Base Farm

DELIVERING MISSION-CRITICAL DATA CENTRE INNOVATION IN ASSOCIATION WITH

BASEFARM

DIGITAL REPORT 2020

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DELIVERING MISSION-CRITICAL DATA CENTRE INNOVATION

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PETTER M. TOMMERAAS, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT DATA CENTER SERVICES AT BASEFARM, DISCUSSES DELIVERING MISSION-CRITICAL DATA SERVICES THAT ENABLE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

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etter M. Tommeraas recounts his first experience with a data centre as “walking down a hallway in an office building, back in

1998, and coming across several servers outside a 04

single room off that hallway. Those servers and that room were the data centre. And that was a solution being delivered by one of Norway’s main data centre providers to a large, national customer.”

To say that the data centre industry has transformed in the 20 years or so that Tommeraas has been operational in it is something of an understatement. Currently Senior Vice President Data Center Services at Basefarm, a managed service provider that delivers services based on both public and private cloud services and manages its own data centres, Tommeraas has a unique view of an industry at the heart of global digital transformation.

“The pace of change has been tremendous,” he notes. “Naturally, that change has been facilitated by technology, but it runs much deeper than that the overall quality, the level of security provided and

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“ THE OVERALL QUALITY, THE LEVEL OF SECURITY PROVIDED AND THE ENTIRE PHILOSOPHY AROUND WHAT YOU DO WITH YOUR DATA AND YOUR DATA CENTRE IS SO MUCH MORE MATURE” — Petter M. Tommeraas, Senior Vice President Data Center Services, Basefarm

the entire philosophy around what you do with your data and your data centre is so much more mature. That’s particularly the case for companies such as Basefarm that provide mission-critical services to customers. The broader pace of digital transformation has driven data centre growth in particular.

From our perspective, there’s been a real shift in companies moving away from doing everything, and most of it well, to using digital technologies and tools to focus on honing their USPs

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and placing effort into the most important or core things. It means that the rest of those services - in this instance how to manage data - are sourced from other specialist companies.”

Basefarm is one such company.

Founded in 2000, it is today part of the Orange Group, and offers a suite of mission-critical IT services that covers Big Data, cloud, and managed, security and professional services. Tommeraas is responsible for operations related to data centres. “I have two main responsibilities,” he says. “I deliver colocation to customers that want to mainly take care of their own operations but are looking for a service due to reasons

Why choose Basefarm’s data centers in Norway?

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07 such as regulation or an added com-

Tommeraas says that there are sev-

plexity. Alongside that, I take care of

eral reasons why colocation is an

and deliver all the data centre service

increasingly attractive choice: “Often,

to support the other areas in Basefarm,

it’s for customers that need the

such as managed services, cloud solu-

added layer of operational stability

tions and the rest of the portfolio.”

and security that they can’t get from

Digital transformation has changed

managing the operations themselves,

all organisations over the last decade

for example,” he explains. “Other

or more. In particular, companies are

examples could be a public customer

faced with increasing volumes of data

that needs an added level of privacy

to manage. Despite this, the design,

or has very specific needs around

build and operation of purpose-built

who can access their data, or even

data centres is becoming a less

a competitor services company.

common route to the cloud, with many choosing a colocation service.

“The biggest difference between Basefarm and other colocation w w w.ba se fa r m . com

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providers is that we have the entire

Basefarm calls this total service

portfolio within our businesses,” he

‘idea to cable’, an integrated package of

continues. “So, while we have many

the key competencies for digital trans-

customers that need to use our

formation including Big Data, cloud

colocation services as they progress

computing and information security.

through their project or migration,

This allows Basefarm to provide stra-

they regularly use our additional

tegic advice, implementation projects

offerings, such as our advisory

and infrastructure operations under

services or specific knowledge in

one management and on any cloud. It

associated areas. I’m confident in

is, Tommeraas concedes, a service

saying that we can offer a total solu-

capability further enhanced by the

tion that few other colocation data

company’s belonging to the Orange

centre providers are able to in terms

Group. “We became part of the Group

of delivery and competence.”

in 2018, and the advantages of that

include belonging to one of the biggest

says: “Our customer teams are very

networks in the world. It allows us to

proactive and work with every client,

deliver network services around the

to the extent that we insert our people

globe in one of the top five networks

into the organisation and ensure that

and has certainly broadened the port-

they work alongside the customer’s

folio we’re able to offer our customers.”

delivery team. Public cloud is an area

Elaborating on the scope of the company’s portfolio, Tommeraas

that is growing very rapidly and we have a very broad suite of deliverables

E X E C U T I V E P R OF IL E :

Petter M. Tømmeraas Title: Senior Vice President Data Center Services Company: Basefarm Petter M. Tømmeraas is Senior Vice President for Data Center Services in Basefarm. He has more than 20 years of experience within data centers, IT and telecommunications. After working for an American software and hardware vendor in the mid-90s, he started working in EUnet in the first half of 1998 and was part of the KPNQwest team that built a pan-European fibre network and a number of data centers all over Europe. In the years after, he worked within the companies that developed from the old EUnet and KPNQwest organisations mainly focusing on data center services, telecommunication services and managed services. In 2009 Tømmeraas helped set up a company to deliver data center services and managed services, mainly to the Norwegian market. The company was sold to Swedish publicly listed company Phonera.

He then joined Norwegian data center company Green Mountain as the Chief Sales Officer of the company.

In early 2018 Tømmeraas joined Basefarm as Senior Vice President Data Center Services. w w w.ba se fa r m . com

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“ THE BIGGEST DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BASEFARM AND OTHER COLOCATION PROVIDERS IS THAT WE HAVE THE ENTIRE PORTFOLIO WITHIN OUR BUSINESSES” — Petter M. Tommeraas, Senior Vice President Data Center Services, Basefarm

it requires a different approach. That kind of scenario means that providers like us also have to work far more closely with our customers - we’ve even been forced to change ourselves in response to that direction.”

For Basefarm, Tommeraas explains that digital transformation has meant a rapid shift technology-wise, first from on-premise data centres, to the public and - looking ahead - a hybrid model.

“The future is hybrid,” he explains. “It

in this area. The biggest challenge is

won’t be feasible to use the public

often communicating to the client the

cloud or data centres alone, but rather

specific solution or group of solutions

a combination of several innovative

that they need, which is why we work

technologies and solutions in a hybrid

so closely with them to ensure they’re

model. The key challenge in that from

getting the best of breed in every area.”

our perspective is ensuring that all of

Elaborating on this point,

those technologies work well together.

Tommeraas states that digital transfor-

There’s not many providers out there

mation and the migration to the cloud

that can do that at the moment and it’ll

means businesses have to change their

be a crucial differentiator for Basefarm,

traditional operating focus. “It used to

and Orange Group, moving forwards.”

be very much focused on big projects

Understandably, to provide such a

every couple of years, which required

level of service requires that Basefarm

a larger step-change,” he states. “It’s

works with several leading technol-

not like that anymore. Organisations

ogy providers, including AWS. The

are faced with constant change or

company is currently Norway’s first

evolution, with a continuous flow of

AWS managed service provider, a cer-

projects to manage and learn from, so

tification that enables it to offer greater w w w.c ow mpa w w.ba ny we sebsite. fa r m . com

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“ WE CAN OFFER A TOTAL SOLUTION THAT FEW OTHER COLOCATION DATA CENTRE PROVIDERS ARE ABLE TO IN TERMS OF DELIVERY AND COMPETENCE” — Petter M. Tommeraas, Senior Vice President Data Center Services, Basefarm

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expertise in cloud infrastructure and application migration. “As well as AWS, we have several big partnerships,” says Tommeraas. “For example, we’re certified by Microsoft for a lot of our work on public cloud, and we also have long standing relationships with companies such as HPE, Lenovo, VMWare and Dell. Each of these is really about the partnership for us more than just the delivery. We want to work very closely with each of our partners to put bestin-class products to the market, it’s beneficial to us and our customers.”

Technology aside, sustainability is a key driver of data centre innovation, not least due to the significant amount of energy consumed by such sites. It is here that Basefarm has a distinct advantage in its Norwegian location. “We’ve carried out a lot of analysis over where the industry may go over the coming years, and for us, Norway is the obvious choice. It offers low-cost power and 100% renewable energy, which is really important for us and our customers’ environment strategies. Obviously, it’s also easier to cool data centres in our climate as opposed to other locations, but there w w w.ba se fa r m . com

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“ PUBLIC CLOUD IS AN AREA THAT IS GROWING VERY RAPIDLY AND WE HAVE A VERY BROAD SUITE OF DELIVERABLES IN THIS AREA” — Petter M. Tommeraas, Senior Vice President Data Center Services, Basefarm

are also other, more practical reasons.

In Europe, 80% of the market is in Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris and Dublin, and each of those locations is getting pretty crowded.

“I see two distinct trends. On the colocation side, there’s a lot more international interest in putting data centres in Norway,” he continues. “But through Orange we’re also moving into a number of other markets such as the UK, Italy, Spain, Switzerland and Belgium for example. In that sense, the

2000

Year founded

€135mn+ Revenue in Euros

766

Number of employees

future outlook is definitely more of a

is getting fiercer. We’re in a very good

pan-European project, with us also

place, but you have to be mindful that

eyeing work in the US and Far East for

to survive and prosper you need to be

a number of clients.”

offering true best of breed solutions

More broadly around future developments, Tommeraas notes several

that take into account the increased value of data to all organisations.”

trends around the technology side of data centres. “Density is increasing,” he states, “so putting greater levels of power into smaller sizes - that totally changes the way you have to think and build in terms of cooling and so on. More generally, the competition w w w.ba se fa r m . com

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www.basefarm.com

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