Data Centre - December 2023

December 2023 | datacentremagazine.com

Data Centre Consultants

LEADING EDGE DATA CENTRES Why they’re on a digital equity mission

CYRUSONE A company committed to ESG

ETIX EVERYWHERE Group CEO Louis Blanchot on how the company replicated success, from France to Southeast Asia

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The DataCentre Team EDITOR-IN-CHIEF MAYA DERRICK CHIEF CONTENT OFFICER SCOTT BIRCH MANAGING EDITOR NEIL PERRY CHIEF DESIGN OFFICER MATT JOHNSON HEAD OF DESIGN ANDY WOOLLACOTT SENIOR DESIGNERS REBEKAH BIRLESON SAM HUBBARD

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October 2022

FEATURE DESIGNERS JULIA WAINWRIGHT VICTORIA CASEY EMMA WALLER LEAD DESIGNER JULIA WAINWRIGHT ADVERT DESIGNERS CALLUM HOOD DANILO CARDOSO ADRIAN SERBAN VIDEO PRODUCTION MANAGER KIERAN WAITE

DIGITAL VIDEO PRODUCERS ERNEST DE NEVE THOMAS EASTERFORD DREW HARDMAN SALLY MOUSTAFA PRODUCTION DIRECTORS GEORGIA ALLEN DANIELA KIANICKOVÁ PRODUCTION MANAGERS JANE ARNETA MARIA GONZALEZ YEVHENIIA SUBBOTINA KENDRA LAU

MARKETING MANAGER ALICE PAGE PROJECT DIRECTOR LEWIS VAUGHAN MEDIA SALES DIRECTORS JAMES WHITE JASON WESTGATE MANAGING DIRECTOR LEWIS VAUGHAN CEO GLEN WHITE

FOREWORD

The digital divide remains a yawning gap “ WE CHAMPION DIGITAL ADVANCEMENTS AND THE PROSPERITY THEY BRING”

With much of the world yet to enjoy the benefits of modern technology, considerable work is needed if we are to bridge the digital divide There’s no denying the digital divide remains a critical challenge. Both the data centre industry and the wider technology sector continue working towards the goal of digital equity.

Around a decade ago the Center for Data Innovation – a US-based think tank – drew attention to the impact of data poverty on communities that lacked high-quality data. It highlighted how such communities face falling behind in an increasingly data-driven world. Sadly, the problem, and its symptoms, persist.

In this month’s Data Centre Magazine, we champion digital advancement and the prosperity it brings.

We also explore how technology remains essentially undemocratic, it being denied to swathes of the world.

Innovation, education and inclusivity are the watchwords that will steer us towards a tech-driven future that is available to all. Digital literacy and affordable access – with no compromise on quality – is the ultimate goal.

MAYA DERRICK

maya.derrick@bizclikmedia.com DATACENTRE MAGAZINE IS PUBLISHED BY

© 2023 | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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CONTENTS UP FRONT 014 BIG PICTURE

Schneider Electric’s blueprint for optimising data centres to harness power of AI

016 THE DATA CENTRE INTERVIEW

SSIA and Equinix’s My Truong

022 LIFETIME OF ACHIEVEMENT

Robin Khuda of AirTrunk

016

022 014

028 PEOPLE MOVES

Across the data centre industry

030 THE MONTH THAT WAS

Highlights from November

034 000 8

December 2023

DECEMBER 2023 056

FEATURES 34 TOP 10

Data centre consultants

46 DATA CENTRES

MIL01: A sustainable data centre powerhouse

56 ETIX EVERYWHERE

Edge data centres in Europe – and now Asia

046

72 SUSTAINABILITY

A commitment to ESG: CyrusOne and the sustainable data centre

82 IXAFRICA

Putting Kenya on the map as a data centre leader

072

082 datacentremagazine.com

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Championing leaders from global organisations, celebrate those who elevate the industry day in, day out.

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DECEMBER 2023 FEATURES 098 CLOUD COMPUTING Leading Edge: at the edge of digital evolution

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110 IRON MOUNTAIN

The twin infrastructure impacts of generative AI and how to deal with them

122 TECHNOLOGY

Why security needs to be a greater concern for the data centre

098

122

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December 2023

Schneider Electric’s industry-first blueprint for optimising data centres to harness power of AI London, UK

Titled The AI Disruption: Challenges and Guidance for Data Centre Design, Schneider’s groundbreaking new document provides insights and acts as a blueprint for organisations seeking to leverage AI to its fullest potential within their data centres.

Executive Vice President of the Secure Power Division and Data Centre Business Pankaj Sharma said: “As AI continues to advance, it places unique demands on data centre design and management.”

The guide explores the critical intersections of AI and data centre infrastructure.

THE DATA CENTRE INTERVIEW

SSIA AND EQUINIX’S

MY TRUONG The new Chairman at the Sustainable and Scalable Infrastructure Alliance (SSIA), Equinix Field CTO My Truong sits down with Data Centre Magazine

My Truong TITLE: FIELD CTO AND CHAIRMAN COMPANY: EQUINIX AND SUSTAINABLE AND SCALABLE INFRASTRUCTURE ALLIANCE (SSIA) INDUSTRY: DATA CENTRE LOCATION: SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA Truong is Field CTO at Equinix and has recently taken up the position of Chairman of the SSIA. His diverse career has seen him work for wellknown names including Uber, Molex and Packet.

M

y Truong has had a varied career, generally working at the intersection of infrastructure and computers at the likes of Uber, Molex, Packet and now Equinix.

More recently, Truong has been leading the Open19 V2 working groups and specification process and has focused his energies on sustainability challenges and opportunities. Humbled to be taking over the leadership position in the Sustainable and Scalable Infrastructure Alliance (SSIA) – formerly the Linux Foundation’s Open19 Project – at what he calls “such a critical time”, Truong sits down with Data Centre Magazine’s Editor Maya Derrick about what lies ahead for both Equinix and the SSIA.

Q. HOW IMPORTANT IS THE REBRAND OF SSIA FROM OPEN19 AS YOU MOVE FORWARD IN A PURSUIT OF CIRCULAR AND RENEWABLE IT, AS WELL AS FOR THE GROWTH OF THE SSIA COMMUNITY?

» Rebrand doesn’t really capture the motivation for changing the name.

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December 2023

“ Data centres and infrastructure are part of the community they operate in and often an impenetrable web”

THE DATA CENTRE INTERVIEW

As we spent time with the community developing the Open19 V2 spec, more and more anecdotal evidence emerged as we spoke with the team.

The revelation that Open19 was just the start of the journey to evolve the thinking around sustainability, circularity and the path towards net zero. SSIA captures the real direction and thinking we wanted to embrace. Reduce is equally important as reuse and recycle.

Q. WHAT DOES THIS CHANGE MEAN FOR WHAT POSSIBILITIES LIE AHEAD?

» The sustainability space in

infrastructure has so many opportunities for impact. The Open19 form-factor allows us to decouple true infrastructure deployment from the IT asset with a clear demarcation boundary. The real interesting pieces appear when we think about the full system.

The decoupling of the infrastructure from the IT asset allows us to think about more innovation on the infrastructure side. An example of this is the new NEC Class-4 Fault Managed Power Systems (FMPS) specification released this year. Introducing a highvoltage, touch-safe power delivery system becomes very interesting when power supply units are not tied to the server.

The software and infrastructure insights, especially in the open source community, leaves a lot to be desired.

Asking a simple question ‘What is my operational carbon footprint?’ inevitably leads to follow on questions around Scope 1/2/3 emissions, which explodes.

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December 2023

CREDIT: SSIA

“ SSIA captures the real direction and thinking we wanted to embrace”

It becomes really interesting when we think about reporting this data. Power grid production mix will rapidly change this data.

There’s also some pragmatic topics to touch on. With the introduction of liquid cooling in the V2 spec, it’s important to have infrastructure blueprints that ease the deployment of the technology.

Building consumable energy models to assist the adoption of sustainable solutions that can be used in conjunction with TCO models ties the technology with the business drivers.

Q. HOW DO YOU PERSONALLY PLAN TO CONTINUE TO GROW SSIA?

» Awareness of a forum or industry

group focused on the intersection of sustainability and infrastructure is the challenge. Businesses are very adept at these types of engagements and finding the right communities to engage in.

If I had a single group SSIA absolutely needs engagement from it is the local and state governments in which our infrastructure operates. Data centres and infrastructure are part of the community they operate in and often datacentremagazine.com

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THE DATA CENTRE INTERVIEW

What is the SSIA? The Sustainable and Scalable Infrastructure Alliance (SSIA) is a community-based organisation advancing infrastructure technologies and standards that power the digital world in a sustainable, scalable way.

The alliance supports the Open19 project, including its mature V1 and emerging V2 standard revisions, and aims to introduce additional projects based on community feedback and demand.

The SSIA’s missions include accelerating the adoption of disruptive technologies for data centre workloads that drive toward net zero carbon footprints, enabling data centre operators, suppliers and end users to collectively solve common challenges through open server, storage, and networking standards and creating solutions that enable use cases for data centre operators of all sizes.

Founded in 2016 as the Open19 Project, it joined the Linux Foundation in January 2021 as the LF’s primary project for data centre hardware innovation. A rebrand followed in August 2023 in order to more appropriately support the goals and initiative of a diverse community focused on infrastructure sustainability throughout the data centre and cloud technology supply chain.

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December 2023

an impenetrable web. Sustainability has a social component, especially where the infrastructure decisions meet the local community.

Q. WHAT CHALLENGES DO YOU EXPECT TO COME ACROSS? AND HOW DO YOU PLAN TO NAVIGATE THAT?

» Greenwashing is a real issue in the

industry, where attaching a theoretical benefit without data becomes problematic. Data is the great equaliser – showing the data to support a climate neutral or net zero outcome can help clarify the positive impacts of a marketing push.

THE DATA CENTRE INTERVIEW

Equinix – connecting places, partners and possibilities WATCH NOW

“ Greenwashing is a real issue in the industry, where attaching a theoretical benefit without data becomes problematic” Q. WHAT DO THE NEXT 12 MONTHS HOLD FOR YOU AT EQUINIX AND AS CHAIRMAN OF SSIA?

» We have a lot of work to do over

the next 12 months. Expanding the membership, selecting from the proposed working topics and forming

the working groups is going to be critical. The real challenge is going to be adoption from the industry of our work. Any change today in the physical infrastructure takes three to five years to appear and will continue to run for another five to 20 years! datacentremagazine.com

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ROBIN KHUDA Data Centre Magazine shines a spotlight on the incredible career of AirTrunk’s Founder and CEO

B

illed as an exceptional leader and passionate manager with a charismatic approach to his work at large, Robin Khuda is no stranger to tackling complex tasks head-on.

AirTrunk’s Founder and CEO, Khuda has a wealth of experience across the data centre industry, having been a founding member of NEXTDC and its subsidiaries, where across his time with the business he held roles including Executive Director, Chief Financial Officer, Chief Commercial Officer and Head of Sales and Marketing, as well as being a member of the Board of Directors.

During his three-year tenure at NEXTDC, Khuda played a key role in growing the brand from a start-up to a successful ASX-300 company with approximately AU$500 million market capitalisation.

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December 2023

LIFETIME OF ACHIEVEMENT

ROBIN KHUDA TITLE: FOUNDER AND CEO COMPANY: AIRTRUNK INDUSTRY: DATA CENTRE LOCATION: AUSTRALIA Khuda has a wealth of experience and success in managing large and high growth technology companies in APJ. He founded AirTrunk in 2014, and the company is now the largest hyperscale data centre platform in the region. He boasts a series of accolades, including being inducted into the Communications Day Hall of Fame for his contribution to the Australian telecommunications industry in 2023.

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LIFETIME OF ACHIEVEMENT

AirTrunk Sydney Phase 2 Timelapse Video WATCH NOW

AirTrunk: Launching Australia’s first and largest hyperscale data centres A committed and hardworking individual praised for his dedication and attention to detail, as Founder and CEO Khuda oversees day-to-day operations at AirTrunk – Australia’s largest independent hyperscale data centre provider – while helping nurture its expansion in Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) region.

He established the brand as a technology company with a powerful purpose, to scale and sustain the relentless growth of the region’s digital future.

AirTrunk executes this by sustainably redefining and delivering data centres that meet the needs of its customers, which include some of the world’s most 24

December 2023

transformational companies. With operations in Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan, AirTrunk has announced further operations in Australia and Japan, as well as a new data centre in Johor Bahru, Malaysia.

A significant contributor to the data centre industry It’s not just those who have worked alongside Khuda that hold him in high regard. In 2020, he was made a recipient of the Pacific Telecommunications Council (PTC)’s Outstanding CEO Award in recognition of his outstanding achievements in the field of information and communications, and earlier this year was inducted into the

AirTrunk’s SYD1 data centre, Sydney West

“I’m most grateful for the opportunities that leading AirTrunk has given me to develop the next generation of tech talent and bring more women into the industry” Communications Day Hall of Fame for his contribution to the Australian telecommunications industry.

On receipt of this award, Khuda said: “AirTrunk took the first mover advantage and pioneered hyperscale data centres in the Asia Pacific and Japan region, offering unmatched scale, speed, efficiency and reliability to support this unprecedented growth.

“While I continue to be proud of what AirTrunk has achieved as a business, I’m most grateful for the opportunities that leading AirTrunk has given me to develop the next generation of tech talent and bring more women into the industry.”

As well as this, Khuda is well respected by industry publications, being awarded Asia Pacific Business Leader of the Year 2018 by DatacenterDynamics and in datacentremagazine.com

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LIFETIME OF ACHIEVEMENT

AirTrunk’s SGP1 data centre in Singapore

Tech in Asia’s Top 30 Tech Startup Founders in 2018. He has also featured in Capacity Media’s Power 100 list, Data Economy’s Power 200 and the APAC 50.

Goldman Sachs, in 2019, named him among the 100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs of that year, and his sustainability and DE&I practices has seen him grace the Top 10 CEOs globally for Sustainability in 2022 by Data Centre Magazine.

And this too has been reflected at AirTrunk, with the company awarded the inaugural Hyperscale Award at the 2018 Datacloud Awards in Monaco under Khuda’s leadership.

The Khuda Family Foundation Alongside his work in the data centre industry, Khuda is a philanthropist with a keen passion for STEM skills 26

December 2023

development and empowering women in technology, along with mental health and domestic violence prevention.

The Khuda Family Foundation was founded in April 2020 and supports women in STEM, The Sydney Women’s Fund for STEM education and to aid with family health and wellbeing, with beneficiaries including the unemployed and victims of crime and disaster.

Registered with the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC), the foundation helps lift up communities in and around the Sydney area.

Along with the foundation, each year Khuda walks more than 30km in the Sydney Coastrek event with fellow AirTrunk team members, creating awareness and raising funds for mental health in support of Australian mental health and wellbeing support organisation Beyond Blue.

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PEOPLE MOVES

PEOPLE MOVES ACROSS THE DATA CENTRE INDUSTRY From IXAfrica and Pulsant to Kao Data and Iceotope, here’s the latest big moves industry-wide

“ I am excited to build leading data centres in the region to accelerate the cloud and AI revolution” SNEHAR SHAH CEO, IXAFRICA

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December 2023

SNEHAR SHAH JOB FROM: G M EAST AFRICA AT AZURI TECHNOLOGIES JOB TO: C EO OF IXAFRICA With more than 25 years of expertise in investment, finance and business development with a particular focus on African markets, Snehar Shah has a strong history in the telecoms and consumer services markets, working for the likes of France Telecom/Orange and Telekom Kenya. Last year IXAfrica received a significant investment of approximately US$50 million in growth capital from Helios Investment Partners to accelerate the development of IXAfrica’s Nairobi campus.

SHAREEF ALSHINNAWI JOB FROM: D IRECTOR, CHIEF OF STAFF – STRATEGY AND EMERGING BUSINESS AT LENOVO JOB TO: V P OF STRATEGIC ACCOUNTS AT ICEOPTOPE TECHNOLOGIES Iceotope’s CEO David Craig said Shareef Alshinnawi’s “excellent career credentials” and his past in working for some of the world’s largest manufacturers of servers and storage makes him an asset to the global leader in precision liquidcooling technology’s growing executive team.

NAVINDER UPPAL JOB FROM: G ROUP TECHNOLOGY DIRECTOR AT JLA GROUP JOB TO: C DO AT PULSANT Pulsant’s first CDO, Navinder Uppal brings more than 20 years of industry experience to Pulsant’s executive leadership team. CEO Rob Coupland said that Uppal will be “a tremendous asset to Pulsant” as the brand continues to pursue its ambitions in the edge infrastructure space.

DAVID BLOOM JOB FROM: F OUNDER & NON-EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF KAO DATA

DANIEL PERSSON JOB FROM: C O-FOUNDER AND CEO OF GOMPUTE JOB TO: C HIEF HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING OFFICER AT ATNORTH Daniel Persson’s appointment at atNorth follows the leading Pan-Nordic data centre services company’s recent acquisition of Gompute, a provider of HPC and data centre services that he co-founded in 2002.

KRISTIN BAKER JOB FROM: V P STRATEGY & BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT UK & IRELAND AT SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC JOB TO: V P INDUSTRIAL & PROCESS AUTOMATION UK & IRELAND AT SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC Having joined the team in 2011, Kristin Baker’s new role at Schneider Electric is dedicated to driving better efficiency in manufacturing organisations, reducing energy from production lines as well as the overall sustainability impacts.

RUSSELL POOLE JOB FROM: M ANAGING DIRECTOR, UK AT EQUINIX

JOB TO: C HAIRMAN OF KAO DATA

JOB TO: CEO OF APTO

Taking a more active role at Kao Data, David Bloom is now involved in the strategic development of the company and supports its growth ambitions within the UK and Europe.

Former Equinix MD Russell Poole now heads up Apto, new European hyperscale data centre provider, which was established with financial backing from investment manager Pimco.

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THE MONTH THAT WAS

THE MONTH THAT WAS:

HIGHLIGHTS FROM NOVEMBER

Featuring Equinix to DataBank, here’s some of the data centre industry highlights from last month

EUDCA AND THE IMPORTANCE OF DATA CENTRE SCOPE REPORTING With the data centre sector seeking new ways to be sustainable, European Data Centre Association (EUDCA)’s whitepaper, published in November, highlights the importance of scope and carbon emissions reporting.

READ NOW

DATABANK GROWTH RECOGNISED IN DELOITTE TECHNOLOGY FAST 500 Data centre leader DataBank ranks in the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 for being one of the fastest growing companies in North America, with 234% growth. Driven by record demand for data centres on the back of emerging AI workloads, DataBank has been recognised as matching growing demand through its strategic land investments and innovative infrastructure.

READ NOW

NEW DC ASSOCIATION WILL BOOST ‘PORTUGAL’S DIGITAL JOURNEY’ Portugal has joined a host of countries boasting a data centre association. Associação Portuguesa de Centros de Dados, or Portugal Data Centre Association (PortugalDC) in English, launched at the end of October and has been established with the aim to provide a clear insight into the current data centre environment across the nation as well as the association’s core objectives, values and key initiatives.

READ NOW

LINX NAIROBI INTERCONNECTION HUB: SUPPORTING DIGITAL GROWTH

FACILITIES CHALLENGING THE DATA CENTRE DESIGN NORM

The London Internet Exchange (LINX) has announced that their interconnection hub in Nairobi, Kenya is now live.

Networks will be able to connect to LINX Nairobi from iColo, Africa Data Centres and IXAfrica, plugging into the hub and peer their traffic to create a secure digital environment to manage their network more effectively.

Whether established, in progress or conceptual, Data Centre Magazine looks at some of the most avant garde data centre designs in the industry and the benefits they bring. These forward-thinking and cutting edge designs, while aesthetically pleasing, also fly the flag for sustainability.

READ NOW

READ NOW

EQUINIX AMONG TECH GIANTS WITH MILITARY FRIENDLY AWARD Equinix is one of the stars of the tech world to have been designated a coveted place on the 2024 Military Friendly Employers list.

Scott Crenshaw, EVP and GM of Digital Services, said: “We’re pleased to honour the incredible dedication of veterans as they serve their countries and influence cultures globally. It’s valuable to explore the impact veterans can have on the technology industry.”

READ NOW

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The Portfolio

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TOP 10

DATA CONS

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December 2023

A CENTRE SULTANTS In celebration of some of the world’s leading data centre consultants, Data Centre Magazine compiles a list of the top 10 WRITTEN BY: MAYA DERRICK

W

ith the importance of data centres and supporting digital infrastructure growing ever-increasingly important — and demands on them growing at a similar rate — our Top 10 unveils the industry’s leading advisory firms that empower organisations to navigate the complex landscape of data centre planning, design, and management as well as nurturing the development to ensure facilities are sustainable future-proof.

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09

i3 Solutions Group

10

Future-tech-tech With core beliefs of being catalysts for change, Future-tech’s teams drive its people, designs, services and business as a whole by championing and facilitating data centre greatness. In the last three years alone, Future-tech has been engaged on more than 3GW of data centre capacity on a variety of consultancy elements, integrating with its clients to produce designs, better infrastructure and, as a result, better data centres, for its clientele.

It has also engaged with the likes of the Uptime Institute to enhance its own knowledge and expertise.

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December 2023

A specialist data centre MEP consulting engineering firm, i3 Solutions Group is globally recognised for its design expertise, future thinking and innovative approach exemplified. With a pedigree that stretches back to the beginnings of the dotcom economy and beyond, i3’s data centre design solutions are innovative, cost optimised, reliable, flexible, maintainable and efficient and allow the group to deliver the best value and quality to its clients.

TOP 10

07 Cundall

08 Sudlows

A global, independent, multidisciplinary consultancy delivering sustainable engineering and design solutions, Cundall takes a holistic approach to critical systems and data centre projects to meet its clients’ objectives. Since Cundall’s Critical Systems Team was created in 2006, it has delivered more than 1000MW of data centre capacity with its clients. Its global teams have a combined focus on delivering the most energy-efficient, low-emissions, technically robust and socially responsible data centres in the world.

Sudlows is an award-winning data centre consultant structured to provide support, expertise, and management to navigate through the entire life cycle of critical facilities.

In operation for more than 110 years, Sudlows was a founding member of the Electrical Contractors Association (ECA). With offices in the UK, Europe, Middle East, India and Singapore, Sudlows provides a full range of technical services for data centres, critical infrastructures, enterprise services and facilities management building projects thanks to its teams which have decades of experience in data centre consultation, design, build, testing, maintenance, integration, connectivity.

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06 RPS Group With an in-depth understanding of its client’s challenges, risks and commercial objectives, RPS works as project partners across all construction stages, from site selection and evaluation through to testing, commissioning and completion. From hyperscale to colocation, the group has a deep understanding of the local markets in which it operates as well as the physical, technical and operational requirements of all types of data centres. With this knowledge, it aims to use its knowledge to also nurture companies through the transition to a net zero through a shift in the way data infrastructure is planned, designed and built.

05 Arup Arup’s data centre and mission critical specialists are innovators in technological facilities, working with some of the most complex and data driven companies to meet today’s data needs. Boasting a strong reputation for delivering engineering and consulting services for data centre projects among various other infrastructure and construction initiatives, the company offers science and industry expertise through regional consultants around the world, including the Americas, Australasia, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and East Asia.

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TOP 10

03 CBRE

04 Ramboll Ramboll creates integrated and strategic infrastructure solutions that promote resilience, efficiency and a circular economy for data centre clients that delivers energy efficiency, climate benefits and cost savings.

WIth the ICT sector experiencing unprecedented growth and being responsible for 2% of global CO₂ emissions, Ramboll plays its part in helping facilities be their most sustainable and resilient, which is essential to reliability, agility and community acceptance. Through partnerships, the brand works to improve the sector’s sustainability and performance by offering global expertise in creating integrated and strategic infrastructure solutions for data centres that support a circular economy, ecosystems and a cooler climate.

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December 2023

CBRE has more than 25 years’ experience operating specialist teams that offer consulting, advisory and transaction, project management and integrated data centre operations services. It bills itself as the only global full-service data centre services provider.

Calling data centres one of the industry’s most dynamic asset types, CBRE are experts in solving complex challenges for its clients. With teams all over the world, CBRE pairs market expertise with local intelligence to deliver comprehensive solutions to keep its clientele ahead of relevant trends and technologies.

WATCH NOW

02 Arcadis

With commitments to improving quality of life, sustainability and digital innovation, Arcadis has in excess of 40,000 projects and operates in more than 70 countries worldwide. Clients in its arsenal range from hyperscalers to enterprise facilities.

Delivering sustainable design, engineering and consultancy solutions for natural and built assets is at the core of Arcadis’ work, with its teams made up of innovators who challenge the status quo and maximise their impact for clients and in communities globally.

James Rix, Arcadis’ Project Director & Global Lead for Data Centers, gives key insights on the future of data centre facilities and infrastructure, particularly

on angles including sustainability and AI. In a recent article, he explained that growing demand on facilities drives the need for more energy, while also highlighting what the impact of that may be when it comes to meeting green targets.

“Who knows… AI will be the key that unlocks a lot of the potential solutions for net zero data centres – whether it’s optimising the code of the governing software, supporting local authorities to make smarter and better investments in their infrastructure or even doing my job better than I can, and designing the ultimate optimal net zero data centre.”

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Jacobs WATCH NOW

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December 2023

TOP 10

Jacobs A global leader in providing integrated planning, architecture, engineering, project and construction management and commissioning for data centre facilities, Jacobs nabbed the top spot in the Data Center Design Firm’s Engineering News-Record and Building Design + Construction. Over the last decade, the company has delivered more than 17 million square feet of data centre white space and 3,600MW in power demand totalling more than $30 billion in construction value.

Koti Vadlamudi, Jacobs’ Senior Vice President and General Manager, Advanced Facilities said: “With our rapid shift to virtualisation during the past year, data centres are even more critical to how we work and live.

“Jacobs’ global team works across six continents to deliver projects for some of the world’s largest data centre providers often under crucial time constraints. Our team of subject matter experts is also addressing critical challenges for the industry like sustainability and carbon neutrality, driving innovation around renewable power and water technologies for many of our clients.”

Koti Vadlamudi, Jacobs’ Senior Vice President and General Manager

MIL01: A SUSTAINABLE DATA CENTRE POWERHOUSE

STACK Infrastructure executives highlight the power of partnerships in the industry with Data Centre Magazine at their cutting edge MIL01 data centre WRITTEN BY: MAYA DERRICK

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December 2023

DATA CENTRES

S

ustainability is at the core of many data centre business’ outlook as the industry dials up its commitment in working toward net zero goals. Earlier this year, Data Centre Magazine’s Editor Maya Derrick was invited to STACK’s MIL01 campus in Siziano – on the outskirts of Milan, Italy – to see how STACK is establishing itself as a leading developer and operator of data centres with sustainability at its core.

Built in less than a year, MIL01 opened in July 2022 and is powered by 100% renewable energy. This, in the words of STACK EMEA CEO John Eland, solidifies STACK’s position as a trusted development and operational partner.

Sherif Rizkalla has been CEO of STACK’s Italy business since September 2019 and added Switzerland to his responsibilities in

November 2022. Welcoming people to the facility alongside other members of STACK executive team and Schneider Electric representatives, he showcases how far STACK’s EMEA branch has progressed, and looks forward to what’s on the horizon.

“We are happy to share what we’ve built together and we’re also excited and eager to hear about how the world is developing in terms of sustainability and digital infrastructure in general,” he opens.

MIL01 and STACK’s focus on sustainability With shy of 600MW of capacity up running and more developments in the pipeline, STACK’s EMEA operations are expanding with sustainability and ESG at the core.

“We’ve been very focused on this aspect,” Rizkalla adds, introducing STACK’s VP of ESG, Michillay Brown.

Sustainability and ESG at MIL01 Established just outside Italy’s busiest financial hub of Milan in Siziano, STACK’s MIL01 data centre is set across 10 hectares of land and boasts 22MW of IT capacity.

Staying true to STACK’s sustainability and ESG goals, STACK has planted an arboretum, or tree garden, brings biodiversity to what is otherwise an overwhelmingly industrial area and allows staff and clients to take a step back into nature.

Every element of the arboretum’s design has sustainability in mind, with the limestone pavements drains naturally and without releasing dust or pollutants, for example. Making up the 38 tree and

120 plant-strong garden is festuca grass which thrives in the Italian summer heat.

Hawthorn, privet, photinia, red robin and viburnum tino trees and bushes have also been planted as they naturally filter CO2 emissions and are drought-resistant.

The 3,000sqm of greenery will absorb thousands of kilos of CO2 over a decade.

MIL01 also features apiaries, more commonly known as beehives, with each containing up to 60,000 bees, producing 15kg of honey annually. Honeybees are responsible for 80% of the world’s pollination. Protecting this endangered species is essential for biodiversity and environmental conservation.

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“ Renewable energy is an essential part of any net zero strategy for any company” MICHILLAY BROWN

VP ESG, STACK INFRASTRUCTURE

With her role central to driving STACK’s ESG strategy and transformation by collaborating with on the ground

experts to ensure ESG is factored into all of STACK’s operations, she professed: “We are currently in an era where digitisation is growing rapidly. Consumers’ priorities, as well as mine, are shifting. Climate awareness is really intensifying.

“This means that environmental and social sustainability can no longer be an afterthought for us, but it needs to be a business imperative.”

Setting an example with ESG Understanding that sustainability is core to a business’ longer term success, Brown shares how environmental initiatives have to be administered at both local levels datacentremagazine.com

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Sherif Rizkalla TITLE: CEO ITALY & SWITZERLAND COMPANY: STACK INFRASTRUCTURE INDUSTRY: DATA CENTRE LOCATION: MILAN, ITALY A seasoned technology leader, Rizkalla’s career has seen him work in a variety of industries, including telecommunications and data centre, across many geographies. He joined STACK Infrastructure in Europe in 2019.

and over wider geographies. All of STACK’s operational facilities, like MIL01, run on 100% renewable energy – a mixture of renewable energy procurement and onsite solar.

“Renewable energy is an essential part of any net zero strategy for any company.

When it comes to our greenhouse gas emissions, we are actively exploring the procurement and the usage of green concrete as well as recycled steel. Not only that, but most recently we conducted 50

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a holistic carbon footprint analysis of all of our operations. That means that we have a closer grip on our emissions hotspots in terms of Scope 1, 2 and 3. It also allows us to now start to directly link that to reduction targets and strategies for EMEA more broadly.”

And that’s not all. STACK in EMEA is reducing its PUE and WE as well as pioneering the reuse of waste heat across Europe.

DATA CENTRES

“There is no ESG implementation without innovation” MICHILLAY BROWN

VP ESG STACK INFRASTRUCTURE

Michillay Brown Empowering innovation “We are also looking at societal benefits,” Brown continues. “There is no ESG implementation without innovation.”

In other campuses, for example, excess heat warms local homes and businesses, with plans being rolled out to harvest rainwater to be filtered and reused for data centre cooling systems across all sites.

Green façades are also in the pipeline, which attract and encourage biodiversity

TITLE: VP ESG COMPANY: STACK INFRASTRUCTURE INDUSTRY: DATA CENTRE LOCATION: LONDON, UK Motivated by her homeland of South Africa, in her new role as VP ESG at STACK EMEA, Brown is driven to make change in the data centre industry that has a positive impact on communities and the environment.

“ The importance of partnerships is that we continue to challenge each other to improve” MARC GARNER

SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, SECURE POWER EUROPE, SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC

Native plants are incorporated into the design of the façade at one of STACK’s data centre campuses

of native species in what can often be quite barren landscapes.

“It also allows our campuses to appear in a way that isn’t so industrial to the local community,” Brown adds as an alternate benefit. “We talk about pollution, we talk about social community, but we don’t talk about the aesthetics of developments.”

One of the biodiversity initiatives being rolled out elsewhere, and already operational in Milan, are tree gardens.

“We have created a beautiful green space where we’ve got a number of plants as well as trees that help us to filter the CO2 but also to capture and offset our own carbon.

It creates a green space in an area that would otherwise be very barren and industrial.”

As well as this STACK’s beehives support local biodiversity while acting as a reminder 52

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of how essential they are to supporting the world as we know it.

Promoting clean transportation and playing a role in society As well as using 100% renewable energy across MIL01 and its other campuses, STACK also promotes current and future clean transport options in the form of electric vehicle charging points for colleagues, clients and guests. In Milan, these charging facilities are adorned with EV panels which provide additional energy and reduce STACK’s reliance on the grid.

Community impact and respecting the local landscape is something Brown is particularly very passionate about, which she uses to accelerate STACK’s ESG plans.

“We need to acknowledge our role that

DATA CENTRES

we play in society,” she stresses. “As with any industry. I think it’s important that we are putting people first, that we are enabling those societal benefits and that we’re investing in the future of the digital economy.”

For example, in Milan, STACK partners and engages with a variety of schools to incorporate data centre knowledge into curriculums to plug the growing skills gap and open opportunities for the workforce of the future. Internships and apprenticeships are also on offer, which – along with signing legislation with the city of Milan on education – further formalises STACK’s commitment to technical education and local job creation. That continues into STACK’s workforce, where DE&I is being pushed across EMEA as well as globally.

Marc Garner TITLE: SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, SECURE POWER EUROPE COMPANY: SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC INDUSTRY: DIGITAL AUTOMATION AND ENERGY MANAGEMENT LOCATION: FRANCE Garner leads Schneider Electric’s Secure Power Division for Europe.

A passionate sustainability leader, he also works to support the continuous development of young talent in the data centre and wider technology and STEM industries, as well as further promoting DE&I in the data centre market.

DATA CENTRES

STACK EMEA MIL01 Campus Bees & Garden Inauguration 2023 WATCH NOW

Partnerships and collaboration at core of STACK’s practices As active members and signatories of various trade associations including the Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact, as well as the EU Code of Conduct for Data Centre Energy Efficiency, Brown acknowledges that the best way to work towards a more sustainable and conscious future is together.

“The key thing here is that it’s important for us to not operate in a vacuum,” she stresses. “We cannot operate in a silo. And so it’s important that the initiatives that we are putting out there are actually aligned with industry-based practice.”

Displaying how MIL01 delivers unparalleled levels of efficiency and sustainability as STACK and the wider industry work toward a climate-positive future, SVP of Schneider Electric’s Secure Power Division Marc Garner works closely 54

December 2023

with STACK representatives in their endeavours. MIL01’s infrastructure is made up of Schneider Electric technology as well as that of its competitors.

Branding MIL01 a “fantastic facility”, Garner stresses the importance of collaboration industry-wide and beyond.

“The importance of partnerships is that we continue to challenge each other to improve in terms of how we deliver, build, design, operate and maintain data centres going forward,” he champions. “We want to be challenged, we want to be asked to do things better – to deliver more, to deliver on our Scope 3 ambitions going forward in our sustainability pledges.

“Equally, we want to be able to challenge our customers. Can we do things differently? Can we bring new technology?

That’s the essence of partnership and how we move forward.”

Each beehive at MIL01 is home to up to

60,000 honeybees and produces

15kg

of honey annually

Beehives at a STACK campus

LOGO

EDGE DATA CENT EUROPE – AND N WRITTEN BY: KATE BIRCH

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PRODUCED BY: LEWIS VAUGHAN

ETIX EVERYWHERE

TRES IN NOW ASIA datacentremagazine.com

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ETIX EVERYWHERE

Group CEO Louis Blanchot shares how edge data centre pioneer and leader Etix Everywhere is taking its successful formula from France to Southeast Asia

A

rtificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles, and augmented reality are just three of the technological advancements that are gaining headlines globally.

While consumers get excited about how these may change their lives, and business leaders wonder how to leverage the opportunities they offer, there is one essential element necessary for success – edge data centres.

While edge data centres may not enjoy the hype of generative AI, they are a vital piece of the infrastructure required to make these technologies tick, due to low latency, increased security, greater bandwidth, and more sustainable operation.

Etix Everywhere is a leader and pioneer in edge data centres in Europe – and is now expanding that successful formula into Asia.

Formed in 2012, Etix Everywhere now operates 15 data centres, and has grown quickly in the last three years. The number of data centres has tripled in that time, while turnover has grown eight-fold.

Etix Everywhere is committed to providing colocation solutions that are both sovereign and environmentally friendly, all within 200km of its partners’ headquarters. This USP has really helped to drive the business.

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ETIX EVERYWHERE

LOUIS BLANCHOT TITLE: GROUP CEO COMPANY: ETIX EVERYWHERE Armed with a civil engineering degree from a top-tier French institution, Louis Blanchot has helmed Etix Everywhere since inception, and played a pivotal role in laying the firm’s foundation. With a track record of successful partnerships over a decade and eight years spent overseeing European operations, Blanchot embodies the essence of leadership.

He spearheaded a strategic turnaround during Etix’s acquisition three years ago. In addition to being a shareholder of the Company, Blanchot shoulders responsibility for the company’s vision, strategy, and overall direction.

“We only focus on the edge market, which for us means bringing the service to the customer and not the customer to the service,” says Etix Everywhere Group CEO Louis Blanchot.

“Our core mission is really to develop a platform of data centres to really bring the infrastructure close to the data end user.”

So, what makes Etix Everywhere different from other edge data centre operators?

Blanchot points to the main USP and reason why customers move to Etix is its scalable edge network with its strong IT marketplace. On top of the colocation factor, Etix is able to deliver interconnection to a long list of IT Partners that can bring added services to its customers to support them in their digital transformation.

“Edge data centres provide customers with access to a lot of solutions to develop their hybrid cloud infrastructure, but also what we see is that there are more and

Etix Everywhere Group CEO Louis Blanchot

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“ What we like in the Southeast Asia market is that we can use the same recipe that we used in Europe – developed and duplicated quickly” LOUIS BLANCHOT GROUP CEO, ETIX EVERYWHERE

more services that require low latency – for example, autonomous vehicle, IoT, streaming, gaming, all these new trends,” says Blanchot.

“There is a growing demand for low latency and also the question of traffic congestion that you can have on connectivity. So, when all the telco companies want to bring a service to their customer, if they had to send data from Lille to Paris to come back to Lille, or basically to send the data to be computed, like in all 62

December 2023

those tier one locations, it creates virtual traffic congestion. When the data can be computed straight away, locally, it will save a lot of bandwidth.”

Over the past two years, Etix Everywhere has refocused its efforts on its core expertise – offering a multi-site, sovereign, and decarbonised colocation solution.

The acquisition of CIV has doubled the company’s capacity in the Hauts-de-France and in 2024, Etix will inaugurate Lille #4 – a new data centre just 500 metres from Etix

ETIX EVERYWHERE

Lille #2, thereby creating a 2.5 MW IT campus with the best connectivity in the region.

Blanchot also points to the recent acquisition of Zcolo France, which has broadened the firm’s horizons – enabling the offer of colocation solutions in three new regions and, as a result, strengthening territorial coverage.

“This acquisition represents a key milestone in cementing our undisputed leadership in the French regional market and accelerates our development in Europe –

with colocation capacity now reaching 17.3MW,” he says.

But the company’s ambitious expansion strategy does not stop here, with a “vision to establish a leading edge data centre platform in Europe and Southeast-Asia, and guarantee our clients highly scalable and connected facilities close to the data end user.”

Data sovereignty is also a key consideration and a hot topic of conversation when it comes to security, and Etix is committed to providing customers with colocation solutions within 200km of its partners’ headquarters.

With data invariably crossing borders with hyperscalers, protecting data sovereignty is a challenge, and that’s why more businesses are taking greater control of their data and keeping it within domestic borders, or even closer to home via edge data centres. datacentremagazine.com

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ETIX EVERYWHERE

Sovereignty is a cornerstone principle for Etix. Domiciled in France with a majority of its capital held by French stakeholders, Etix operates under the jurisdiction of French law for the provision of all its services.

It’s a commitment to sovereignty that not only underscores the company’s dedication to maintaining the highest standards of ethical conduct and legal compliance, but also ensures accountability and compliance within the French regulatory landscape.

“In this way, Etix demonstrates an allegiance to home turf while contributing to the growing French business ecosystem,” says Blanchot.

Along with a commitment to sovereignty, what makes Etix particularly appealing is its offering of a modular solution, a feature it has provided since its inception in 2012. Back in 2012, it was innovative, but now many operators are trying to use modular architecture.

“It’s funny. It’s what we created,” declares Blanchot. “It was our innovative design when we created Etix, and the design that we have sold to all our customers ever since – because the benefits are obvious.

“Firstly, you only invest in what you need, and you align your CAPEX with your sales ramp-up.

“The other main benefit is that we know that the Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) is really related to IT usage. So, when you achieve around 50% usage and exceed that, the PUE is better. That’s why having a modular data centre improves the IT load and helps you achieve a good PUE.” PUE is essential for data centres as they try to become more sustainable, and that is a core focus for Etix Everywhere.

As well as aiming for PUE 1.3 for all of their

“ Having the support from a big partner like Schneider Electric is huge.

That’s why we only work with such a world-class supplier” LOUIS BLANCHOT GROUP CEO, ETIX EVERYWHERE

ETIX EVERYWHERE

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ETIX EVERYWHERE

“ Power Usage Effectiveness is essential for data centres as they try to become more sustainable, and that is a core focus for Etix Everywhere” LOUIS BLANCHOT GROUP CEO, ETIX EVERYWHERE

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data centres, the Nantes-headquartered company also strives to use no water for cooling (WUE <0.01 L/kWh), employ low-carbon electricity, recycle residual heat, repurpose existing buildings, and add solar panels.

It’s a bold ambition, and one that was cemented when Etix joined the Climate Neutral Data Center Pact in 2021 with the goal to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030.

So how will it achieve those goals?

“We have three ways, the first being to work on the energy efficiency of the data centre and improve the PUE,” says Blanchot.

“Renewing the technical equipment can really improve performance.

“Then you need to work on how you ‘feed’ your data centre with green energy, and how

to recycle the energy that you are producing.

Ultimately, the idea is to switch from being an energy consumer to an energy producer, to create a virtuous circle.”

Evidence of how Etix is looking to expand its footprint in a sustainable manner comes with its first edge data centre in Thailand’s capital Bangkok.

Etix has chosen to focus its development on the capitals of emerging countries with what it considers exponential growth potential. These include Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh City, and Manila.

The Bangkok site is strategically located in an industrial zone that offers a stable and reliable power source, and also has good road access and telecommunications infrastructure.

DECADE OF DATA CENTRES “When we started in 2012, we were talking about kilowatts or megawatts,” says Group CEO Louis Blanchot. “Now it’s not rare to speak in gigawatts. So, the size of the project is totally different now.

“This new hyperscale market demands finding a huge plot of land with a lot of possibility to scale and also – a lot of power.

“It’s totally different to our edge DC market, really a medium-sized data centre close to the city with a big and deep IT ecosystem and customer portfolio.”

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“ We only focus on the edge market, which for us means bringing the service to the customer and not the customer to the service” LOUIS BLANCHOT GROUP CEO, ETIX EVERYWHERE

The modular infrastructure provides flexibility when it comes to scalability, meaning Etix can meet the future growth needs of operations at the same site.

“What we like in the Southeast Asia market is that we can use the same recipe that we used in Europe – developed and duplicated quickly,” says Blanchot.

“That’s why we started with Bangkok. The government is really supporting the digital economy, the country is stable, there is a high number of ‘eyeballs’, not to mention a high number of telcos.”

Instrumental in this expansion into Asia is trusted partner Schneider Electric – the energy consultancy regularly voted the world’s most sustainable company.

Blanchot points to several factors that Etix Everywhere had to tackle, from culture to climate, and how Schneider Electric’s expertise helped them to navigate these challenges.

“Having the support from a big partner like Schneider Electric is huge,” says Blanchot. “That’s why we only work with such a world-class supplier. They have been brilliant for us, and have been able 70

December 2023

to deliver the same level of quality in a new country.

“Working with Schneider, they helped provide a turnkey solution, so we can just push the button and know exactly the price, the timing, and the level of quality.

“It’s just a copy and paste of how we worked with Schneider Electric in Europe, and being able to rely on them has been a big comfort and given me the confidence that we can deliver for our customers.”

Looking ahead to the opportunities on the near horizon, from artificial

ETIX EVERYWHERE

intelligence to autonomous driving, those are going to require eye-watering amounts of data, which has to be good news for data centre operators?

Blanchot agrees, but reckons it is a little bit of a ‘chicken-and-egg’ situation – the technology cannot really take off until the capacity is there to enable it.

“We discuss this a lot with our customers, and urge them to think about the world tomorrow,” he says. “I can tell you that all the main telcos understood it well and see these trends coming.

“When we started Etix in 2012 and began investing in edge, I think it was a little early, but now the market is ready. There are more and more investors trying to develop huge platforms to invest in edge, because this is the future.”

If this is indeed the future, you can bet that Etix Everywhere will be there, leading from the front when it comes to edge data centres.

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SUSTAINABILITY

A COMMITM CYRUSONE AND THE SUSTAINABLE DATA CENTRE

MENT TO ESG: Data Centre Magazine explores the importance of ESG and sustainable practices within the data centre industry with CyrusOne’s Director of Sustainability Mark Moloney WRITTEN BY: AMBER JACKSON

C

yrusOne is a leading global data centre developer and operator that specialises in delivering global digital infrastructure solutions.

The company works to ensure that data remains people-focused by following industry best practices and harnessing cutting-edge technologies, including those that promote sustainability. datacentremagazine.com

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SUSTAINABILITY

With these commitments in mind, Data Centre Magazine speaks with Mark Moloney, Director of Sustainability in Europe at CyrusOne. With responsibility for the development and execution of the company’s European sustainability strategy, Moloney’s role involves providing guidance on national and international sustainability legislation, such as the European Energy Efficiency Directive and the German Energy Efficiency Act. A journey towards ESG and its importance in the data centre industry Data centres are currently responsible for 1.5% of global energy consumption and, as of September 2023, this is expected to reach 8% by 2030.

In recent years, sustainability has been more of a key focus when designing new data centres. Therefore, finding ways to conserve energy is now vital,

with the industry seeking to increase capacity in a more energy-efficient and renewable way. Ultimately, the goal is that improving ESG performance will improve data centre performance, with higher uptime and lower power and water usage.

Despite originally coming from a background in engineering and data centre operations, Moloney has always had a keen interest in sustainability. He started his career as a network manager before moving to work at data centre real estate investment company, Digital Realty, as its European Technical Operations Director and then Director of Connectivity.

Moloney’s job sees him collaborate with CyrusOne’s design teams to align sustainability goals across all its data centres.

He communicates the sustainability vision across the business, as well as the wider data centre industry. datacentremagazine.com

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SUSTAINABILITY

“All industries have an obligation to rigorous site selection process,” he explains. minimise their impact on the environment “When reviewing potential new locations, and the data centre industry is no we focus on sites that are already designated exception,” Maloney says. “At CyrusOne, for data centres or similar uses via zoning, or we recognise that building and operating in existing planned developments such as large data centres leads to a geographic technology or business parks. concentration of environmental impacts, “This selection process, which includes even if the total impact is reduced compared assessments of environmental impact to the inefficiencies of smaller data rooms. and protected areas, provides us with “Being a leader in this industry means confidence that our facilities will not have adverse effects on embracing our important wildlife responsibility for habitats.” reducing those impacts. This He continues: “By thoroughly includes efficient understanding governance practices the sensitive and also having a ecosystems positive impact on our teammates, present on or near our sites, we community members, can proactively suppliers and our anticipate and customers.” address potential He continues: “Transparency is a impacts during the site selection guiding principle in MARK MOLONEY process. We our efforts and we DIRECTOR OF SUSTAINABILITY IN EUROPE, also use climate have released annual CYRUSONE risk assessment sustainability reports detailing our ESG strategy and progress techniques to evaluate factors such as future flood risk and water stress that may impact towards our ambitious goals. Some of our our operational success.” most recent milestones include powering Now more than ever, those within the our facilities with more than 50% of zero industry are seeking to prioritise energy carbon sources and restoring more water than we use for all of our data centres in efficiency and reduce power consumption at regions with extremely high water stress.” data centre sites.

To this, Moloney says: “As we advance towards our Climate Neutral by 2030 Strategy, site selection, sustainability: goal, we consider the carbon emissions Three pillars crucial to ESG success Moloney believes that data centre location intensity of the local electricity grid and can impact ESG success. “To support our the local availability of renewable energy purchasing opportunities. All aspects of success in a particular location we undergo a

“All industries have an obligation to minimise their impact on the environment and the data centre industry is no exception”

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Mark Moloney TITLE: DIRECTOR OF SUSTAINABILITY IN EUROPE COMPANY: CYRUSONE INDUSTRY: DATA CENTRE LOCATION: IRELAND For more than two decades, Mark Moloney has worked within data centres, the cloud and connectivity. Prior to working with CyrusOne, he was a board member of EUDCA and continues to have an active role in focusing on how data centres can help Europe’s commitment to becoming climate-neutral.

Mayor Claus Kaminsky and Erika Schulte, Economic Development Officer, of the City of Hanau visiting CyrusOne’s newest data centre site in Hanau, Germany

our site selection strategy enable us to prioritise sites that align with our ESG goals and facilitate our transition towards a more sustainable future.

“At CyrusOne, we have long had a strategic focus on efficiency. We are known for building data centres quickly and effectively due to detailed planning and a standardised design. Our standard design for new data centres incorporates many energy efficiency measures. We consider the current best practices in the industry, partner with suppliers and take innovative approaches in design and construction to achieve cost-effective efficiency.”

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“By reporting our own water consumption, we hope that we can encourage others in the industry to follow suit” MARK MOLONEY

DIRECTOR OF SUSTAINABILITY IN EUROPE, CYRUSONE

SUSTAINABILITY

About CyrusOne CyrusOne has a forwardthinking mindset when it comes to sustainability – especially ESG. The company’s sustainability mindset is guided by a qualitative, quantitative and meaningful sustainability plan that includes its goal to become climate-neutral by 2030.

In addition to reducing its impact on the environment, CyrusOne’s progress is being measured and judged by its progress in social responsibility and corporate governance.

Overall, its targets are set to contribute to staying below 1.5°C warming. To achieve this, CyrusOne will upgrade the efficiency of its existing facilities, build new facilities with higher efficiency and start new facilities with renewable electricity.

emissions, with hope to do this through smart operational practices and facility upgrades including using building management systems, airflow modelling and balancing cooling delivery with server needs.

Moloney explains that the company is wanting to prioritise upgrades for its least efficient facilities, as well as in regions that have the highest carbon intensity of the local grid. In the same vein, CyrusOne is working to maintain a commitment towards institutional integrity and ethics throughout the organisation.

Speaking on the importance of transparent governance practices, Moloney says: “CyrusOne is committed to institutional integrity and ethics throughout

our organisation. We seek to ensure the highest standards of business conduct while maintaining transparency with our employees, customers, and communities in which we operate.”

He continues: “We treat transparency as our guiding principle in an attempt to honestly analyse our sustainability programmes and report the areas that need improvement along with our successes.

“We promote the water-saving cooling we use at many facilities, but we also disclose the number of facilities in our portfolio that still consume large amounts of water. Reporting water consumption in our industry is rare, despite the substantial amounts of water that is used in traditional datacentremagazine.com

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SUSTAINABILITY

Data Centres – The Hidden Technology Behind Modern Life WATCH NOW

cooling technology like evaporative cooling.

“By reporting our own water consumption, we hope that we can encourage others in the industry to follow suit and to work together to develop reporting standards to integrate water into energy and carbon reporting to tell the full picture of a data centre’s impact on resources and the local region.”

Data centres harnessing the potential of future technologies Legislation is often important within the data centre industry as it often ensures that the ambitious climate targets set by businesses are met. Through an ESG lens, CyrusOne hopes that its future sees the improvement of capturing waste heat from data centres.

Moloney says: “We have set lofty ESG goals for ourselves and thanks to the dedication of our teams, have managed 80

December 2023

to meet some of these earlier than planned, such as how as of June 2021, CyrusOne’s European facilities met their 2030 carbon reduction commitments to the Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact eight years early, achieving 100% renewable electricity.”

However, despite these achievements, Moloney acknowledges that there is still progress to be made. He says: “There is more we want to achieve by 2030,

CyrusOne’s FRA2 data centre in Frankfurt, Germany

including upgrading infrastructure to make it sustainable, increased resource-use efficiency and greater adoption of clean technologies and processes.”

He continues: “We are exploring innovative ways to be able to better capture and distribute heat at high temperatures that have the potential to heat homes, businesses and other buildings. We are also seeing the rapid deployment of AI technologies.

AI-specific tools will likely advance our ability to manage and manipulate large volumes of data. This will enable us to make better decisions regarding ESG faster and more accurately.

“AI deployments also present new opportunities to move outside of existing areas and give us flexibility to site in areas with substantial and available carbon-free power and other resources.” datacentremagazine.com

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I X A F R I C A : PUTTING KENYA ON THE MAP AS A DATA CENTRE LEADER WRITTEN BY: MAYA DERRICK PRODUCED BY: LEWIS VAUGHAN

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IXAFRICA

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Co-Founder & Chairman Guy Willner shares IXAfrica’s journey from start-up to operator sustaining East Africa’s growing demand for digital infrastructure

K

enya may seem like an unconventional place to build a state-of-the-art revolutionary data centre campus, but if anything it boasts better credentials than other geographies, which lend themselves as favourable to sustainable locations.

And that sentiment is echoed by IXAfrica’s Co-Founder and Chairman Guy Willner.

The seasoned data centre specialist has experience setting up facilities worldwide, and highlights how Kenya boasts a plethora of benefits – both for the environment, operator and its clientele.

“The interesting thing about Kenya is that it uses 90% plus renewable energy. To put that into context, the UK is probably about 25% on a good day. And this is 24 hours, so it’s not wind energy or solar, it’s geothermal – which means it’s available 24/7. It’s a massive thing for Kenya.”

Kenya’s a bit like Nordic nations, like Iceland or Norway with 93% renewable energy – due to its access to hydropower, Willner explains. “But geothermal is neither damaging for the environment like building dams, nor is it only available eight hours a day like solar. This is really serious stuff.

I don’t think there’s one European Union country that gets anywhere close to where Kenya is in terms of renewable power.”

IXAfrica’s data centre campus expansion in Nairobi, Kenya Situated in Nairobi, IXAfrica’s campus is strategically located amid Africa’s growing technology epicentre and is

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Guy Willner is the Co-Founder & Chairman of IXAfrica datacentremagazine.com

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“ Our mission is to build good businesses with good people, and real businesses that generate profits and contribute to the local economy” GUY WILLNER

CO-FOUNDER & CHAIRMAN, IXAFRICA

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the first hyperscale data centre in East Africa. IXAfrica, in partnership with Tilisi Developments, is expanding its offering with a new, second campus in the Kenyan capital.

Last year, IXAfrica announced a US$50m investment into its Nairobi One campus to accelerate its development and help cement IXAfrica’s reputation as East Africa’s leading hyperscale data centre provider and to cater to the increasing demand for cloud computing services, digital transformation, and edge computing applications in the region.

In collaboration with premier real estate developer Tilisi, IXAfrica purchased 11 acres of land to construct its second data centre campus in the Kenyan capital.

WHY NAIROBI, KENYA IS A FAVOURABLE DATA CENTRE LOCATION Setting up a data centre facility in Kenya can be done with a pretty clean conscience thanks to geothermal energy, Willner attests.

With a population across West Africa of more than 400 million – more than 50 million of which in Kenya alone – the average age is around 21, compared to approaching 50 in Europe. And with this demographic statistically more likely to be more frequent users of smartphones, Kenya is located well to deal with the sheer volumes of traffic coming from sub-Saharan Africa.

“If you start looking at medium term demographics,” Willner illustrates, “we’re heading for a massive revolution in the next 30 years. Emerging markets have always had high interest rates, so they’ve always had to manage their businesses very carefully. There’s been very sensible management to companies, and suddenly people are beginning to look at Africa in particular and see what they can do.”

And with IXAFrica’s campus located in Nairobi, IXAfrica utilises the naturally high altitude to its advantage.

Willner explains: “Nairobi sits at 1,700 metres – to put that into context, the highest mountain in the United Kingdom is 1,300 metres. Europeans and Americans have no clue about what’s going on in Africa, thinking power is terrible and it’s super hot.

Nairobi is about 24 or 25 degrees all year round. It’s never too hot, never too cold. So when our first design came through and we had US$300,000 worth of central heating systems for the data centre, the people locally questioned as to why.”

Nairobi is the only city in the world with a national park on its doorstep, and Willner shares how a massive part of Kenyan culture revolves around protecting their environment.

“There’s always a pull from the teams and people in Kenya to look for green solutions,” he says. “They’re still very close to nature and are really sensitive to that.”

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Guy Willner on IXAfrica’s growth and how it is sustaining East Africa’s growing data centre demand WATCH NOW

“The new Tilisi development is at 2,200 metres altitude, so it’s about five degrees cooler. It’s 20 or 21 degrees during the day and maybe 10 at night. Below 14 degrees, you can use free cooling in data centres. So that’s what we’ll be doing. It’s very exciting to have that second campus.”

Catering to growing demands in East Africa Using an analogy of a data centre being the head of the internet as it houses the technology for it to function, Willner likens long distance networks to the body and arms, the fingers are the last mile, whether mobile telecoms, fibre to the home or WiFI in a village.

“Everything is connected and therefore everything has to be built in synchronisation,” Willner illustrates.

“There’s no point in having a data centre if there’s no network. This is all part of a whole development in Africa in general. Dozens of companies are now laying fibre across Africa, 88

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and also into small communities. We are part of that whole ecosystem where everybody has to do their own thing.”

For this reason, Willner attests that IXAfrica’s carrier-neutral and vendor-neutral qualities makes it favourable and desirable to its current and future clients.

By providing state-of-the-art infrastructure, green power availability, advanced security measures, and efficient cooling solutions, IXAfrica is poised to play a pivotal role in bolstering East Africa’s technology landscape.”

“In terms of environmental responsibility I think we’re probably about a decade ahead of most of Europe,” he says, proudly. “We’ve been able to use local construction techniques and not import a whole load of glass and steel from Europe or Southeast Asia.

We’ve got 90% green grid. We’re in a super lucky position in Kenya to have geothermal energy.”

Guy Willner

TITLE: CO-FOUNDER & CHAIRMAN COMPANY: IXAFRICA LOCATION: KENYA Guy Willner – A worldrenowned Data Centre expert and entrepreneur, having invested in and founded a number of DC startups including in emerging markets over the last 25 years.

Mr. Willner founded IXEurope in 1998 and oversaw the company’s growth from a sole datacenter in London to a network of 14 datacenters located in four countries IXEurope was purchased by Equinix (NASDAQ: EQIX) for $555 million, and Mr. Willner remained as the President of Equinix’s European sector through June 2008.

In 2018, Mr. Willner co-founded IXAfrica, a hyperscale datacenter operator in Kenya that is projected to be the largest hyperscale datacenter campus in East Africa by 2025. In 2022 Guy joined the Board of Elea Digital in Brazil.

Mr. Willner holds a bachelor’s degree in engineering from Oxford Brookes University.

In 2022 Guy became an Advisor to Helios LLP in Digital Infrastructure with specific focus in the African Region.

“ I think we’re probably about a decade ahead of most of Europe” GUY WILLNER

CO-FOUNDER & CHAIRMAN, IXAFRICA

BLEND INTERNATIONAL WITH LOCAL – THE BENCHMARK FOR TIER 2 DEVELOPING MARKETS As a Design Consultant working solely on data centre projects across the EMEA regions, Future-tech has a unique perspective on meeting international standards and best practice in a wide range of local markets

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Future-tech has worked in 38 different countries across the EMEA region in the last 36 months. In environments as diverse as Helsinki, Milan, Athens, Lagos, Nairobi and Johannesburg.

This has led to a company-wide sensitivity to local markets, in both design and management. Working with local consultants that have varying experience with data centre projects, but also with systems, software and timescales that have become the standard expectation in FLAP-based data centre projects.

Future-tech’s experience has led us to understand and appreciate the capabilities and nuances of local supply chains, working practices and cultures.

By collaborating with key local stakeholders – architects, structural

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and civil engineers, fire, environmental consultants, etc – Future-tech and its partners deliver market-leading international expertise and project processes, combined with in-country knowledge and relationships.

Our clients benefit from the advantages associated with maximising resources, materials and labour available in the region, together with international design management, solutions, and technology. This blend results in greater sustainability, lower overall cost, regionally sensitive procurement, and efficient programme delivery.

The IXAfrica Nairobi-One Campus is an example of this formula in action.

Future-tech is very proud of the relationships developed, the success of the project, and the opportunity to help shape a future Tier 1 market.

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A Kenyan data centre for Kenyan people “Our mission is to build good businesses with good people, and real businesses that generate profits and contribute to the local economy in terms of people, in terms of training, in terms of taxes,” Willner adds, excited by the challenge of this emerging market.

“The excitement here, although there are other data centre players in Kenya, is building up a data centre company that really makes Kenya part of it.”

Willner and IXAfrica pride themselves in delivering a project end-to-end with ESG in mind as well as profit and quality of service.

“IXAfrica is a new company, but from the point that we started designing, it was all about keeping Africa” GUY WILLNER

CO-FOUNDER & CHAIRMAN, IXAFRICA

From left to right, IXAfrica Data Centre Engineer on Board and Shareholder Naresh Mehta, Niraj Shah, Director, Sales & Business Development and Chairman Guy Willner

“There’s no expats in Nairobi, it’s all local employees,” he says. “We might have people there for two months at a time or something like that, but Kenyans run the Kenyan business. IXAfrica is a new company, but from the point that we started designing, it was all about keeping Africa.”

Trust is a major factor in the data centre workforce, Willner explains, with experience, reliability and a 24-hour infrastructure key to success – needing a workforce braced and ready for any unexpected disasters, whether that be if power fails at 4am on a Saturday morning or otherwise. datacentremagazine.com

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“ It will benefit us, it’ll benefit our competitors, but most importantly it’ll benefit the country and the industry” GUY WILLNER

CO-FOUNDER & CHAIRMAN, IXAFRICA

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“We’re the newest game in town.

We’ve made sure that our data centre can cope with some of the most complex concentrated super compute that you can find.”

The importance of people “You build an amazing data centre, but you’ve got to have people who can operate it and with the passion to make sure this data centre never fails. It’s very much about people,” he continues. “The two things that I like most about the industry is that it’s full of very friendly people who help each other out. And the other thing is the international aspect where you might be doing something

in Nairobi – or London or Birmingham or Paris or similar – but the challenges are very similar.

“If I’ve got a friend running a data centre in Brussels, there’s no competition between me and him or him here with my Nairobi business. We can share information, we can share ideas. There’s a lot of sharing of ideas and information. “ The importance of a skilled, local workforce is something Willner firmly believes in, but appreciates is a pool that needs nurturing to shape the industry of tomorrow. For this reason, Willner and his team are working to establish and operate a data centre academy in Nairobi, working with Moringa School.

“I’ve always wanted to establish a school and Kenya’s a good place to do that because it has a very highly educated population,” Willner reveals. “It will benefit us, it’ll benefit our competitors, but most importantly it’ll benefit the country and the industry. If Kenya is going to be a massive regional hub for compute, then it’s good that we get more and more people who are trained up to understand what a data centre is.”

Putting Nairobi on the map as a thriving data centre location Willner envisions IXAfrica further establishing itself as a key player in the Kenyan data centre market. Although in its infancy as datacentremagazine.com

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an operating data centre company, he has a strong vision of populating his campus with expanding hyperscalers in the space of five or six years.

“With the Tilisi project being in a big business residential park, just northwest of the central business district, it’s got fantastic power,” he adds. “It’s got 66-kilovolt lines coming in, and with geothermal energy, it’s in an ideal place.”

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And Willner hopes to power the progress of IXAfrica’s growth with the positive relationships he’s built up over his 25 years in the data centre industry.

Looking forward Likening the next 12 to 18 months to a white-knuckle ride, Willner and his team are working to set up their data centre from a standing start, navigating building an empty

“ We’re all interlinked because if you’ve got that trusting relationship, you are going to work to build the right thing” GUY WILLNER

CO-FOUNDER & CHAIRMAN, IXAFRICA

data centre into a thriving hub of information exchange, connectivity and thriving business.

Partnerships with powerhouses Despite feeling strongly about the strength of his team and having a core passion for startups, Willner acknowledges the power of collaboration across the industry.

“A lot of people we’ve worked with for a long time, like Future-tech and Schneider,

help out with our conceptual designs, keeping an eye out to understand what the next steps are in the industry. They help us understand how to operate and keep us on our toes in terms of all the newest technology that’s coming in.

“It’s really interesting to have big powerhouses behind us where they’ve got big R&D groups looking at what’s going to happen in 20 years so we can guide our designs so they are futureproof.”

Sharing values, core morals and ethical practices with partners is equally valuable to Willner, with trusting relationships and ensuring synchronicity, one of the main things looked for when partnering with businesses for the betterment of IXAfrica, the wider data centre industry and the communities they serve.

“You can’t do anything on your own,” he states. “So you need a bunch of friends and they can also keep you in focus.

We’re all part of this ecosystem. We’re all interlinked because if you’ve got that trusting relationship, you are going to work to build the right thing.”

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LEADING EDG

AT THE EDGE OF DIGITAL EVOLUTIO Leading Edge’s CEO Chris Thorpe sits down with Data Centre Magazine to talk about sustainability, AI and their core mission to facilitate digital equity WRITTEN BY: MAYA DERRICK 98

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here’s no doubt that leaders in the data centre sphere are pioneering once unfathomable and life-changing developments as the industry continuously evolves, and Leading Edge Data Centres is no different.

Its Founder and CEO, Chris Thorpe, is at the forefront of tackling the ever-growing challenge of digital equity across Australia.

With a network of six data centres across New South Wales with a further 13 facilities in the rest of Australia – one of the world’s largest countries by area – Thorpe and Leading Edge have a vision to provide equal access to connectivity regardless of their geography.

Connectivity: Regional Australia’s biggest regional challenge “We want to provide experience that you get in metropolitan environments like Sydney and Melbourne and take that to the regions so they get the same experience,” Thorpe says, explaining that the biggest challenge in regional Australia is connectivity. “So if you can actually take the compute environment with its high sustainability and high resilience so you still get the cybersecurity, you’ve got on the whole a very similar experience, but in a smaller environment. If you can take that to the regional environment, they’ll be on the same level playing field. That is the key.

“It’s about building the platform so regional areas can compete in the same environment as metropolitan and again, really compete on a global stage as the metropolitan environments do.”

Founded just before Covid when restrictions were enforced on Australia, Leading Edge faced the challenges of datacentremagazine.com

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Supporting Data Centres in the Transition to Net Zero Carbon The combined knowledge and experience of MiCiM and OI allows us to work collaboratively with clients from strategic sustainable design development through to implementation

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“ AI WILL LIVE ON AND DRIVE THE EDGE” CHRIS THORPE

CEO AND FOUNDER, LEADING EDGE DATA CENTRES

finding its feet, and worked with pioneering partners such as Schneider Electric to form a solid foundation.

“You’ve got major data centres in the metropolitan locations,” Thorpe explains.

“We are not trying to compete in those environments. What we’re trying to establish is a secure, resilient environment in regional locations directly connected back into the core, which is great for disaster recovery and compute. You need it locally, you need it

fast, secure and in an environment that’s got some serious uptime.”

Thorpe highlights how in his experience, regional locations lag behind that of urban geographies when it comes to technical advancements, sometimes by up to 10 to 20 years. This, he says, is what sets Leading Edge apart from competitors, while also highlighting how operators need to work together to ensure equity as a common goal.

“Rural areas struggle to reach the cloud with a very high level of resilience. If you can actually locate it close to them, they’re not paying for that expensive backhaul pipe. There are many different factors. You can access the cloud in an environment very close to you. If your business is actually totally dependent on a backhaul environment going back to Sydney or back to Melbourne and an issue happens, your business fails. So edge facilities just take all those issues away.” datacentremagazine.com

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The barren landscape and distances between rural locations means communities in regional Australia do not have the same quality of digital services as those in urban areas.

This is where Leading Edge comes in to bring internet and cloud solutions to remote locations to empower communities

Building fundamental infrastructure Essentially, Chris and the Leading Edge team are laying the foundations for fundamental infrastructure to support the current need for connectivity as well as new applications on the horizon. Now boasting a growing ecosystem of 40 clients, Leading Edge is helping its clientele realise the opportunity ahead of them in providing essential services to businesses across Australia, regardless of their location.

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“ WHAT WE’VE BUILT IS HIGHLY RESILIENT” CHRIS THORPE

CEO AND FOUNDER, LEADING EDGE DATA CENTRES

Chris Thorpe TITLE: CEO AND FOUNDER COMPANY: LEADING EDGE DATA CENTRES And, thanks to Leading Edge’s disaster recovery credentials, CCTV quality and applications, it has seen advanced manufacturing businesses coming aboard.

“We are reducing telco costs by between 50% and 60% and increasing their speed by five times,” he says, proudly. “Their resilience just goes through the roof. We’ve got case studies where businesses have been struggling to grow because they can’t compete with metropolitan areas, but now they’re

INDUSTRY: DATA CENTRE LOCATION: SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA Thorpe has more than 28 years experience both in the IT and telecommunications industries across the US, Europe and Australia. A passionate CEO and thought leader, he founded Leading Edge in 2019 to empower the digital economy of regional Australia through Leading Edge’s Tier III edge data centre network.

Flooding in the Hawkesbury Nepean River in New South Wales

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Beautiful but harsh: a dry riverbed in New South Wales

connected with us, they’re reducing their cost and increasing their speed and resilience.

They’re now actually recruiting people and their business is back into growth mode.”

Harnessing the natural landscape Rural Australia’s harsh landscape adds an extra challenge to levelling out digital equity, but Thorpe and Leading Edge, from the offset, have chosen to leverage this to their advantage rather than see it as an obstacle.

“Regional Australia is really harsh,” Thorpe demonstrates. “You can have extremely hot and extremely cold environments as well as drought and floods. So we needed to design an infrastructure that was going to be able to cope with all of those environments, plus be sustainable.”

With this in mind, Leading Edge, in collaboration with Schneider Electric, constructed a modular-style data centre in New South Wales armed with a solar shield over the top to protect the facility from the arid landscape and harness the sun’s rays.

“The building below is completely protected from the elements,” Thorpe shares. “As well as covering the roof in solar, we’ve got lightning conductors on the roof and a two end environment, so we have multiple layers of redundancy for power and cooling.”

The facility can also run off-grid in the case of loss of power: a common occurrence in rural Australia thanks to frequent storms and a contributor to the ongoing digital inequality. datacentremagazine.com

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Leading Edge Data Centres x Schneider Electric WATCH NOW

“There’s one site in particular, Tamworth,” Thorpe explains, “where we’ve lost power on five occasions for up to four or five hours. The system has been tested on multiple occasions and we have 100% uptime across the network to keep the data centres up and running. What we’ve built is highly resilient.”

The facility is a 50-year certified structure and despite the technology inside being bound to change over time, its long-term sustainability credentials ensure it can be hooked up to renewable power quickly in the not-so-distant future when it is less of a premium.

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“ WE’RE OPERATING IN REGIONAL AUSTRALIA AND IT’S BEAUTIFUL, BUT IT CAN BE EXTREMELY HARSH” CHRIS THORPE

CEO AND FOUNDER, LEADING EDGE DATA CENTRES

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Tamworth in New South Wales.

Frequent loss of power can be an issue in parts of regional Australia

About Leading Edge Data Centres Leading Edge Data Centres is Australia’s first dedicated edge data centre network provider, building highly connected edge data centres in regional Australia.

Established with the aim to provide business and communities in regional towns and cities with access to a reliable and cost-effective interconnected network of regionally located data

centres that enable secure and fast internet access and direct cloud connectivity and carrier services in regional Australia, as well as supply faster application performance with its infrastructure and networked connectivity, Leading Edge’s team work to create and deploy innovative solutions which solve regional Australia’s IT problems.

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infrastructure has serious challenges, which is why we’ve built with a kind of a bunkerstyle, government-grade mentality.”

AI and the ever-changing edge landscape And with connecting rural locations with the same speed, latency and general connectivity as metropolitan areas, Leading Edge’s edge facilities are equipped to handle future-centric dominating technologies.

“AI is interesting, I’ve seen the impact on the hyperscale market in Sydney already,” Thorpe details. “I see positive pressure, and AI will live on and drive the edge in many ways. Let’s just see how this transpires.”

Citing the US and Europe as leading markets advancing in the edge environment, Thorpe looks ahead to what is coming Australia’s way. “Everything’s generating data now,” he adds. “Everything is becoming a digital twin, so that data needs to be processed close because the volumes we’re talking about are going through the roof.”

Advocating that Leading Edge’s facilities are part of the building of regional infrastructure that Thorpe feels should have been built 15 years ago, he envisions a much wider-scale roadmap.

“You look at autonomous vehicles – anything on the ground or in the sky – we’re talking agriculture, a numerous number of industries that are affected

by AI. You need close to zero latency environments to be able to facilitate that – we’re initially building a mesh network of across 3,000 kilometres to support that.

“It’s actually very encouraging from our perspective, because we’ve put our foot forward and led the market here in Australia.”

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“ WE’VE PUT OUR FOOT FORWARD AND LED THE MARKET HERE IN AUSTRALIA” CHRIS THORPE

CEO AND FOUNDER, LEADING EDGE DATA CENTRES

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THE TWIN INFR IMPACTS OF G

AND HOW TO DE

PRODUCED BY: IRON MO

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IRON MOUNTAIN DATA CENTERS

RASTRUCTURE GENERATIVE AI

EAL WITH THEM

OUNTAIN DATA CENTERS

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Sustainability leader Iron Mountain Data Centers is investing heavily in next generation carbon reduction measures which will be vital to sustain the exponential growth of generative AI

2023

will be looked back on as the year generative AI burst into the public consciousness and businesses frantically adapted their models to accommodate it. The ability of Large Language Models (LLMs) to bridge the linguistic gap between humans and machines has caught the popular imagination and raised awareness of the potential to automate and improve many aspects of our lives.

In this initial flurry of speculation it can be difficult to find reliable forecasting models on which to base sound business decisions. However, in data centre infrastructure the impacts are more predictable than most, and Iron Mountain Data Centers (IMDC) believes they will drive an industry-wide design revolution fuelled by sustainability.

Smart data centre users undertaking AI investment should be aware of this and start planning for it now.

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Power surge It is clear to Iron Mountain Data Centers that by far the greatest challenge in supporting generative AI is the huge surge in power loads. Generative AI models use graphics processing unit (GPU) chips which require 10 to 15 times the energy of a traditional CPU. Many models have billions of parameters and require fast and efficient data pipelines in their training phase, which can take months to complete. ChatGPT 3.5, for instance, has 175 billion parameters and was trained on more than 500 billion words of text. To train a ChatGPT 3.5 model requires 300 to 500MW of power. Currently, a typical data centre requires 30 to 50MW 114

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of power. One of IMDC’s larger campuses, in Northern Virginia, has capacity for 10 data centres on it. The whole of the power load for this campus would be required to train ChatGPT 3.5. While LLMs are definitely at the most power-hungry end of the generative AI boom, every generative model IMDC has worked with has processor and power needs which grow exponentially, either doubling or tripling each year.

Forecasting the power requirements of generative AI over time is hard to do with any accuracy, but most analysts agree that it will ramp up current requirements hugely. If one estimates current data centre compound growth at a relatively modest

IRON MOUNTAIN DATA CENTERS

AI’S APPETITE IN ACTION IMDC provides the infrastructure for many High-Power Compute (HPC) configurations running generative AI, and has developed specialist facilities that meet their needs. High-density power, modular architecture, high-bandwidth training – input – and inference – output – connectivity and advanced cooling are all critical factors for customers.

Healthcare One of IMDC’s healthcare customers has developed a supercomputer for AI-driven imaging apps. While the total consumption is not massive and training cycles are much shorter than for LLMs, the data growth curve of this supercomputer since it was first built in 2018 has been steep. It began with just 10,00050,000 images and achieved 85% accuracy.

Now it uses up to half a billion images with accuracy of 95% and runs 50,000 deep learning training experiments per month.

Despite the compactness and efficiency of the GPUs, a few racks in the data centre have become a full module of 60 racks with

26 petabytes of processing power storing close to two billion datasets. In less than two years a petaflop of processing power will be needed.

Research The Computational Research Accelerator department at Arizona State University was running out of network ports, space and power for ‘Agave’, its supercomputer, so they built a new supercomputer called ‘Sol’ in 2022 in one of IMDC’s Phoenix data centres. Sol is a Dellbuilt system spanning 178 nodes. It uses AMD Epyc 7713 CPUs, consisting of around 18,000 cores, with the bulk of the nodes carrying 512GB of memory and five large-memory nodes equipped with 2TB. It has 56 GPU nodes with quadruple Nvidia A100, 80GB, GPUs each and four nodes with triple Nvidia A30, 24GB, GPUs. The system is networked with Nvidia’s 200GB/s HDR InfiniBand and supported by four Petabytes of Dell BeeGFS scratch storage. The R&D potential of Sol is extremely exciting, and a steep physical growth curve is anticipated.

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15%, global capacity will double in five years and quadruple in 10. With generative AI in the mix, CAGR could rise as high as 25%, tripling capacity in five years and increasing it up to tenfold in a decade. That is more than double the current growth rate. Enterprises, AI startups and Cloud Service Providers are already racing to secure data centre capacity for their workloads, with the hyperscale clouds leading the pack. This is happening fast. Analyst TD Cowen reported “a tsunami of AI demand” with 2.1GW of data centre leases signed in the US, a fifth of current total supply, in Q2 of 2023.

A mountain of e-waste The second AI-generated challenge is at the

back end; a stream of used equipment. AI is driving faster server innovation, particularly in chip design, and the latest AI chips such as the Nvidia H100 have had so many billions advanced against their manufacture and are in such short supply that they are even being used as debt collateral and made available for rent. While this refresh rate will be key to improving efficiency it will also – in tandem with the rise in capacity – increase the scale of e-waste.

E-waste is one of the fastest-growing waste streams in the world. By 2030, annual e-waste production is on track to reach a staggering 75 million metric tonnes. Global e-waste is thought to hold roughly US$60 billion-worth of raw materials such as gold,

What if Data Security, Serviceability, Safety and Satisfaction Could all be Achieved by Design?

Explore how Mission Critical facility types are becoming defining elements of architectural design.

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Use more image captions as often as possible

“ To address the twin challenges of capacity growth and e-waste the industry will have to be at the top of its game”

palladium, silver and copper. However, just 17% of global e-waste is documented to be collected and properly recycled each year.

Looming climate targets Combine these factors with the broader issues society now faces. These challenges will need to be addressed as the climate crisis deepens and zero emission targets loom. There will be unprecedented pressure on power grids to provide new electrical power for industries that are weaning themselves off fossil fuels. Iron Mountain Data Centers is a firm believer that generative AI in particular will be under intense environmental, and therefore datacentremagazine.com

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“ AI may be a key to solving the problem, not just for our own industry but for other sectors” popular, scrutiny. To address the twin challenges of capacity growth and e-waste the industry will have to be at the top of its game.

Addressing the challenge: Carbon elimination and circularity How should the industry react? As ever, by solving the problems one by one.

Low-to-no-carbon power sources will be the key to addressing power challenges.

The power demands of generative AI will accelerate this focus and drive new innovations in microgrids and backup power sources such as battery, hydrogen and nuclear. Renewables will also be key.

Most hyperscalers and a growing number of colocation providers have been growing the green grid and eliminating carbon to the point that today, hyperscalers are the biggest buyers of renewables in the world. On the colocation side, the Iron Mountain Group is now one of the top 20 renewable buyers in the world.

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Data centre owners will now need to follow the leaders and we are already making headway. Following Google’s lead, two years ago IMDC committed to provide not just 100% renewables but 24/7 carbonfree energy – you can see how IMDC and its partners have gone about this in a recent documentary ‘Transforming our Future’. This is a major step up from ‘attributing’ power used to renewables credits, and we believe that this approach will in time replace the current year-by-year Virtual Power Purchase Agreement model.

When it comes to circularity, new chips and superfast GPUs will drive the

AI revolution, but what will happen to the old ones? For both efficient performance and impact reduction, Iron Mountain Data Centers says AI providers will need to check that IT asset lifecycle optimisation and recycling, remarketing and secure disposal are available. The industry has been fairly slow to integrate this, but this will accelerate, and IMDC is changing the shape of its business to be in a position to address this issue.

The IMDC Asset Lifecycle Management (ALM) division, which now covers 32 countries, sanitises more than three million drives a year and has generated in excess

of US$1bn for clients via remarketing and recycling. Most recently, Iron Mountain invested a further US$200 million in acquiring Regency Technologies, which will add even more robust remarketing and recycling capabilities to support circularity for the world’s largest digital businesses.

Iron Mountain sees huge potential for this segment to service AI customers over the coming years.

The AI opportunity for the industry In the same way that generative AI will revolutionise the industries that run its applications, it is set to revolutionise datacentremagazine.com

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STATS: • To train a ChatGPT 3.5 model requires 300-500MW of power • With generative AI in the mix, data centre CAGR could rise as high as 25%, tripling capacity in five years and increasing it up to tenfold in a decade • By 2030, annual e-waste production is on track to reach a staggering 75 million metric tonnes • The IMDC Asset Lifecycle Management (ALM) division, which now covers 32 countries, sanitises more than three million drives a year and has generated in excess of US$1bn for clients via remarketing and recycling • Click here to read the IMDC Infrastructure Service Sheet on the Top 10 considerations when planning AI infrastructure

the infrastructure industry that supports it. It promises to deliver immense economic value over the coming decade, but will also consume immense amounts of power. Many generative AI applications can be hosted in a specialised shared facility. Different models have different infrastructure requirements, but all share the need for high-density power, advanced cooling and modular design.

The scale of the power challenge does not mean it cannot be overcome. In an era in which Big Tech has displaced many oil giants 120

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in the list of the world’s largest companies, innovation has accelerated and serious fact-based commitments have been made by industry leaders to tackle the climate crisis. In fact AI may be a key to solving the problem, not just for our own industry but for other sectors.

Data centre customers interested in developing generative AI applications should plan and invest early to keep ahead of the steep upward curve in power and space uptake. They should also pay close attention to new infrastructure design impacts,

“ Iron Mountain is now one of the top 20 renewable buyers in the world”

efficiency, energy sourcing and e-waste.

This means scrutinising the energy track record and targets of their cloud or data centre provider and sharing data on climate target progress and day-to-day access to – preferably 24/7 carbon-free – renewables.

You can find more detail on the market forecasts and detailed infrastructure impacts of generative AI in IMDC’s Generative AI Solution Guide.

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WHY SECURITY N BE A GREATER CO FOR THE DATA CE NetApp’s Grant Caley shares why data centre security must be elevated as a strategic priority as enterprises wrestle growing list of high-profile concerns

WRITTEN BY: MAYA DERRICK

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NEEDS TO ONCERN ENTRE

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here have been plenty of trends taking the data centre industry by storm in the last 12 months that continue to take hold, whether that be the exponential growth in hyperscale, colocation and multi-tenancy, issues with workload repatriation, the rising cost of outages, growing demand for edge compute and supply chain issues which are limiting in future capacity.

But one of the growing concerns when it comes to data in any form is properly securing it.

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“ In my opinion there isn’t enough automation across the data centre” GRANT CALEY

CHIEF TECHNOLOGIST UK&I, NETAPP

TECHNOLOGY

Who is NetApp? In operation since 1992, NetApp is at the forefront of helping its clients meet disruptive forces head on, and harness data in new ways.

Now with more than 30 years in the data game behind the company, NetApp has thrived in a technology landscape defined by constant change.

Being a key player in anticipating new waves of change, NetApp is in the business of embracing the full potential that comes with new technologies, and subsequently playing an important role in helping businesses navigate forward into the unknown.

In 2022, NetApp became the provider best equipped to unlock the best of hybrid cloud for its customers, harnessing the combined knowledge and experience of its workforce to provide the best solutions.

Referred to as the “crown jewels of any organisation” by data storage and data management services company NetApp’s UK and Ireland Chief Technologist Grant Caley, the securing of the data itself can often be cast aside as a result of over focusing on other priorities.

In 2020, Security Intelligence data showed that 64% of companies worldwide that had troubles with cyber attacks, with using the cloud to store their and their customers’ data being a contributing factor.

Threats increasingly present in the data landscape With more than two decades of experience in data management, the majority of which at NetApp, Caley champions NetApp’s partners and enables the delivery of NetApp solutions to customers and has a firm passion for customer experience.

“Data drives everything we do,” Caley declares. “It is behind every decision and every achievement and is foundational for technology.” datacentremagazine.com

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TECHNOLOGY

“ Data protection is key for organisations to recover as fast as possible from a damaging cyber-attack” GRANT CALEY

CHIEF TECHNOLOGIST UK&I, NETAPP

For this reason, Caley stresses why data protection is critically important for the data centre and security needs to be taken seriously across the data centre industry – because the threat of cyber attacks is not a case of ‘if’, but ‘when’.

He continues: “There has been a proliferation of cyber attacks in recent years. With the advent of the cloud, and as data has moved to various environments, data is spread across more sources than ever before. In response, companies must be more diligent with their data and take planning for recovery as critically as they take cyber protection measures.”

Grant Caley TITLE: CHIEF TECHNOLOGIST UK&I COMPANY: NETAPP INDUSTRY: DATA STORAGE AND MANAGEMENT LOCATION: MAKE THIS MEDIUM An experienced Chief Technologist, Caley is skilled in helping customers understand and develop their data fabric strategy across on-premises and the hybrid cloud with particular focus on enabling business agility, cost efficiency and operational consistency, governance and risk control. He has worked at NetApp for more than 23 years, with previous experience at IBM.

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TECHNOLOGY

Building truly resilient infrastructure positioned to streamline and improve a Data protection and data security, starting working environment – can be leveraged for with the data itself, is at the core of the likes of sophisticated attacks resulting resilient infrastructure, according to Caley. in data breaches.

Historically, security focuses for businesses With this in mind, Caley advocates and the likes of data centre facilities that prioritising diligence when it comes surrounded preventing attacks. But now, as to security is an essential first point of cyber crimes become more sophisticated, protection and should be a critical ongoing they vary in nature and become increasingly priority for businesses and their respective common, which is why Caley is calling employee culture. for data centres and their operators to be And looking to the future, Caley envisions equally as concerned with that by tackling security data recovery as they are head-on and automating with defence. controls, data centre “In order to remain managers’ time and protected, organisations energy will be freed up to must have a consistent focus on what lies ahead. approach to data security He professes: across all environments “Automation is vital for and extend security into data centre security.

GRANT CALEY cloud systems,” he details.

When taking a solely CHIEF TECHNOLOGIST UK&I, Caley warns that, manual approach, there NETAPP if businesses neglect are many variables data security and focus that can be missed on other priorities, the compromising the impact is overwhelmingly that they are security of a business. If a data centre doesn’t leaving themselves wide open and in a integrate automation, businesses won’t be vulnerable position when it comes to able to look ahead at the next wave of attack major cyber breaches. or look to the future for opportunity.

“This could cause irreparable “In my opinion there isn’t enough organisational and reputational damage,” automation across the data centre. he cautions. “It’s therefore imperative that Businesses can’t look forward to companies focus on security to ensure they optimising their processes and ditching remain one step ahead of malicious actors the administrative duties that take up which constantly seek new attack methods time, and they can’t benefit from the and exploit various tools and technologies.” long-term savings without automation.

Driving automation is the primary way Emerging technologies: Strengthening to scale the future of data centres, as and weakening defence data grows exponentially.”

The likes of AI, for example – although Highlighting that data protection an exciting and emerging technology safeguards and protects individuals’

“Data drives everything we do”

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WATCH NOW

or customers’ personal data, but also that of an organisation, data protection is critically important for data centres and plays a pivotal role in avoiding considerable problems which may harm reputation.

Companies can ensure a truly resilient infrastructure and future, in Caley’s eyes, boils down to securing elements of data protections so they can’t be compromised.

He concludes: “Data protection is key for organisations to recover as fast as possible from a damaging cyber attack. Backups are foundational in data protection, meaning a high availability backup will always be required. From a security perspective, those backup’s capabilities must have additional protections layered and embedded to ensure cyber resilience.

“Many cyber attacks go beyond an initial breach and look to remove an organisation’s ability to recover correctly.”

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64%

of companies worldwide had troubles with cyber attacks in 2020

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