations within each country.

however, it has also experienced a supply drop. The German city had at the end of Q2 2017 a supply MW of just over 6.5, compared to more than 8 MW in the previous quarter. In terms of supply sqm, Frankfurt’s drop was also the smallest, from just below 7,000 sqm to more than 6,500 sqm.

Colocation supply in the second quarter of 2017, both in terms of MW and sqm, has dropped across Europe’s main four hosting hubs of London, Paris, Frankfurt and Amsterdam when compared to the previous quarter. London and Paris led the fall, with both cities also lagging behind Q2 2016’s values, according to BroadGroup’s “Colocation Market Quarterly Q2 2017” report. Frankfurt and Amsterdam have also registered a slowdown in available supply.

Despite the drop-in supply in Q2, analysts highlighted in the report that although London, Paris, Amsterdam and Frankfurt face some growing competition from regional locations in their home markets, all are proving they can remain as the key location.

The lack of significant data centre builds opeining in Q2 has also contributed to the drop in available supply. However, analysts also expect the market to become more diverse with the large-scale adoption of edge data centres, “but this does remain more of a five-year development to get towards the 20-30 data centre locations per country”.

The British capital has registered the largest drop with supply MW decreasing from just above 6MW in Q1 2017, to below 4 MW. In terms of sqm, London has also had the deepest decline, going from nearly 5,000 sqm to just above 3,000 sqm.

Paris’ drop follows closely, with supply MW downgrading from around 4.5 MW to below 3.5 MW in Q1 and Q2 2017 respectively.

As for supply sqm, the French capital’s decrease in supply was less than Amsterdam’s, going from more than 3,000 sqm to just above 2,500 sqm.

As for London and the UK as a whole, much has been discussed around Brexit and the country’s departure from the European Union. However, analysts said Brexit is still not causing damage to the British colocation market.

The third largest drop was seen in Amsterdam, which in Q1 2017 had the largest percentage of supply MW between the four cities.

The Dutch city has gone from nearly 8.5 MW in the first quarter to just over 7.2 MW in the second quarter. In terms of supply sqm, Amsterdam dropped from more than 7,000 sqm to below 6,400 sqm in the last two quarters.

Lastly, Frankfurt has in the second quarter seen the highest increase in both supply terms compared to the other four rival cities,

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Philip Low, chairman of BroadGroup, said: “In terms of London and Brexit, we are still seeing relatively limited impact. This has been particularly helped by the hyperscale cloud companies increasing their commitment to the UK, particularly Google and Microsoft. “All the cloud players are also HQ in London, rather than a regional location. However, there are increasing signs of financial companies looking to move at least some staff and operations into mainland Europe.”

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European businesses at risk by failing IT infrastructure practices Only 16% of application owners are involved in the storage solution deployment process across the enterprise layer.

Nevertheless, the survey has also found that 70% of respondents plan to establish service level agreements (SLAs) with their application owners for either performance and/or availability.

For performance, specifically, 43% of respondents will establish performance-related SLAs. 94% of respondents indicated that their organisation ensures performance and availability by using monitoring tools. 54% prefer to use vendor-independent monitoring tools.

Businesses across the continent are positioning themselves at risk by failing to profile application workloads and test data storage systems before purchase and deployment.

Nearly six in ten (59%) of companies in Europe do not profile their workloads before buying their next storage system and 44% said they do not trust either storage vendors or their VARs to advise them on the right solution, according to research conducted by the Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) and co-sponsored by Virtual Instruments.

Mark Peters, Practice Director & Senior Analyst at the Enterprise Strategy Group, said: “Assuming that upgrading to flash-based storage will solve all data-related application performance issues is a myth.

“Solely depending on vendor recommendations or partners who are aligned with specific vendors could leave IT teams vulnerable,” the companies said in a statement.

This could impact companies in different ways from overprovisioning and wasted financial expenditures to a new storage solution being unable to keep up with the organisation’s business requirements and lead to lost revenues. A lack of insight into application workload behaviour is compounded by a failure to understand how storage solutions will perform until they’re put to work.

Only 29% of the 412 IT respondents surveyed said they would conduct on-premises load testing themselves before their next storage systems purchase, while another 11% indicated they would work with vendors or partners to conduct load testing before deciding on their next storage system purchase.

“Without understanding how a solution is likely to behave under normal, dynamic, and anticipated peak load conditions, it is much harder to predict whether a solution is correctly configured to manage an organisation’s unique demands. It is also likely to impact overall performance,” the final survey report suggests.

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“Application performance is heavily impacted by the I/O characteristics and patterns employed by the application itself and its interactions with other applications that might be sharing the same, invariably virtualised, infrastructure.

“How each vendor has designed its all-flash arrays to handle the plethora of different workloads varies greatly. Five-fold performance differences or more are not uncommon for the same identical workload.”

Chris James, EMEA marketing director, Virtual Instruments said: “For CIOs, the research showcases the gaps in knowledge that are putting their businesses at risk. But they also show opportunities for increasing insight into how their infrastructures are working, and how they can stop wasting capital and avoid over-provisioning.

“That level of understanding enables higher, more consistent performance, which brings benefits across the IT infrastructure and the wider business.

“For vendors, the results give a strong message about where they should be focusing their efforts. Availability should be a given, it’s performance that matters to customers, and the vendors that enable their customers to establish performance-based SLAs that leverage both load testing and monitoring will be setting the bar for the rest of the industry.”

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DigiPlex slashes data centre customers’ electricity bills by 25%

Future Stockholm data centre will heat up 10,000 homes

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A massive 97% electricity tax relief on commercial data centres is changing how some of the Nordic countries do business.

Nordic data centre services provider DigiPlex has announced a 25% drop in electricity prices for its customers after the company was approved for the new Norwegian tax relief scheme that reduces electricity fees by 97%.

The 97% reduction in electricity taxes was approved by the Norwegian government in 2016 and is only available to commercial data centres. The incentive came into effect on January 1, 2017, similar to neighbouring Sweden, which has also reduced data centre electricity taxes by 97%.

Digiplex said in a statement the new tax relief will help improve the competitiveness of modern data centre companies in Norway, “both nationally and internationally”.

The provider believes that by only being available to commercial data centres, the tax relief will help stimulate Norwegian companies and organisations to modernise their data storage and move from power hungry in-house arrangements to more energy efficient external solutions.

DigiPlex CEO, Gisle M. Eckhoff, said: “It has been a long process to get the approval under the new regulations, and we are very proud to lead the way for our customers and other Norwegian data centres.

“Our existing and future clients can rest assured that we are continuously investing in innovative solutions and that we always work towards a sustainable operation. We want to reduce our power usage, and make sure our customers do not pay more than they have to, as well as minimise their carbon footprint.”

However, DigiPlex’s announcement was followed by some industry criticism as the company claimed to be the first data centre operator to be approved into the government’s scheme.

Taking to Twitter, CEO Knut Molaug, of rival Green Mountain, claimed his company had been added to the program ten days after it was launched. He said: “First? …. Green Mountain received approval January 10th @greenmountainas.”

Molaug told Data Economy: “We received the approval only 10 days after the new legislation was implemented and this has reduced our clients power cost by a third since January.

The power cost now averaging around 3 pence per kWh for our clients.”

Answering to the claim, Fredrik Jansson, CMO at DigiPlex, told Data Economy: “The important thing here is to spread the word about the tax relief Norway has a data centre destination and how it benefits customers.

“It is great that our announcement has been noticed and seems to have sparked Green Mountain to go public with their approval. We hope that more Norwegian data centre operators will follow suit and announce that they are passing the benefit onto their customers.”

DigiPlex operates three facilities in Norway, in Ulven, Fetsund and Rosenholm, all in the Oslo region. The three sites have a combined capacity of 106,500 sqf. In addition, the company operates a fourth hub in Stockholm’s Upplands Vasby, with 215,200 sqf.

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Project is part of the Stockholm Data Centres Park initiative which aims to warm up 10% of Stockholm’s homes through data centre excess heat.

Sweden’s plans to become the energy efficient hotspot of the world have gained a new boost as a 5MW data centre is about to break ground in Stockholm where up to 10,000 homes will benefit from the facility’s wasted heat.

The company behind the project is Borderlight AB, a supplier of IT and Telecom services to the public and industry sectors, which has unveiled plans to install a large-scale heat reuse system that will be used to direct excess heat to residential apartments.

The operator has signed up local heating network provider Fortum Värme to absorb the excess heat into its network and then distribute it to households around the capital. Fortum Värme’s district heating network connects more than 10,000 buildings, representing an aggregated heating demand of 12 TWh per year.

In addition, Borderlight’s sister company GoGreenHost will provide the server blades and racks specifically optimised for heat recovery, with rack densities reaching up to 100 kW per 19” rack.

Sten Oscarsson, CEO of Borderlight and GoGreenHost AB, said: “Borderlight’s and GoGreenHost’s target is to become a leading supplier of advanced IT services coupled with efficient heat recovery from data centers that reach close to 100% recovery of consumed electrical power.

“Our plan is to contract installation of 30 MW in new data centre capacity 2017 and another 60 MW 2018 in sizes from 1–6 MW per site, all connected to a redundant high capacity fiber backbone.” The new data centre development and consequent distribution of excess to thousands of households is included in the Stockholm Data Centres Park initiative launched in January 2017. The project aims to supply 10% of Stockholm’s residential heating demand through recovered waste heat from data centres.

Close to 90% of all buildings in the Swedish capital are connected to the district heating network operated by Fortum Värme, which makes it easier for data centre operators and the heating network provider to collaborate and distribute the heat throughout the city.

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OCTOBER 2017

Data centres hailed as ‘foundation for digital sovereignty’

Keppel invests over $100m in Dublin data center expansion Acquisition puts Keppel DC REIT’s assets under management at approximately $1.53bn with 917,240 sq ft of lettable area across 13 data centres.

Keppel DC REIT has acquired its second data centre presence in the Irish capital for a sum of $101.3m.

Named B10 Data Centre, the asset sits 12 kilometres from Dublin’s city centre and has been described as a carrier-neutral colocation data centre with a weighted average lease expiry (WALE) of approximately 11.0 years by net lettable area.

The data centre located within the Ballycoolin Business and Technology Park is currently 87.3% leased to global internet enterprise, IT services and telecommunications clients.

The hub started operations in 2013 and offers approximately 25,200 sq ft of lettable area.

Increasing data regulations are driving the demand for construction of data centre facilities across the globe and Europe is no exception.

NTT Communications (NTT Com) has announced it has invested in a fifth German data centre facility in Bonn through its European data centre services provider subsidiary e-shelter.

The new hub has been built to address market demand and increase capacity to withstand further market needs. e-shelter CEO and founder Rupprecht Rittweger, said the infrastructure will serve Germany’s needs for the future.

He said: “At first sight, you may perceive just a building fulfilling its purpose as a data centre. But the conceptual design of our data centres goes much further.

“Data centres will be even more important in the future, they are a foundation for digital sovereignty in our country.”

The two-story data centre has been names Rhein-Ruhr 1 and offers 29,000 sqf of server space, equivalent to 1,100 racks as to demand. Power sits at 7MW. NTT Com operates four other data centres in Germany alone with two sites in Frankfurt, one in Berlin and one in Munich.

Across Europe, the company has a presence in Austria, France, Germany, Spain, Switzerland and the UK. Elsewhere, NTT Com operates data centres in Japan, India, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand, Australia, Taiwan, Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines, China and the US.

Keppel DC REIT said the acquisition is immediately accretive to Keppel DC REIT’s Distribution per Unit (DPU).

It also added that the addition of the new facility will further diversify the REIT’s income stream, while its portfolio WALE remains long at approximately 9.4 years.

With the acquisition, assets under management of Keppel DC REIT have increased to approximately $1.53bn with aggregate lettable area of approximately 917,240 sq ft across 13 data centres.

Chua Hsien Yang, CEO of Keppel DC REIT Management Pte. Ltd., said: “This asset is a strategic addition to Keppel DC REIT’s portfolio given its strong tenant profile with a long WALE that provides income stability.

“Apart from enhancing its offering in a key data centre hub, the REIT will be able to reap operational synergies from its existing data centre, Keppel DC Dublin 1.”

Keppel DC REIT’s investment follows on from a booming data centre industry across Ireland and especially Dublin.

The region has seen not only builds and acquisitions from colocation players but also from hyperscalers including Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple.

Consulting firm BroadGroup had previously cited Ireland as the most attractive location in Europe for data centres, noting the entry of hyperscale and large-scale data centre players around Dublin.

The company’s portfolio boosts more than 140 facilities in total. In addition to e-shelter, NTT Com is also the parent company to Ranging Wire.

NTT Com is the ICT solutions and international communications business within the NTT Group.

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OCTOBER 2017

Huawei to target Sweden’s booming FinTech scene with data centre business ICT company opens up about its plans for the server business, with Europe, the US and APAC all set to be targeted for expansion as well.

Boundless computing

Huawei has vowed to ramp up its market share in the Nordic region with more work towards expanding its data centre sever business in the cards.

Here’s the definition from Huawei:

The server business at Huawei is today very much run under the slogan of “boundless computing”.

Boundless computing includes optimizing computing for applications and bringing computing closer to data sources, to unleash the full potential of computing. It also includes pushing beyond the boundary of servers, and enabling DC-level resource pooling and on-demand provisioning, to boost the overall computing efficiency of data centres. Moreover, it requires going beyond the boundary of data centres, enabling smart access, and taking computing even into the data sources, in this way, to smarten up data at the remote end.

William Dong, VP of data centre marketing solution sales for the company’s Enterprise Business Group, told Data Economy, that within Huawei’s plans for the region, Sweden’s fintech scene is an attractive landscape for the Chinese multinational. “[The Nordic market for Huawei] is very small. We will turn this into an active market, especially in Sweden, and especially around fintech,” Dong said.

Boundless computing has been introduced by Huawei earlier this year, and as Long explained, has been designed to “reimagine computing for a better-connected world”. With that in mind, Huawei is reading for a world where 80% of computing is done outside the data centre, in edge computing enabled environments to which boundless computing will deliver server hardware.

He also added that Huawei has a big focus on five key industries including manufacturing, something that Sweden seems to have plenty of, or enough to get Huawei interested in its sector. Dong said: “We think Sweden has this kind of big manufactures; so we chose Sweden for our potential big Nordic market.”

The other four industries of focus include energy, finance, transportation and public safety. Qiu Long, president of Huawei Technologies’ IT server product line, added that today, in the Nordic region, the country with the highest share of the Huawei’s presence amounts to 15%.

Long said: “The edge has some differences from the normal data centre. Because it is running in very different environments and extreme conditions, the hardware cannot be built in the same way as the one for data centres. “Therefore, Huawei will do two things: first, hardware designed at the chip level to support operations and computing at the node level and support analytics at the edge.

He did however not specify which country, and the company was also not able to provide specific figures for the region as a whole and its share in the Huawei’s overall CNY 44.7bn (FY 2016) enterprise segment.

Long also said that for the server business, the company will focus not only in the Nordics, but on several regions, “including Europe, the US and APAC”.

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“Secondly, we will do something around extreme environments, similarly to what we do in our telco business. For example, our wireless base stations can be placed in any extreme locations.”

The executive also vowed to in the future five years making Huawei’s boundless computing vision go “beyond the boundary of the CPU”. Long said: “The CPU is not the only good thing for computing. For data centres we will also go beyond the data centre. We will have ubiquitous computing beyond the data centre.”

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OCTOBER 2017

Equinix invests $122m on standard-setting Silicon Valley data center

Apple tells Ireland it could pull the plug on $1bn data center project over delays

Colocation giant brings total investment on its Silicon Valley campus to nearly $400m as interconnection demand scales up.

Equinix has brought its capital expenditure for this week alone up to $382m as the company announces the opening of a new International Business Exchange (IBX) data centre in Silicon Valley.

The $122m facility joins the company’s expansion into Portugal and Spain with the $260m acquisition of Itconic.

Named SV10, the site in California joins Equinix’s Great Oaks campus in San Jose which serves more than 625 customers and represents the second-largest internet exchange point in North America, according to Equinix.

With the addition of SV10, the operator has also bought the total investment in the campus to nearly $400m where it now operates 13 data centres.

The initial phase of SV10 will add more than 37,000 sqf of colocation space, and provides campus cross-connectivity into the adjacent SV1 and SV5 buildings.

It will include space for 930 cabinets, and two additional expansion phases are planned. At full build, the facility will provide capacity for 2,820 cabinets.

Equinix Silicon Valley sites also include 125 network providers and cloud services such as AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, Oracle Cloud and others through the Equinix Cloud Exchange and direct connect services.

It will include space for 930 cabinets, and two additional expansion phases are planned. At full build, the facility will provide capacity for 2,820 cabinets.

In terms of power, Equinix said SV10 sets the green standard for future Equinix IBX builds.

The company explained: “SV10 is a LEED Silver Certified building that meets the strict water reduction standards and will feature indirect evaporative cooling (IDEC) technology which dramatically reduces water use; hot aisle containment; accessibility to and from public transportation; and rooftop solar and fuel cells for sustainable energy production.”

Karl Strohmeyer, President, Americas, Equinix, said: “Our Great Oaks campus features one of the highest densities of network and cloud providers within our global platform of IBX data centres. The interconnection opportunities for enterprise customers at this campus are vast, enabling customers within the region to expand their digital transformation.

“We are thrilled to be bringing our third facility at the Great Oaks campus online in this increasingly important and growing market.

Shortage of judges, growing bureaucracy and power constraints could prove too much for the iPhone maker which has waited over two years for an approval.

Apple has reportedly told Irish authorities that its $1bn data centre investment in Galway is under threat from ongoing delays over the approval of the project.

Two people familiar with the matter have told Bloomberg that the company has raised its concern over the planning process the data centre has been subjected to, which has delayed the 166,000 sqf site’s breaking ground ceremony for more than a year.

The iPhone X maker is also said to be concerned about potential objection over the power needs of the data centre, which according to local report, would put even more pressure on Ireland’s national grid.

One of the sources said Apple is worried the power issue could delay the project even more. Apple originally announced its plans to expand its data centre footprint in Ireland in 2015, with an agenda set to open the site in 2017.

However, objectors to the project in Ireland have formally made their voice heard with the country’s authorities and the project has been victim of several delays.

From a shortage of judges to no clear decisions, Apple has found itself to be walking in and out of Irish courts for nearly a year. Objectors claimed the data centre would have a negative impact in the local area by increasing traffic and noise pollution.

This would also affect the local wildlife, especially bats and badgers who live in the Derrydonnell Forest, adjacent to the proposed construction 500-acre site.

Nevertheless, Apple has gathered local support from thousands of residents who have actively campaigned for the approval of the data centre, both online and on the streets of Galway.

The next court hearing is now scheduled for October 12, and is expected that if approved, the data centre will be up and running by mid-2019.

While the company seeks approval for its Irish data centre, Apple has in the meantime announced a $920m data centre investment plan for Denmark.

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OCTOBER 2017

Microsoft to build Dublin power station as Irish capital struggles to power booming $10bn data centre industry Sector does not show signs of slowing down and the country is readying to break ground on some core projects to ensure business continuity.

Such investment has put strain on the local electricity network, which according to Ireland’s Electricity Supply Board has placed some “unprecedented” demand for electricity.

An EirGrid spokesman told the Irish Independent: “Space at Grange Castle Business Park is in high demand from international business customers.

The Irish data centre boom has taken its toll on the country’s power grid as local electricity operator EirGrid prepares to invest “tens of millions of Euros” in expanding capacity in Dublin to accommodate growing demand.

According to the Irish Independent, Microsoft is also “being forced” to build its own power station in the Irish capital to help power its data centre in the Grange Castle Business Park, Clondalkin.

The hyperscaler will install 16 gas-powered generators which will produce up to 18MW of electricity.

However, a Microsoft spokesperson said the station would only be used to power the company’s data centre “if necessary”.

Microsoft, which has invested nearly $20bn in building out its global Azure cloud infrastructure over the years, has today four data centres operating in Dublin and was in May 2016 given permission to double that in an investment estimated at more than $1bn. Each of the new data centres is expected to measure 188,400 sqf.

The company’s total investment in Ireland sits are around $2.2bn with the first data centre having been brought online in 2008.

And the cloud giant is only one of the mega multi-nationals who operate data centres in Ireland. Others include giant sites from AWS, Apple, Facebook and Google, all with large scale builds.

Since 2008, combined capital expenditure data on data centre investments in the country -either built or approved – shows the sector is set to top over $10bn by 2020.

Although Ireland, and especially Dublin, are far from reaching the likes of London, Paris, Frankfurt or Amsterdam, the country has seen one of the highest surge in data centre CAPEX in Europe – together with the Nordic region.

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“To accommodate this growth, further power is required to meet both current electricity needs and to plan for future electricity demand.”

Part of that plan is set to be launched in the coming weeks and has been branded as ‘West Dublin Project’. The “tens of millions of Euros” project caters the construction of a substation exclusively dedicated to powering data centres. However, the station is scheduled to be completed only by 2019.

The EirGrid spokesperson added: “Given the lead times associated with transmission reinforcements, generation capacity or equivalent may need to be available in the Dublin region to accommodate this additional demand in the short term.

“A key driver for electricity demand in Ireland for the next number of years is the connection of large data centres.

“A significant proportion of this extra data centre load will materialise in the Dublin region.”

Speaking to Data Economy earlier in the year, Tanya Duncan, MD of Interxion Ireland, had already raised the issue surrounding the power-hungry sites built by hyperscalers.

She said: “We are very happy for the likes of Microsoft, Amazon, Google, they are all here, which is great. They give us a name, a reputation and people see them here and they come to Ireland, so that is great, but on the other hand, they take a lot of the infrastructure in terms of power and whatever else and so we have to be very aware of what is happening with power and the uptake of power and that we are on the agenda as well.”

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OCTOBER 2017

Irish gov’t studying new data centre planning laws to avoid another Apple-like PR disaster Government looking at legislation that would treat data centres as part of the country’s strategic infrastructure and speed up processes.

The Irish Government has been quick to react to Apple’s frustration following a nearly two-year delay on getting the planning permission to build a $1bn data centre in Galway.

According to Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, who has met with the Cupertino giant last week, one of the proposals under consideration is an amendment to the Strategic Infrastructure Act “to treat data centres as part of our strategic infrastructure and enable the planning process to work more smoothly”.

The government’s position follows the meeting between Varadkar and Apple, who told the Prime Minister of their frustration over the Galway data centre. “They expressed frustration at the legal and planning delays that have delayed that investment,” Varadkar said.

However, he played down the hype around reports that suggested Apple had told the Irish Government it could cancel the data centre investment based on the legal battle the company has found itself into and the ongoing delay to its expansion strategy.

Varadkar said that despite the mentioned frustration, the company remains committed to making its investment in Galway. Apple originally announced its plans to expand its data centre footprint in Ireland in 2015, with an agenda set to open the site in 2017.

Minister of state reaffirms government’s commitment to launch new data centre planning regime in wake of Apple’s $1bn data centre delay to ‘Build a new Ireland’ Parliament also working at speed on data protection bill as foreign data amounts to more than 90% of the data stored in the country.

The Irish government has today reaffirmed its commitment to look into the country’s current data centre legislation which has caused a two-year delay to a large-scale Apple data centre project.

Speaking at the inaugural Datacloud Ireland congress, Pat Breen, TD, Minister of State with special responsibility for Trade, Employment, Business, EU Digital Single Market and Data Protection, said the government is invested in maintaining Ireland’s top place in the data centre sector by adapting the country’s laws to avoid another delay like the Apple one.

He said: “Building on the strong record we have for location choice for data centres, Ireland is a world class location for data centres, and the global cloud providers choosing Ireland prove that. “The government is committed to ensuring that Ireland remains a world leader location for data activities, including the construction of data centres.”

Mr Breen said: “We are committed in improving our energy infrastructure and improving our energy consumption. Having the personnel and the expertise for these data centres is also important, and we have it. Our climate here, and is very beneficial when it comes to reducing the energy footprint. We have a weather system here that is ideal. We also have a very strong data privacy set up in place. We have a strong and stable data protection, which is part of the new Ireland.”

According to the minister, the new planning regime, the energy, the people and the data protection landscape currently in place and being worked on, including GDPR, will help expand data centre operations in Ireland and deliver a new Ireland. Speaking specifically on GDPR, Mr Breen said: “I want to reinstate the government’s commitment to build on this work to attract companies to build new data centres here.

“There are Irish organisations out there fully prepared for GDPR. We have to be on the message all the time here. We are preparing legislation, the data protection bill. That is well advanced in parliament, and we hope to have that ready in this [parliamentary] session.

“Many of you will be aware of one data centre proposal delays. The government is studying new laws on data centre planning proposals.

“We are aware of it and we are looking into it. We are committed to find a solution and improve the industry and the building of data centres.”

“From our point of view, government and ministers, we will be very vocal about this. We will be very supportive in this and involved in this with the Data Commissioner’s office. I believe we cannot be complacent here. We will work in the months ahead; we will reach to all audiences across the country.”

Mr Breen said this is part of the government’s wider action plan that looks into the future of the Irish economy. “Ireland is the fastest growing economy in Europe. We are looking for a new Ireland, a new future, and we want to ensure Ireland is a leader in data,” he said. “It is a fantastic opportunity for us today to lead the industry.”

In addition to touring Ireland, the minister also said he will work to get the GDPR message beyond the country’s borders. He mentioned the “events in the UK and across the Atlantic as well which are impacting data protection”.

In addition to looking into the planning regulations for data centres, the minister also said the state is working on improving its energy infrastructure and improving energy consumption. The pledge has been made three days after Microsoft was reported to be going to build a power station to help power its data centre needs in Dublin as the local grid goes under expansion to cope with the large demand for data centre business.

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He made a direct reference to Brexit, which “is a big issue in Ireland, more than any other country. Brexit affects us the most. That is why we are so vocal about it with the European Commission and others.

Data protection keeps us very busy and is a key area for us. It impacts on all of us, impacts the economy, impacts society. I firmly believe Ireland is in place to deal with the challenges in the [data and data centre] industry.”

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OCTOBER 2017

Equinix expands into Portugal and Spain with $259m Itconic acquisition Acquisition will include five data centres in four metros, with two located in Madrid, one in Barcelona, one in Seville, and one in Lisbon.

The acquisition will add more than 250 employees to the Equinix team in Europe.

The world’s largest colocation data centre operator Equinix (Nasdaq: EQIX) has entered into an agreement with The Carlyle Group for the purchase of Itconic.

Itconic is a data centre, connectivity and cloud infrastructure solutions provider in Spain and Portugal. It also operates CloudMas, a subsidiary that is focused on supporting enterprise adoption and use of cloud services.

In its last financial fillings, Itconic generated approximately €55.5m or approximately $66.8m of revenues for the period Q2 2017 annualized. Equinix will purchase the companies in an all-cash transaction totalling €215m or approximately $259m dollars.

The agreement was signed on September 8, 2017, and the acquisition is expected to close in Q4 2017, subject to customary closing conditions including regulatory approval.

Eric Schwartz, President, EMEA, Equinix, said: “The large-scale deployments of new direct submarine cables between Europe, Latin America and Africa will connect through Iberia, making it a globally relevant key interconnection hub and a geographically important region for Equinix.

“With the acquisition of Itconic, we will continue to deliver the level of excellence and Interconnection that the industry expects and which our customers demand. Our ongoing growth signifies our commitment to the region and to developing our global footprint to support the growing digital business needs of our customers.”

Some of the submarine cables already connected to Itconic’s Lisbon data center are ACE (African Coast to Europe), WACS (West Africa Cable System), Tata Global Network. The MainOne cable will be connected in the future. In addition, the data center in Seville is connected to Canalink.

The acquisition will include five data centres in four metros, with two located in Madrid, one in Barcelona, one in Seville, and one in Lisbon, and adds approximately 322,000 gross sqf to the Equinix International Business Exchange (IBX) data centre portfolio.

Faustino Jiménez, CEO, Itconic, said: “With our incorporation into Equinix’s global platform, companies operating in the Iberian peninsula will finally be able to access the largest network of interconnected data centers in the world and take advantage of its more than 180 centers in 44 different markets.

Equinix will serve more than 400 customers in Iberia, including marquis enterprise brands such as L’Oreal, Vueling, Deloitte, BNP Paribas, Repsol, Real Madrid, Randstad, Carlson Wagonlit Travel, Aon and Bank of America. In addition, more than 100 network and mobility companies and more than 90 cloud and IT services companies operate at Itconic, including AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.

“At Itconic, we are proud to be part of a world-leading company that is at the forefront of IT infrastructure services and offers services that enable the digital transformation of companies on all five continents. We believe in the power of Interconnection, and this acquisition reinforces our vision of how technology can transform the way companies do business.” Equinix currently operates more than 180 IBX data centers in 44 markets.

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OCTOBER 2017

Nordics experience $3bn data centre investment boom with more large builds expected M&A activity, market entry by new investors, promotional initiatives by Sweden, Norway and Denmark and the emergence of eco-systems drive growth.

The Nordic region has long established itself as one of the booming markets of Europe and new research now shows that tax incentives and a green energy policy is paying off.

According to BroadGroup’s “Datacenter Nordics III” report, investment in the data centre sector in the Nordic market has reached around $3bn over the last 12 to 18 months alone.

However, the report points out that in the near future, not only US players are expected to harness the Nordic potential, but also Asian firms are anticipated to invest in the region. Recently, Data Economy reported that Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei has plans to invest more solidly in the Nordic region, especially in Sweden.

In addition, analysts estimate that combined available power for third party facilities and hyperscales is already approaching 800MW for the region.

Third party sqm space is expected to increase by more than 26% by the end of 2018. A combination of M&A activity, market entry by new investors, promotional initiatives by Sweden, Norway and Denmark in particular to attract hyperscale investment and the emergence of eco-systems will “significantly change the landscape over the next 12-18 months”, it reads in the report.

BroadGroup said it also expects further expansion from hyperscalers due to the Nordic region’s abundance of renewable energy, and competitive energy tax, and land availability.

This followed from the company’s CEO vision to make the company a top five global cloud provider in the coming years.

Commenting on the report, Philip Low, chairman of BroadGroup, said: “Given the outlook for available renewable energy attached to greenfield and brownfield sites across the region, with more than 5500MW, the outlook for the end of 2018 and beyond is extremely positive.

“As the Nordic markets are now much more integrated with Europe, existing colocation and content distribution hub opportunities, the emergence of Edge, fixed price contracts for renewable energy and further investment in connectivity present attractive opportunities for enterprises deploying IT assets globally.”

American hyperscalers such as Google and Facebook, have long been tenants in the region with their own large-scale sites.

Recently, Kolos has made headlines across the globe after unveiling plans to build what will be the world’s largest data centre at 1GW and 6.5 million sqf, also in the Nordic region, in Northern Norway.

Datacenter Nordics III is the third annual report from BroadGroup and covers 8 countries: Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden and the Baltic States of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia who collectively own 260 third party data centre facilities.

World’s largest data centre lands multi-million dollar VC round At full build, the site will measure as much as 6.46 million sqf and have the ability to process 1,000 MW.

The data centre proposed by Kolos in Narvik, Norway, is projected to initially draw in 70MW of power, and at full build will measure as much as 6.46 million sqf and have the ability to process 1,000 MW. Kolos has already conducted a series A capital funding round, partnered with HDR, and engineering and design company, and acquired the land to build the data centre.

Data centre developer Kolos has announced it has closed a $2.5m venture capital round to help finance the project which has already secured more than $250m in funding from Headwaters Merchant Bank.

The funding round coincides with BroadGroup’s data which reveals that $3bn in data centre investment has been made into the Nordic region over the last 12 to 18 months.

The company, which is set to break ground this year on what is to date the largest data centre project in the world, raised the $2.5m from British-Columbia-based Fast Track Venture Capital in association with other investors.

According to Fast Track Venture Capital’s website, the company invests in early stage technology companies “led by outstanding entrepreneurs” who are looking for a seed investment of up to $1m, with investment beginning at $10,000.

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The consulting firm said more investment is expected in the near future as the industry expands and projects like Kolos come to light.

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OCTOBER 2017

Goldman Sachs doubles investment ever made on Russian data centre operator IXcellerate Russian market has seen a 21% growth in revenues in 2016, setting the tone for further national and international investment across the sector.

Russia’s third largest operating commercial data centre operator IXcellerate has gained some heavy investment power from Goldman Sachs through a $15m convertible loan agreement.

“Our main competitive advantages are infrastructure quality and full transparency of our business as well as the highest level of customer service. In the nearest future, we are planning to expand further and rely not only on organic market growth and new investments, but also considering merge & acquisition opportunities”.

By investing in IXcellerate, registered as a UK business, Goldman Sachs has become the third investor in the company, together with IFC and Sumitomo Corporation.

Goldman Sachs will hold approximately 25% of shares following conversion. The deal was signed by IXcellerate headquartered in Great Britain.

Goldman Sachs’ move comes as the Russian commercial data centre is predicted to have generated revenues of $250m during 2016, according to iKS-Consulting.

The funding will be used to expand the IXcellerate Moscow One Datacentre located in northern Moscow.

Two new data halls will be built in the coming months to collocate 1100 and 350 racks respectively. Approximately 20% of this capacity is already reserved by existing and potential customers.

Once both data halls are commissioned, IXcellerate will be the third largest player among all operating commercial data centres in Russia in terms of total rack capacity.

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The operator’s current list of clients includes Thomson Reuters, Orange Business Services, RETN, Telia, NTT Communications, Evroset, Softline, Onlanta, FORS Distribution, as well as other global corporations, undisclosed due to confidentiality policies.

Guy Willner, CEO and co-founder of IXcellerate: “Since the launch of our data centre in Russia, we have been consistently moving towards becoming one of the market leaders.

The total sum of funding that IXcellerate has attracted in international markets since its inception for its Russian project amounts now to $35m.

The company said in a statement that following the fresh investment, its business strategy will continue to be based on the modular construction concept, enabling a customised “data centre within data centre” solution to large enterprises.

The IXcellerate Moscow One campus will be able to collocate 2185 racks following the projected expansion.

This represents a growth of 21% over 2015 and 11% in foreign currency terms.

Dmitry Bederdinov, iKS-Consulting, said: “New significant international investments will have a positive impact on the growth of the Russian commercial data centre market.

“Large and resilient data centres with enough resources to come up with competitive bids will have the advantage in terms of customer service and overall sustainability.”

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OCTOBER 2017

Nigerian stock exchange gets $140m data centre to compete with ‘some of the best’ exchanges in the world

African leaders’ call for action demands data centre construction boom Continent is on a mission to more than halve its dependency on internet traffic routing from Europe, the Americas and Asia.

Africa internet operators have been challenged to build and deploy more IT infrastructure in order to boost the continent’s connectivity and lower the costs associated with traffic exchange.

The continent’s operators have been set the goal by the African Peering and Interconnection Forum (AfPIF) to route 80% of internet traffic through infrastructure built in Africa by 2020, decreasing Africa’s dependence on routing lines from other regions, mainly Europe.

The call for action has been made by Funke Opeke, CEO of connectivity and data centre operator MainOne, while speaking at the AfPIF, in Abidjan, Côte D’Ivoire.

Facility in Lagos hailed as a cornerstone to the country’s economy which has felt the effect of decreasing oil prices.

The Nigerian government has opened a Tier Three modular data centre in Lagos in a boost to the country’s stock exchange.

The government believes the N500m ($139m as of August 8, 2017) data centre has enough IT power to enable the Nigerian Stock Exchange to compete with some of the “best exchanges” in the world.

The opening ceremony was attended by the Minister of Science and Technology, Dr Ogbonnaya Onu, who said the government is invested in breaking the country’s mono commodity-based economy. Dr Onu said the way the economy has been built over the years was the reason why the country has felt the effect of the changes in the oil market.

According to Opeke, internet transactions initiated in Africa typically leave the sender for a long journey outside the continent, usually to Europe, America or even Asia before returning to the target recipient, with the response traveling all the way back the same “tortuous route” to the sender.

She said: “Africa needs to retain more local traffic within the continent to drive more value from the Internet.

“This can be achieved by leveraging robust Internet Exchange Points and access via local interconnection points and local data centres which provide a platform for different networks to directly interconnect with other operators and exchange traffic, guaranteeing lower bandwidth costs, quicker access to more content providers and carriers and lower latency for local markets.”

Opeke also said the market is changing and that Africa’s growing fiber network density and increase in world-class data centres are “making it much easier for content providers and OTT operators to host and serve data locally”.

The opening of the data centre in the Nigerian capital is the continuation of the government’s efforts to reshape the economy and the minister said that collaborations with relevant establishments have already been made to ensure the success of the data centre.

The government has started works with research institutes through the Federal Ministry of Technology and Science in a bid to create more jobs and wealth.

Dr Onu said a data centre for the Nigerian Stock Exchange was a necessity due to the importance of the stock exchange to the nation’s economy.

He also urged the Nigerian Stock Exchange to allow the public listing so small and medium enterprises(SMEs) to boost the economy as a whole.

Oscar Onyema, CEO of the Nigerian Stock Exchange, said the facility will be used to reduce latency times and improve redundancy overall.

The data centre is to firstly be used only for brokers activities, with Onyema adding that in the future the hub’s operations might be expanded to quoted companies and others.

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AMERICAS First Harvey, now Irma. data centre operators ready for category 5 hurricane Florida data centres ready for worst, as storm records are to be broken and emergency series are readying for any eventuality.

The operator has also warned users that phone systems may be switched off depending on the severety of the trip, focusing our support staff on tickets and live chats. Social media will play a key role for breaking warnings and information posted to those collocated at Host Dimes’ data centres.

The most powerful hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic Ocean is already making damages in the Caribbean and data centre operators are coming out to talk about their action plan for such situation.

Hurricane Irma, which has become a category five in five hurricane, It is expected to cause large scale destruction, days after Hurricane Harvey. One of the first data centre operators to come out and talk about the storm was Host Dime, which asked customers to not send her many preconscious releases.

In a blog post, the operator said: “Due to this ongoing situation, please request non-critical updates and report current issues before 9/9/17 or after 9/12/17. During this time, if you believe your server is inaccessible, read up on how our IPMI service may be able to help.

“We will be staffed and available during the storm to handle any potential issues that arise, and have tested and verified all of our emergency infrastructure to ensure all services remain up and available. We have also made the requisite staffing changes to ensure that our support remains uninterrupted and available for all clients.”

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“While we will have staff available during the storm, priority will be placed on existing service requests and procedures, and any new orders/modifications may be delayed until after the storm has passed,” the company said.

Host Dime operates data centres across the Americas, with a data centre facility in Orlando, US. “Jared Smith is HostDime’s Content & SEO Strategist, said: “As you may have heard, Hurricane Irma is currently on track to affect Florida this weekend. As with all storms, HostDime.com has been working diligently to prepare ourselves for the heavy rains and wind that a storm of this size entails.

“Due to this ongoing situation, please request non-critical updates and report current issues before 9/9/17 or after 9/12/17. During this time, if you believe your server is inaccessible, read up on how our IPMI service may be able to help.” requests and procedures, and any new orders/modifications may be delayed until after the storm has passed.

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Trump’s ‘shaky reputation on data privacy’ could cost US cloud industry $10bn by 2020 Country could lose its “status quo” as the world’s fastest growing cloud region, however, experts warn it is not the first time the industry is under threat.

President’s Donald Trump “shaky reputation on data privacy” could cost the country’s cloud industry $10.1bn by 2020, with the first $1bn potentially being lost this year already. That is according to secure data centre experts Artmotion, which has looked into the Trump’s presidency popularity and its impact on the cloud sector.

Research from the Pew Research Center has found that 78% of people do not trust Trump to do the right thing when it comes to international affairs. This compares to 36% who felt the same way about former President Barack Obama. Artmotion said this combined with a rapid increase in people expressing unfavourable opinions about the US more generally, could have a “severely detrimental impact” to the cloud computing industry.

The company said that growth for US cloud computing providers is already thought to be slowing, with the region expected to experience the slowest growth rate across eight global regions, according to IDC’s latest Worldwide Public Cloud Services Spending Guide.

However, the US is still forecasted to generate more than 60% of total worldwide cloud revenues to 2020, the guide shows.

Artmotion has warned that this forecast slowdown does not factor in the effect that President Trump’s “controversial record on data privacy” has had on business confidence in the US as a data hosting location.

Based on that, researchers estimate the US to lose $1bn in cloud revenues this year, and $3.1bn in 2018. By 2019, the country could

lose its largest share at $3.3bn and in 2020 it could potentially miss out on $2.7bn. In the space of four years, Artmotion estimates the US’s cloud industry could lose $10.1bn and grow its market value to ‘only’ $214.4bn by 2020, down for IDC’s estimate of $217.1bn.

The global industry is expected to be worth $380.9bn by 2020.

Mateo Meier, CEO of Artmotion, said: “In a market that is still expected to grow significantly in the next few years, it is vital that US service providers continue to attract new customers in order to retain market share.

“Despite the US’s current dominance of the global cloud computing market, there is no certainty that the status quo will be maintained.

Perhaps the key reason for US cloud providers to be fearful is that this is not the first time we have been here.

“Edward Snowden’s revelations about PRISM and the NSA’s mass surveillance techniques were hugely damaging to US cloud companies. It also encouraged many businesses to completely rethink their data strategies, rather than continuing to trust that US cloud providers would guarantee the levels of data security and privacy they need. The impact that President Trump could have needs to be understood in that context.”

CenturyLink bets on converged, software-defined data centre roadmap for cloud business Company builds on VMware and HPE working partnerships to launch hybrid cloud capabilities.

This includes compute, storage, networks and security built on a powerful API-based, software-defined layer.

CenturyLink (NYSE: CTL) has unveiled an updated private cloud service designed to enable businesses to run critical business applications in the same way they would in a public cloud environment while maintaining the predictability, security and performance of dedicated infrastructure.

The company claims that by implementing DCC Foundation, businesses can lower their total cost of ownership, deliver advanced security and simplify their operations.

The CenturyLink DCC (Dedicated Cloud Compute) Foundation, a fully private service based on VMware Cloud Foundation and high-performance HPE ProLiant servers, is an updated architecture moving to a converged, software-defined data centre model.

David Shacochis, vice president of Hybrid IT product management, CenturyLink, said: “With today’s digital economy fuelling increased demands on IT infrastructure, the latest enhancements to our Dedicated Cloud Compute (DCC) service, based on VMware Cloud Foundation, build on CenturyLink’s proficiency in helping enterprises in their digital transformation.

The DCC Foundation service has been launched in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific.

Integration of DCC Foundation with CenturyLink Cloud Application Manager further enhances support of multi-tiered hybrid-cloud configurations.

CenturyLink explains that software-defined data centre technology and hyper-converged infrastructure deliver a single, software-defined infrastructure platform for deployment and management of all data centre resources.

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“The software-defined data centre approach enables the flexible delivery of enterprise applications connected to our global network across 32 hosting locations on four continents. With this service, businesses can rapidly deploy new workloads and innovations in an easily scalable, highly secure environment.”

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Digital realty to build $1bn data centre in Texas

Mega data centres operator switch files for IPO With a portfolio of 12 million sqf and more than 1,000 MW of power, Switch’s footprint could prove to be a giant stock market addition.

The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) could soon see the eighth US data centre operator make its market debut as Switch, Inc, officially files for IPO. The other data centre companies currently trading include Equinix, Digital Realty Trust, CoreSite, QTS, CyrusOne, Iron Mountain, and DuPont Fabros Technology, which is currently in the process of being acquired by Digital Realty.

Switch’s initial public offering was made on Friday, September 8, 2017, and concerns the company’s Class A common stock.

Switch said it plans to trade under the symbol SWCH. The company has, however, cleared out the price per share for the IPO, not disclosing the value of the offering.

Mega-site to be built in three phases after a 40% tax abatement on property taxes for seven years is granted to the REIT. Digital Realty has unveiled plans to build a $1.05bn data centre campus in Garland, Texas, the second data centre of its kind in the small city of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex region.

The private capital investment will, at full build, amount to 150MW of data centre power, sitting on a piece of land measuring 47.5 acres. The project is to be built in three phases, which amounting to $350m.

The wholesale colocation operator has been given a 40% tax abatement on property taxes for seven years as part of a package of incentives to lure Digital Realty to the region.

However, it has not been disclosed when Digital Realty will break ground on the complex and the company has until January 1, 2021, to decide, before the tax incentives it has been given for the project officially demand the site’s construction to start.

The City of Garland has also agreed to give the data centre REIT access to market-based rates to Garland Power & Light, the locally owned and operated electricity provider.

Digital Realty’s investment in Garland follows on from NTT’s RangingWire’s own multi-billion Dollar, 80MW data centre built close to the future Digital Realty hub.

David Gwin, Garland’s Director of Economic Development, said: “After many months of hard work and collaboration, we are extremely excited to partner with Digital Realty on this exciting new data centre campus project and look forward to many years of assisting them to grow and prosper in Garland.

“An advantageous location, aggressive public partner, access to quality infrastructure and a superior locally-owned and operated electricity provider in Garland Power & Light (GP&L) have all served to promote and secure this type of investment for the community. We look forward to many more projects and economic opportunities of this type in the future.”

Digital Reality operates today 156 data centres in over 32 global markets across 11 countries and four continents. The company’s combined portfolio amounts to more than 26 million of sqf.

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Following the offering, Switch will have three classes of authorised common stock. The Class A stock and the Class B common stock will have one vote per share. The Class C common stock will have ten votes per share, according to the filled documents.

In the documents, the company has also unveiled that on an annual basis, revenue has grown from $166.8m in 2013 to $318.4m in 2016, representing a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR), of 24.0%.

Switch generated net income of $73.5m and $31.4m during the years ended December 31, 2015 and 2016, respectively, and $35.2m and $35.3m during the six months ended June 30, 2016 and 2017, respectively.

Net income for the year ended December 31, 2016 included a nonrecurring charge of $27m related to becoming an unbundled purchaser of energy in Nevada.

As of June 30, 2017, Switch had total indebtedness of $825.4m under credit facilities.

The company’s footprint includes today four prime campuses in the US: three operational and one under construction.

The total grows sqf full capacity will amount to 12 million, with onl four million sqf currently available. Power exceeds today 415MW, with full capacity design projected to top 1,185MW. The company has a customer base of more than 800 clients, including over 100 cloud and managed services providers and 50 telecommunications providers.

Switch has also expressed its desire to establish strategic partnership. It said: “We may enter into strategic relationships with a variety of partners that contribute to our business. For example, rather than simply offering our customers connectivity to public cloud environments, frequently referred to as being an “on ramp” to the cloud, we may partner with public cloud providers to address that portion of their customers’ needs that require higher density and reliability than is typically available from public cloud offerings.

“To facilitate these potential partnerships, we plan to expand to locations near hyperscale cloud deployments where we can provide colocation for cloud customers’ mission critical needs.”

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Project Echo. 2.5 million Sqf Virginia data centre complex moves on If approved, hyperscale project is set to become a neighbour of QTS’s 1.3 million sqf data centre as well as HP, Bank of America and Lumber Liquidators.

Iron Mountain launches first data centre part of $350m northern Virginia expansion drive

A large data centre development in Virginia, US, covering an area of more than 328 acres is moving to planning commission debates. Code-named ‘Project Echo’, the site sits in the White Oak Technology Park in Henrico County, Sandston, and is being developed by Scout Development and Virignia-based Christopher Consultants.

The final user of the data centre has not been disclosed, however, details available are very similar to the features of large data centre builds by hyperscalers such as Facebook, AWS or Google. Including the secrecy surrounding the project.

The project is set to be discussed by the Henrico County Planning Commission this Thursday. According to the meeting’s agenda, the data centre project will on a first phase see the construction of a one million sqf H-shaped building.

Three future buildings will be added at a combined total of 1.5 million sqf. The meeting will focus on a special permission to allow the developers to build the buildings at a height of up to 100 feet, instead of the normal 50 feet for the county.

In the meeting agenda it reads: “This plan of development is for the construction of a data centre in phases. Phase I proposes two, one-story connected buildings with mechanical penthouses, approximately 1,000,000 square feet in total, with associated support facilities. The 2 September 1, 2017 master plan proposes additional buildings up to 1,500,000 square feet and additional associated support facilities.

“The exterior of the buildings will be composed of precast concrete panels, fiber cement panels, ribbed and smooth architectural metal panels, metal louvers and glass curtainwall glazing. The color palette will predominantly consist of grey tones with a slate-brown brise soleil (sun shading) in front of the curtainwall. Future buildings would generally appear to be consistent with the buildings proposed with Phase I.” It continued: “This request includes the approval of a special exception to allow a building height of up to 100 feet, exceeding the allowable height of 50 feet in an M-2 District. The exception is requested to allow future buildings, or building expansions, to exceed the allowable height.

“The Phase I building as currently proposed meets the 50-foot height requirement.”

According to the document, the project is subject to review and approval by the White Oak Technology Park Development Review Board which has granted conceptual and preliminary approval of the proposal and will review the final construction plans, including landscaping plans, at a later date.

Note Virginia’s Project Echo should not be confused with a project sharing the same name in San Antonio, Texas. The Texan project is a 78,000 sqf site serving a “confidential” client.

The building was built by Turner and architecture by Corgan, Syska Hennessy Group.

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Northern Virginia is the company’s fifth US data centre market, joining Boston, Denver, Kansas City and Western Pennsylvania.

Iron Mountain has opened the first of four planned data centres in Northern Virginia part of a total capital expenditure (CAPEX) of $350m put towards expanding the company’s footprint in the region.

The first facility located in Prince William County represents an investment of $80m and boosts 165,000 sqf and 10.5MW of power.

Iron Mountain held a ribbon-cutting ceremony of the Tier III site, attended by Governor Terry McAuliffe, U.S. Representatives Robert Wittman, Gerry Connolly, and Kevin Yoder, Virginia Senator Jeremy McPike, and Prince William County Supervisor Jeanine Lawson.

The new data centre has opened with more than half of its first phase capacity pre-leased, including customers like Virtustream, a Dell Technologies business.

The data centre sits on a 83-acre site with total power capacity for 60MW. Two additional phases of construction are scheduled with plans to develop three other facilities on the campus.

William L. Meaney, president and CEO of Iron Mountain, said: “With this new facility, we enter the hottest data centre market in the U.S. and add further capacity for serving existing and new governmental customers, a group where our brand for security, service and compliance resonates particularly well.

“Together with our existing data centres and recent acquisitions, this data centre helps to further accelerate our fastest growing business segment.”

Governor McAuliffe said: “Since 2006, more than 6,600 new jobs and over $11.8 billion in investments have been announced in Virginia’s data centre industry and we are thrilled to add this important project to that roster.

“We are honoured to have such a dynamic global leader like Iron Mountain continue to invest in the Commonwealth aiding our efforts to build a new Virginia economy.”

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Keppel invests $10m into floating data center startup First commercial data centre scheduled to be operational by early 2018 with promises of transforming energy efficiency and reduce carbon emissions footprint.

Data centres have been deployed pretty much everywhere on Earth.

We have heard of facilities inside mountains, in churches, under the sea, in the Arctic… the list goes on. But one startup wants to make data centres as portable as possible by making them float.

This is where California-based Nautilus Data Technologies comes in.

Nautilus was the first company to successfully launch a waterborne data centre prototype in 2015 incorporating its technology on a vessel, demonstrating additional capability for large scale modularity, mobility and flexibility in data centre deployment in both developed and emerging markets.

For example, just like when emergency shelters are deployed or a city’s hotel capacity is increased by the addition of cruise ships on its shores for events like the Olympic Games, a floating data centre can be used when higher amounts of IT power are needed without the necessity to spend millions of Dollars building a concrete facility inland.

Nautilus is currently building its first commercial data centre at Mare Island Naval Shipyard in Northern California, and deployment is scheduled for early 2018. The carrier-neutral data centre facility will feature power capacity of approximately 6MW distributed across four data vaults with redundancy for connectivity and power.

One of the project’s main selling points is its efficiency and greenfriendly design. The Nautilus design includes water-cooled data centre environments which employ less complex systems that can be deployed in half the time. Nautilus data centres are sited on vessels or on land near large water bodies, and use the naturally chilled water to cool the facilities, recirculating the water back to its original source with virtually zero water consumption.

By eliminating the need for energy-intensive air-cooling equipment and water treatment chemicals, Nautilus claims its technology can reduce operating costs up to 30% while increasing cooling efficiency by up to 80%. This while also reducing carbon emissions and air pollution by 30%, while using only one third the spatial footprint with up to five times the server capacity, according to the company.

Wong Wai Meng, CEO of Keppel Data Centres, said: “While meeting the digital economy’s increasing demand for critical data centre infrastructure, we continuously look at better and more efficient ways of deploying data centre resources for our customers.

“This strategic investment in Nautilus will allow Keppel Data Centres to benefit from the development of innovative and sustainable data centre technology that has great potential for broader commercial application. Through this investment, we can also explore opportunities for collaboration and harnessing of synergies within the Keppel Group, for example, by tapping the Group’s capabilities and experience in the offshore and marine sector for the development of floating water-cooled data centres.”

The abovementioned transaction is not expected to have a material impact on the net tangible assets or earnings per share of Keppel T&T for the current financial year.

Digital Realty closes $7.6bn acquisition of DuPont Fabros Colocation operator also adds new members to its board as portfolio jumps to 158 properties and more than 26 million sqf of hosting space.

Digital Realty has officially completed the merger of DuPont Fabros (NYSE: DFT) following its blockbuster $7.6bn acquisition which has generated one of the largest solo-owned data centre footprints across North America and the world.

The mega-merger was originally announced last June following the unanimous approval by the board of directors of both companies. With the addition of DuPont Fabros’ portfolio into its fleet, Digital Realty is gaining 12 purpose-built data centres which combined amount to 3.2 million gross sqf and 278MW of critical load capacity. The combined company boosts now 158 facilities comprising more than 26 million sqf.

Digital Realty has also become the ninth largest publicly traded US REIT in the RMZ index with an equity market cap of approximately $27bn, and a total enterprise value of over $35bn.

William Stein, Digital Realty’s Chief Executive Officer, said in a company blog: “This strategic transaction represents the biggest step we have taken to date in accelerating our commitment to provide the most comprehensive set of data centre solutions and expertise in the market – supporting single-cabinet colocation and interconnection, to multi-megawatt, and now hyperscale deployments.”

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Digital Realty’s investment in its hyperscale vision comes as capital expenditure (CAPEX) in this segment booms. In 2016, hyperscale cloud CAPEX topped $25.3bn, up from $21.1bn in 2015 and the same value in 2014. Back in 2010, CAPEX in this vertical ‘only’ amounted to $7.2bn.

The M&A of DuPont Fabros gives Digital Realty not only fully-working hosting assets, but also a portfolio capable of being expanded by up to 163MW of power.

Stein said: “DFT’s development pipeline enables strong growth of the Digital Realty Connected Campus portfolio. Six data centre development projects currently under construction in Ashburn, Chicago, Santa Clara and Toronto are expected to be completed in the next 12 months and are already 48% pre-leased.

“Adding to this, DFT also has strategic land holdings in Ashburn, Phoenix and Oregon which enable further expansion as additional capacity is needed.

“In addition to world-class assets in the nation’s top metros, DFT has an outstanding team with a deep knowledge of industry best practices for customer engagement and ongoing satisfaction.

“In the coming weeks, we will continue to execute the strategic integration of Digital Realty and DFT, designed to offer greater choice and flexibility for our customers.”

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ASIA PACIFIC Mega data centre builder Supernap opens $300m Asian hub Company aims to make site the data centre hub for Asia Pacific and a catalyst for attracting more investment to the region.

and technology. The project is known as “Thailand 4.0” in reference to Industry 4.0.

Supernap said the multi-tenant carrier-neutral data centre facility will play an important role in the region where it sits as the critical infrastructure that powers the ability of businesses to operate in the growing Internet of Things, Cloud and Artificial Intelligence markets.

Supernap International has brought online yet another large data centre complex this time in Bangkok, Thailand.

With a power capacity of 20MW, the $300m, 226,000 sqf data centre has been designed and built to the specifications of the Tier IV Gold-rated Switch LAS VEGAS multi-tenant/colocation data centres in the US. Supernap International is itself the result of a partnership between American-based Switch and the ACDC Fund, a fund whose two limited partners are Orascom TMT Investments and Accelero Capital.

Supernap Thailand also incorporates Switch’s patented designs for HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) technology enabling the facility to host high-density IT workloads.

Sunita Bottse, Managing Director of Supernap Thailand, said: “We welcome clients throughout ASEAN, APAC and the rest of the world to run their mission-critical IT infrastructure in what we expect will be one of the most secure, reliable and connected data centres in the world.

“Our high standards in uptime, security, efficiency and resiliency can be critical for corporations who operate 24 hours a day in every business line – including finance, e-commerce, oil and gas, transportation and health care.

It has been designed to achieve a target PUE range of 1.35-1.45 – a level more efficient than other data centres in ASEAN, which typically have PUE levels above 2.

“Companies that have built their own data centres in the past are now realizing that they can mitigate risks and achieve better service level agreements (SLAs) by operating in Supernap Thailand’s mission-critical colocation data centre.

The now operational data centre in the Thai capital has been developed in line with the government’s plan to transform the country into a high-value based economy through innovation

“Clients who tour the Supernap Thailand data centre experience first-hand the power and scale of the campus and what that means to their business growth.”

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Digital Realty breaks ground on 176,000 sqf Sydney data centre Up to 500 jobs will be created as a direct consequence of the development, including facilities managers, engineers, security personnel and additional contractors.

Digital Realty is adding to Australia’s budging data centre market with the construction of a new facility in Western Sydney expected to come online in Q3 or Q4 of 2018.

The SYD11 facility will be connected to the company’s existing SYD10 Erskine Park facility, and will boost 176,000 sqf of hosting space powered by 14MW. The new development is expected to create over 500 jobs throughout the construction phase and upon completion, with 30 permanent roles confirmed, including facilities managers, engineers, security personnel and additional contractors.

contribution to the local economy, which is expected to deliver significant job creation in an already thriving region.”

Krupal Raval, CFO APAC, Digital Realty, mentioned the company’s two data centres in Sydney and two in Melbourne and the fact that SYN11 will help to better serve the REIT’s growing customer base in the region.

Construction works are expected to take up to 12 months, suggesting the site could be operational by Q3 or Q4 2018.

To mark the beginning to the construction works, Digital Realty hosted a ground-breaking ceremony in Erskine Park, which was attended by Hon. Tanya Davies MP, Minister for Mental Health, Women and Ageing, along with a number of Digital Realty executives including CFO of APAC, Mr. Krupal Raval.

He said: “In addition to demonstrating our commitment to our local customers, we hope this facility will become a hub for the modern economy, providing a significant boost in employment and additional investment in the area.”

Digital Realty CEO A. William Stei, said: “This expansion furthers our leadership within Australia while demonstrating our commitment to our enterprise customers across APAC. “Data centre facilities are core to any company’s digital strategy, and SYD11 will bring to market the latest advancements in data centre design, enabling our customers’ IT strategies while providing new and improved ways of connecting, working and extending their business reach.”

Also commenting, Hon. Tanya Davies, said: “This is an opportune moment for Western Sydney to become a magnet for business as investment here increases. We welcome Digital Realty’s significant

Digital Realty currently owns and operates 145 properties across 33 global metropolitan areas. In the APAC region, Digital Realty operates a network of data centres located in Singapore, Hong Kong, Osaka, Melbourne and Sydney.

Digital Realty’s expansion in Sydney comes at a time when the local market is in frank expansion, with future forecasters confirming on-going growth for the years ahead.

A recent study by Structure Research, covered by Data Economy, expects the Sydney and Melbourne data centre industry to nearly double in size reaching revenues of $955.5bn by 2021, up from today’s $564.8bn.

Canberra data centres breaks ground on $150m hub, its largest to date Company tops $500m in investment over the last decade to build one of the largest colocation footprints in Australia.

The data centre is being built to target government IT needs and their service providers. The operator works today with more than 40 federal government departments and agencies.

Australian data centre services provider Canberra Data Centres has broken ground on its largest data centre project to date amounting to more than 215,000 sqf of space.

“The addition of Fyshwick 2 will ensure enough capacity for two to three years’ growth in the market we operate in.”

Fyshwick 2 will join the company’s first data centre in the region and a current total portfolio of four facilities: one in Fyshwick and three in Hume. The sites offer nearly 95,000 sqf of hosting space and 22.5 MW of power.

The new 20MW building has a construction cost estimated at $150m and is expected to be brought online in 2018 with a running PUE of 1.2.

During construction, up to 100 jobs are to be created, with 12 operations staff to be put in charge of the site once operational.

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Canberra Data Centres’ chief executive Greg Boorer, said: “Government estimates that its data holdings will be 100 fold larger in the next decade than they are today.

The expansion in Fyshwick comes less than two weeks after Microsoft launched two cloud regions in Australia from Canberra Data Centres’ facilities.

Tom Keane, Head of Global Infrastructure at Microsoft Azure, said: “We are delighted to be partnering with a locally owned provider with deep roots across government to further extend the reach of our cloud, and to provide the full innovation of Azure to Australian and New Zealand Government customers and partners.”

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Australian top colocation data center markets to sky rocket to $1bn revenues 1.8 million sqf hosting 54,000 racks/cabinets powered by 197MW were deployed at the end of 2016, numbers posed for exponential growth in the coming months and years.

Overall and as a matter of comparison, the data centre colocation market size of the ANZ region (Australia + New Zealand) is estimated to be worth today $651m. This is projected to double in size by 2020 according to Structure Research’s global colocation market share database.

Australia’s top data centre markets, Sydney and Melbourne, are expected to experience intense growth and expansion, pushing revenues to $955.5bn by 2021, up from today’s $564.8bn.

At the end of 2016, when combined, Sydney and Melbourne offered a data centre capacity of 1.8 million sqf hosting 54,000 racks/ cabinets powered by 197MW.

The growth is being driven by “massive-scale cloud providers” and strong demand for in-country services deliverability and outsourcing, according to Structure Research’s Australia Market report.

In total, the two regions accounted to 56 unique data centre services providers and 72 unique operational data centres.

On a hyperscaler level, the main players boosting the market are Microsoft, Google and Alibaba, which have all expanded their cloud footprint in Australia in recent months usually within the Sydney and Melbourne regions.

Analysts expect this expansion to continue, in line with further expansion from colocation providers. Market new-comer AirTrunk, which is posed to open its hyperscale sites in Sydney and Melbourne later this year, will heavily contribute to 2017’s growth.

By 2021, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 13%, the market is forecasted to nearly double its size to $700.5m.

2018 is expected to deliver the highest percentage of growth at 13.8% ($486.1m).

Structure Research data points to Sydney as being one of the top four data centre markets in the Asia Pacific region excluding China.

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Jabez Tan, Research Director, Data Centres at Structure Research, told Data Economy: “Australia is situated in a unique, pseudoisolated geographical location where service providers have to deploy IT infrastructure in-country in order to serve Australian enterprises.

“Unlike Singapore, Hong Kong and Tokyo – the Sydney and Melbourne markets have plenty of available land to for new data centre builds and expansions though bandwidth costs are high compared to the other top APAC markets while power costs are increasing.

Researchers expect Sydney to grow 12.3% year-on-year (YoY) compared to 2016. Revenues are projected to top $427.2m, up from $380.4m last year.

As for Melbourne, 2017 is projected to grow 10.9% over 2016, from $124.1m to $137.6m. Equally to Sydney, but only around one third of the Sydney market, Melbourne is expected to nearly double its colocation market size to $255m. 2020 is expected to deliver the highest growth at 17% ($218.7m).

Major players include Equinix, Global Switch, Fujitsu, Keppel DC REIT, Digital Realty, DCI Data Centers, Telstra, Metronode, NextDC, Macquarie Telecom, AirTrunk, and Vocus Comunications.

“Public cloud adoption and uptake is at a relatively mature stage in Australia and this has attracted sizable deployments from the likes of Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, and we fully expect other massive-scale cloud providers like Google, IBM and Alibaba to deploy additional data centre capacity in Australia over the next two years.”

The Australian data centre market has over the past few weeks seen an increase in activity in the sector, from new builds to new boardroom appointments.

NextDC and 360 Capital Group bids to acquire Asia Pacific Data Centre Group has also made headlines, with the two companies over-bidding each other over APDCG’s assets.

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Hyperscale startup opens one of Australia’s largest data centres to date

“We’ll show the world China’s cloud power”. Inspur to invest $1.5bn in data centre builds across the globe Company prepares to expand data centre fleet and target markets outside China for both government and enterprise customers.

Chinese cloud operator Inspur has unveiled its roadmap for the near future as the company has set itself the goal to reach 20bn yuan ($3bn) in revenues by 2020.

Nicknamed “1-2-3-3”, the strategy focuses on “2” dimensions of the market in China and other countries for both government and enterprises.

Company promises to expand not only in the country but across APAC as hyperscale economy gains momentum.

Data centre services provider AirTrunk has cut the ribbon of its first data centre in Western Sydney, Australia.

The facility has been designed for large cloud, content and enterprise customers in need of an architecture capable of handling, processing and storing high volumes of information and content.

The site has a total capacity in excess of 80 megawatts of IT load when fully completed and was launched with 64,000 sqm of hosting space.

The data centre has also been built to the the Australian Government’s security requirements.

Robin Khuda, CEO and founder of AirTrunk, said: “AirTrunk are building the data centres of tomorrow so that the technology companies who are transforming the way we live are assured of a secure, efficient and responsive home for their data.

“We’ve built the Sydney facility in record time for our customers and have also established a platform for AirTrunk to deliver more exciting projects across the Asia-Pacific region in the future.

“The rapid growth of cloud adoption has driven demand for secure, reliable and scalable data storage solutions in the Asia-Pacific region.

“AirTrunk has the financial capabilities and expertise to respond to that demand. We’ve demonstrated our unique value proposition to the Australian market and have already achieved substantial market share very quickly.”

Minister for Western Sydney Stuart Ayres said: “We’re delighted AirTrunk has chosen Western Sydney for this massive investment – building this centre has created around 300 jobs and 180 more people will be employed here permanently once operational.”

It has also been built to carry out “3” expansion moves by building out cloud data centres centres, building the company’s open cloud platform and improving the cloud ecosystem overall.

Lastly, the plan will look into “3” features: security and trustworthiness, data service, and service customisation.

Richard Wang, executive president of Inspur, announced the company will be investing 10bn yuan ($1.52bn) to expand its current data centre footprint and build new facilities as part of the plan to also expand beyond Chinese borders.

He said: “In five years, Inspur Cloud will invest 10 billion yuan to expand the layout of cloud centres in the Chinese market and launch the ‘overseas plan’.”

Inspur Cloud announced the “overseas plan” to build five cloud centre nodes in Seattle (North America), Columbia (South America), Frankfurt (Europe), Moscow (Europe) and Ethiopia (Africa).

The company operates today four core cloud centres and 34 municipal cloud centres in China and will also build and additional seven core nodes and 50 sub nodes in the country.

As part of the new strategy, Inspur has also unveiled a new logo and slogan, “Computing Everywhere”.

The logo of Chinese style represents the updated Inspur Cloud exporting China’s cloud computing capacity to the world, the company explained in a statement.

Wang said: “With five cloud centre nodes all over the world, Inspur Cloud will develop its global business and provide services to more than 100,000 government clients and over 1,000,000 enterprise clients.

“Inspur Cloud will team up with partners to build Inspur Cloud’s ecosystem. By 2020, Inspur Cloud will work hard to boost the sales revenue to 20 billion yuan and become a world-leading cloud service provider. With ‘Computing Everywhere’, we will show the world China’s cloud power.”

AirTrunk is also readying to bring online a second hub in Melbourne. The campus will launch in coming weeks with a capacity in excess of 50 megawatts IT load when fully completed, complementing the company’s Sydney facility.

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Google sets eyes on Taiwan for hyperscale data centre New site could follow a $600m investment in Taiwan which started in 2011 with the beginning of the construction of Google’s first regional data centre.

Google is reportedly considering setting up a data centre in Taiwan to expand its cloud and storage services. The intention to establish the data centre has been reported by Taiwan’s Central News Agency (CAN), citing Taiwan’s Minister of Economy Steve Chen.

According to the minister himself, the government has reserved a piece of land in the Changpin Industrial Park in Changhwa, western Taiwan, for the development. Chen also confirmed that Taiwan will offer incentives – similar to what happens in the US – around land taxes, for example.

The government also said the country’s electricity supply was stable to support such IT facility. According to the Central News Agency, Google has researched about 18 different locations to build the facility including Japan and South Korea.

However, the news agency affirms that company seems to be interested in Taiwan and the possibility of setting up the data centre there. If confirmed, the new data centre in the Changpin Industrial Park will be Google’s second in Taiwan.

The company originally announced its first site in September 2011 and in December 2013 it opened what was a $600m long-term investment in the region.

In its website, the company explains that it chose Taiwan for being a leading high-tech hub, with a history of supporting innovation and foreign investment, and a location right in the heart of Asia.

“To power its high-tech industry and thriving Internet economy, Taiwan has invested in reliable infrastructure, innovative world-class talent and a stable and accommodating regulatory environment,” the company said.

“As with all of our facilities around the world, we chose Changhua County following a thorough and rigorous site selection process, taking many technical and other considerations into account, including location, infrastructure, workforce, reasonable business regulations and cost.”

Huawei Connect 2017: ‘we have never taken shortcuts and will never do,’ says CEO vowing to make it to the top 5 global public cloud providers Chinese multinational makes strongest bid to date on becoming a public cloud provider, vowing to never take control of user data and ramping up cloud alliances.

“Huawei has never taken shortcuts and will never do. The same applies to the Huawei cloud,” Huawei rotating-CEO Guo Ping told an audience of 20,000 at the company’s flagship event Connect in Shanghai, China.

Taking to the stage, Ping vowed to make the company’s cloud offering one of the top five providers worldwide.

He said: “Clouds around the world will begin to converge – becoming more and more centralised. In the future, we predict there will be five major clouds in the world. “Huawei will work with partners to build one of those five clouds, and we have got the technology and know-how to do it.”

Public cloud services are today available in China, and the public cloud business is not seen as a “level one business group” such as the carrier, enterprise and consumer groups of Huawei, a company spokesperson has explained. “We are truly connecting people with people, people with things and things with things,” Ping said.

“Huawei will work with partners to build one of the world’s top five clouds.” However, despite the company’s hype around being in the top five of cloud providers, the CEO did not directly mention today’s cloud beasts Microsoft, Google, AWS, IBM and Salesforce.

The desire to place Huawei on the Top 5 will mean that one of the current large players – Salesforce being the fifth largest currently and the first on the frontline – will fall short should the Chinese technology giant succeed.

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Zheng Yelai, president cloud BU and IT product line for Huawei Cloud, would later say that the company’s ‘Top 5’ idea is based on 1943 IBM president Thomas J Watson’s prediction that there would only be five computers to serve the world’s needs in the future.

“I think there is a world market for about five computers,” Watson said.

That is the beauty of the language between English and Chinese,” Yelai said.

Huawei’s market share in the cloud space is far from today’s leading five operators, all of them publicly listed companies. At home, Huawei also faces competition from e-commerce giant Alibaba, also a listed company, and its Alibaba Cloud offering. According to Q1 data from Canalys, AWS currently sits at the top of the market with a 31% share, with cloud revenues reaching $3.6bn in Q1 2017.

AWS grew its cloud business by 43% when compared to the same quarter in 2016, however, the growth was overshadowed by Microsoft and Google which grew 93% and 74% respectively. IBM has reportedly grown 38%. Further research from Synergy Research has found that Microsoft, Google and Alibaba have seen their cloud business grow more than 80% between Q1 2016 and Q1 2017.

Huawei does not release figures on its cloud-business as this is not seen as a level-one business, so comparisons are hard to make. Cloud is instead included in the enterprise and carrier business segments.

In its annual report for 2016, Huawei posted a year-on-year growth of 23.6% and 47.3% for the two segments respectively, with combined revenues of CNY 331.2bn.

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NextDC says no, but 360 Capital says yes. Data center M&A war of the year gets a new twist

One Belt One Net. Asian tycoon invests $5bn to set up data centre company

APDC securityholders advised to not take any further action until the group studies the best business strategy for its assets.

Australia has taken centre stage on the data centre merger and acquisition (M&A) scene as 360 Capital’s (ASX: TGP) and NextDC (ASX: NXT) fight off each other for the Asia Pacific Data Centre Group (ASX: AJD; APDC) business.

The bidding for the assets was thought to be over when the APDC rejected TGP’s last bid on September 7, favouriting NXT’s bid instead and recommending shareholders to support that same bid.

However, TGP has not taken the decision lightly and the company, which previously offered AU$1.95 per share to acquire the group, topping AU$222m, has come back with an all-cash offer.

TGP has made an unconditional, all-cash, off-market takeover offer to acquire all the securities of APDC for consideration of $1.95 per APDC security.

This compares to the previous offer in which APDC securityholders would receive $1.95 per APDC security comprising a capital distribution of $0.65 from APDC and a $1.30 cash consideration paid by 360 Capital.

Business to target companies operating in e-payments, cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology and advance use of AI in financial services.

In what could be one of the largest initial funding rounds thrown into the creation of a data centre business, Singaporean tycoon Oei Hong Leong, 69, has announced he will put forward $5bn into such project.

APDC said in a statement: “The Board has previously recommended that APDC securityholders accept the NEXTDC Offer of $1.87 cash per APDC security, in the absence of a superior proposal.

The company will be named One Belt One Net, in allusion to China’s One Belt One Road Initiative put in place to foster relationships between 60 Euroasian countries sitting on the ancient Silk Road with total investment topping $900bn, according to Finch.

“The Board is considering the 360 Offer, and has sought further information from 360 Capital in relation to the timing for lodgment of its Bidder’s Statement.

Leong’s $5bn fund will be used to build a data centre, procure equipment and machinery, cloud computing services, software development, and recruit and train staff.

“APDC expects to be in a position to provide further information, including advice for securityholders, prior to market open on Thursday 14th September 2017.”

The billionaire, whose fortune is valuated at $1.36bn according to Forbes, did, however, not give any details on how the data centre project will be funded.

360 Capital Group intends to fund its latest offer through existing cash reserves and borrowings.

Speaking of the level of customers that will be attractive to One Belt One Net, Leong specifically mentioned those working in e-payments, cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology.

The group’s continuous attempt to win the bidding process could make TGP the majority shareholder of APDC after the deals closure.

360 Capital already owns 19.82% of the company which puts pressure on NextDC to reach a minimum of 50.1% of the shares to avoid becoming a minority shareholder at 20.77%.

Leong said in a statement: “The large—scale data warehousing company will be beneficial to attract the world’s science and technology investment funds and start-up companies inflowing to Singapore and being concentrated in Singapore, so that Singapore will become a new information technology centre and investment centre.”

The 25th richest Singaporean businessman has also hopes the data centre will “tremendously improve” the Singapore Stock Exchange (SGX), with the potential to create listed companies such as Tencent and Meitu. “[One Belt One Net] will improve the stock’s activeness and gradually bring the emerging industries of science and technology into the companies listed in SGX,” he said.

“Over the past decade, in the field of artificial intelligence, electronic payment and other high-tech areas, Singapore is not really in the leading position.

“Now in the big data age, to catch up and to lead is imperative.”

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5th–9th November 2017 Gartner Symposium ITXPO Barcelona, Spain VISIT WEBSITE

7th–8th November 2017 DatacenterDynamics Zettastructure London, United Kingdom

30th October 2017

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Datacloud Nordic, Oslo, Norway

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

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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28th– 29th November 2017 Data Centre World– Frankfurt Frankfurt, Germany VISIT WEBSITE

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30th – 31st October 2017 DatacenterDynamics– Brazil Sao Paulo, Brazil VISIT WEBSITE

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Gartner Data Centre Infrastructure & Operations Management Summit, Las Vegas, NV The Premier Destination for Infrastructure, Operations Management and Data Center Leaders. Enterprise transformation is the new imperative for the data center, infrastructure and operations, the impetus for business-driven strategies and investments.

This conference features comprehensive tracks around the biggest challenges IT infrastructure and operations leaders.

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14th December 2017 DatacenterDynamics Connected Canada 4.0 Toronto, Canada VISIT WEBSITE

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ASIA PACIFIC 11th– 12th October 2017 Data Centre World Asia Singapore VISIT WEBSITE

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

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31st October – 2nd November 2017 Gartner Symposium ITXPO Tokyo, Japan

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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9th November 2017 DatacenterDynamics Enterprise Mumbai, India

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

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10th November 2017 Datacenter Dynamics Converged, Hong Kong VISIT WEBSITE

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