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How AR technologies
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DATA CENTRES
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secure and
physically safe

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The DataCentre Team

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF FEATURE DESIGNERS DIGITAL VIDEO PRODUCERS MARKETING MANAGER
JOSEPHINE WALBANK SOPHIE-ANN PINNELL MARTA EUGENIO ALICE PAGE
HECTOR PENROSE ERNEST DE NEVE
CHIEF CONTENT OFFICER SAM HUBBARD THOMAS EASTERFORD PROJECT DIRECTOR
SCOTT BIRCH MIMI GUNN DREW HARDMAN LEWIS VAUGHAN
JUSTIN SMITH JOSEPH HANNA
MANAGING EDITOR MEDIA SALES DIRECTORS
REBEKAH BIRLESON SALLY MOUSTAFA
NEIL PERRY JAMES WHITE
JINGXI WANG
ADVERT DESIGNERS JASON WESTGATE
PROOFREADER JORDAN WOOD PRODUCTION DIRECTORS
JESS GIBSON MANAGING DIRECTOR
CALLUM HOOD GEORGIA ALLEN
LEWIS VAUGHAN
DANILO CARDOSO DANIELA KIANICKOVÁ
CHIEF DESIGN OFFICER
CEO
MATT JOHNSON VIDEO PRODUCTION PRODUCTION MANAGERS GLEN WHITE
MANAGER JANE ARNETA
HEAD OF DESIGN KIERAN WAITE MARIA GONZALEZ
ANDY WOOLLACOTT
CHARLIE KING
SENIOR VIDEOGRAPHER YEVHENIIA SUBBOTINA
LEAD DESIGNER HUDSON MELDRUM
REBEKAH BIRLESON

6 August 2022
 FOREWORD

The far-reaching
impact of digital skills
investments
“ALTHOUGH THE TALENT Beyond a business-level understanding, investing
SHORTAGE AND in the advancement of digital skills has the scope to
significantly benefit entire economies
DIGITAL SKILLS CRISIS
BOTH POSE VERY REAL From the perspective of an organisation, the benefits of
THREATS, THERE ARE investing in the digital skills of the workforce are largely
CLEAR SIGNS THAT, apparent – especially given the current talent shortage
WITH THE RIGHT threatening the data centre industry.
But recent research has shown that the impact of these
STEPS IMPLEMENTED,
investments is much more far-reaching than may be initially
A POSITIVE CYCLE expected. According to Gallup and AWS research, investing
CAN BE INITIATED” in advanced digital skills could raise annual global GDP by
US$6.3tn each year.
Findings revealed that digital skills generate income and
revenue premiums for both individuals and industries, with
advanced digital skills alone – such as cloud architecture
and software development – potentially raising annual
global gross domestic product (GDP) by an estimated $6.3tn
each year.
What’s more, the results consistently show that digital
skills provide immense economic value to businesses and
workers worldwide, boosting revenue growth, innovation,
wages, job security, and job satisfaction.
So, although the talent shortage and digital skills crisis
both pose very real threats, there are clear signs that, with the
right steps implemented, a positive cycle can be initiated.

DATACENTRE MAGAZINE JOSEPHINE WALBANK

IS PUBLISHED BY
editorial@[Link]

© 2023 | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

[Link] 7
 CONTENTS
UP FRONT
16 20
14 BIG PICTURE
How data centres are
helping to keep public
leisure centres open

16 FIVE MINS WITH

Richard Brandon, VP
of Strategy at RtBrick

20 LIFETIME
ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
Laura Ortman,
CEO of Cologix

14

000
138
8 June 2023
 JUNE 2023

26

CONTENTS
44
26 DATABANK
DataBank fuelling tech growth
by taking data to the edge

44 DATA CENTRES
How AR technologies are
improving data centre efficiency

54 21 ST CENTURY
TECHNOLOGIES
Building Africa's largest
digital infrastructure 68
68 SUSTAINABILITY
The next evolution of data
centres' smart energy systems

138 TOP 10
Ones to watch in the 54
data centre industry

[Link] 9
Improved Data
Centre Resilience
and Efficiency
is a cool outcome from the Schneider
Electric upgrade at University College Dublin…

Find out how Schneider Electric and

Total Power Solutions, Ireland has:
• Transformed IT services round the clock
• Released valuable space for student amenities
• Improved facility reliability and efficiency at UCD.

[Link]
 JUNE 2023
CONTENTS
76 PINTEREST
How data engineering is
powering Pinterest's
global platform

92 DESIGN & BUILD

Site security – converging
the cyber with the physical
92
100 GLOBAL SWITCH
Global Switch London,
a blueprint for a greener future
118
118 CLOUD COMPUTING
The factors driving the
cloud repatriation trend

126 QTS
The future of sustainable
data centres

100

76 126

[Link] 11
4 - 6 JUNE 2024 | CANNES, FRANCE
 THANK YOU FOR ATTENDING
DATACLOUD GLOBAL CONGRESS 2023

2,300+ 120+ 700+

ATTENDEES SPEAKERS COMPANIES

#DatacloudGlobalCongress
 BIG PICTURE

14 June 2023
How data centres are
helping to keep public
leisure centres open
UK
The ongoing energy crisis has threatened
countless sectors, businesses, and
institutions, including the UK’s public
swimming pools.
But, in a pioneering cost-management
solution, the waste heat from small data
centres is being used to heat the pools
– for free.
The initiative has been trialled in Devon
by Mark Bjornsgaard, CEO of Deep Green.
“It’s great for them – they get to reduce
the cost of heating the pool and reduce the
amount of carbon they use, and good for us
as we can offer cheaper computer services
because we don’t have the cooling costs,”
commented Bjornsgaard, speaking on
BBC Radio 4.
Thanks to the overwhelming success
of the trial, as many as 20 UK pools may be
upgraded to integrate the solution this year.

[Link] 15
 FIVE MINUTES WITH...

RICHARD
BRANDON

RICHARD BRANDON
TITLE: VP OF STRATEGY
COMPANY: RTBRICK
LOCATION: UK

Richard Brandon is the VP of

Strategy at RtBrick, a leading
provider of cloud-native routing
software, precisely designed for
EXECUTIVE BIO

connectivity companies.
Within the software company,
Brandon’s role includes overseeing
strategy and partnerships, while also
heading its marketing efforts – for which
he’s been widely recognised as a leading
industry influencer.

16 June 2023
Q. TELL US ABOUT YOUR I had a pretty technical role for
EDUCATION AND CAREER PATH. a few years, before moving into product
» I studied Physics at Imperial College management and, eventually, more
in London, specialising in astrophysics. of a marketing role.
So you should be warned – if you ever I moved into the vendor industry,
bring up the topic of space into working at Cisco and Juniper, before
a conversation, then it could turn heading back to a smaller operator, and,
into a long night. since then, I’ve run marketing for a few
Sadly, as interesting as the universe is, start-ups, helping to take one public.
employment opportunities off-planet I think every company I’ve worked
are limited. So, my first job took me into for has been smaller than the last.
telecommunications, working on fibre I’m not sure what that says about me.
optics for a large telco. Either I don’t like people very much

[Link] 17
 FIVE MINUTES WITH...

“I think we’ll see more or I like environments where I can get

Tier-1 carriers adopting

things done quickly; the latter I hope!

disaggregation, not just in Q. HOW ARE YOU DRIVING

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION
the network edge, where IN YOUR ORGANISATION?
» We’re really bringing a cloud-native
we play, but also in the approach to telecoms and connectivity
IP core and the RAN. And providers’ networks. That means running
routing software on open bare-metal
we’ll see more maturity hardware, with a choice of platforms

in the solutions”
and vendors.
Our network operating system runs in
a container on a Linux OS. And the whole
system is controlled through open
APIs. We’re seeing a lot of interest as
carriers see advantages in terms of cost,
automation and flexibility. For example,
Deutsche Telekom has deployed our
software in its production network,
acting as a Broadband Network Gateway
(BNG) to deliver a next-generation
network edge. It’s giving operators
access to a similar operating model
that the huge cloud-natives have
been enjoying.

Q. WHAT ARE YOU DOING

TO IMPROVE YOUR OPERATIONAL
SUSTAINABILITY?
» The whole area of disaggregation
brings some interesting sustainability
benefits. The bare-metal switch
hardware we run on uses commercial
silicon that is brought to market 1-2
years faster than proprietary systems.
So, it tends to be more advanced in
terms of the power it requires to
deliver the same performance.
On top of this, routing software and
hardware have always been sold as
single integrated systems. If you want to
change to a new software vendor, you

18 June 2023
can’t swap out the hardware; you network edge, where we play,
have to replace it, which then adds but also in the IP core and the RAN.
to e-waste. And we’ll see more maturity in
And, you can’t repurpose old hardware the solutions.
to do something else – like you can with Up until now, they’ve done the
a computer, for example. Our software things that traditional systems could
runs on open hardware, which changes do, but at lower cost and with more
all of that, making the hardware more flexibility. But now, we should expect
flexible and increasing its longevity. them to surpass the performance of
traditional systems in some aspects,
Q. WHAT DO THE NEXT too. For example, our software can now
12 MONTHS HOLD FOR YOU beat any traditional integrated system
AND THE COMPANY? in aspects of resiliency, like relearning
» I think we’ll see more Tier-1 carriers the internet routing table faster than
adopting disaggregation, not just in the anything else.

[Link] 19
 LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD

L AURA
ORTMAN
For this month’s award, we feature Laura Ortman,
the newly-appointed CEO of the digital edge leader, Cologix

L
aura Ortman was appointed as In 2022, Cologix achieved a $3bn
Cologix’s new CEO in 2022, by the recap, extensively expanding its
company’s Board of Directors. partnerships across the data centre
Her career represents over 25 marketplace. Alongside this, with
years of experience in technology, Ortman at the helm, the company is
with her fields of expertise spanning also investing heavily in the growth of its
enterprise software, SaaS, IaaS, the Scalelogix hyperscale edge and digital
cloud, data centre colocation, software edge data centre portfolios, while also
development, and testing, alongside working towards the ambitious target
the training, development, coaching, of transitioning to 100% renewable
and mentoring of her teams. energy by 2030.
Ortman has held executive leadership
positions with some of the industry’s Driving pioneering DE&I standards
largest names, including Equinix and As a mother of two girls and the
VMware, where she worked for over company’s first female CEO, it is
eight years, rising the ranks from a Senior immediately clear why Ortman
Support Manager for Global Support holds DE&I as one of her top
Services for the Americas to the VP and leadership priorities.
General Manager for Cloud Services & “Currently, Cologix has more than

FIRST NAME
Executive Global Services. 50% female representation on its
leadership team. I also spearheaded
Cologix’s first ever female CEO the company’s first employee resource

SURNAME
Prior to her appointment to the CEO group, Cologix Women’s Connection
position, Ortman held the roles of Network, where we have over 90%
Co-President and Chief Revenue participation. Last year, we formalised
Officer within Cologix. our DEI initiative programming to help
Now, she leads the company’s strategy drive our diversity programmes forward,”
and establishes the roadmap for its Ortman explained, in an interview with
product, technology, and IT strategies. Jaymie Scotto Cutaia of JSA TV.

20 June 2023
[Link] 21
 LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD

WTF Panel on Diversity & Inclusion

– ITW 2019

WATCH NOW

22 June 2023
 “This is a pullquote.
This is a pullquote. This
is a pullquote. This is a
pullquote”

“Currently, Cologix Advisory Board for the University of

Colorado Boulder – Leeds School of
has more than 50% Business, and the Alumni Board and
College of Business Dean’s Advisory
female representation Board for the University of Alabama.
She is also a member of the
on its leadership team” Extraordinary Women on Boards
(EWOB) group – which consists of
Throughout her career, Ortman female corporate board directors
has been an invaluable advocate for working to achieve improved board
women working in technology. excellence, modern governance, and
“I believe it is important to mentor board diversity – based in New York.
and encourage more women to have “I also want to set an example for
careers in technology as well as the my two daughters and girls who
data centre industry,” Ortman adds. aspir to get into the technology
To this aim, she personally mentors field or business and leadership
a number of female college students positions. They essentially can
and volunteers on numerous higher accomplish anything they aspire
education boards, including both the to in the future.”

[Link] 23
The future is modular.
Modular is the future.
Leader in the development and manufacture of Modular
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we supply indoor or outdoor demands,
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Modular designs and manufactures
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Modular is experienced.
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[Link] 25
DATABANK
FUELLING TECH GROW
TAKING DATA TO THE E

WRITTEN BY:
SEAN
ASHCROFT

PRODUCED BY:
LEWIS
VAUGHAN

26 June 2023
 DATABANK

WTH BY
EDGE

[Link] 27
 DATABANK

Tony Qorri is VP of
Construction with DataBank,
and explains how the
business continues to
expand strategically in
testing economic times

I
t might seem odd that, in a world in which
technology companies are laying off
workers in their thousands, a company
such as DataBank – which helps fuel tech
consumption – is continuing to expand at a
steady pace.
DataBank's managed data-centre
services are anchored in world-class
facilities, and the company currently
boasts such centres in locations including
Dallas, Minneapolis, Kansas City, Cleveland,
Pittsburgh, Salt Lake City, and Atlanta –
managing or operating major network facilities
in each of these regions.
These facilities provide uninterrupted
access to customer data, applications and
IT equipment. DataBank’s services provide
business solutions for corporate enterprises,
including hybrid cloud services, customised
IT deployments, and industry compliance,
to meet the outsourcing needs for IT
management, maintenance and operations.
The company serves a wide range of
customer verticals, including media and
content distribution, cloud infrastructure
providers and telecom networks.
DataBank has been expanding its size and
reach for years. In September 2017, it acquired
cloud hosting company, Edge Hosting,
which specialises in designing, operating and
simplifying secure and compliant IaaS and
PaaS Managed Cloud Hosting. The acquisition
provided both market expansion and extra
expertise in the delivery of cloud solutions and

28 June 2023
 managed services, especially for clientele
“I stick with the requiring comprehensive operational

same principles controls for a number of commercial and

government compliance standards.
in my work as I
zColo acquisition brought Qorri on board
did in my sports Then in September 2020 it acquired

career: keep zColo’s data centre assets from Zayo

Group Holdings, with these located in cities
learning, keep including New York, Los Angeles, Seattle
and Denver. The deal means DataBank now
improving” offers secure colocation, connectivity, cloud,
and managed services in 60 data centres in
TONY QORRI 28 key markets in the US
VP CONSTRUCTION, and UK.
DATABANK Such structured, strategic growth has
put DataBank at the forefront of the edge

30 June 2023
 DATABANK

TONY QORRI
TITLE: VP OF CONSTRUCTION
COMPANY: DATABANK

Tony Qorri joined DataBank as

Vice President of Construction
in December of 2021 with the
responsibility of overall construction
efforts on large construction projects
as well as customer fit-out projects.
Qorri came to Databank as part of
the DataBank acquisition of Zayo's
colocation division, zColo, where he
served as Director of Construction for
7 years. Prior to Qorri's tenure at Zayo,
he worked for a General Contracting
/ Construction Management firm in
New York City where he served as
Senior Vice President of Operations
for 7 Years. Qorri has been in the
mission critical industry for 15 years
where he has built multiple Enterprise
data centers for many of the financial
institutions as well as the top 5
infrastructure wave, enabling enterprises, colocation companies on
hyperscalers, cloud, content, and software a global perspective. His
customers to move their mission-critical time spent on both the
workloads and platforms closer to end-user contractor side as well
populations in second-, third-, and fourth- as the end user side
tier markets. makes him a very
Crucially, these deals have seen DataBank well-rounded
acquire expertise along with infrastructure. individual that
understands all aspects
EXECUTIVE BIO

One such addition is VP of Construction,

Tony Qorri, who joined the company as part of engineering,
of the zColo deal. building, and
So how does Qorri explain DataBank’s operating a
growth in the face of a shrinking data center.
tech market?
“Tech companies might be cutting their
staff, but it's not because people aren’t
using technology,” he says. “In fact, people’s
 Architects of Continuity ™

Vertiv™ Solutions Support Databank

in Eliminating Water Waste
While Cooling the Data Center.
Water-free, highly efficient cooling solutions from Vertiv improve
energy efficiency and save our most precious natural resource.

Data Center Guide

to Sustainability.
Learn More.

Visit [Link]
© 2023 Vertiv Group Corp. All rights reserved. Vertiv™ and the Vertiv logo are trademarks
or registered trademarks of Vertiv Group Corp. All other names and logos referred to are
trade names, trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.
Technologies for Better
Data Center Efficiency
Today, there’s more than 18 million servers running in more than 2,500 data centers all across the globe to support
everything from our global economy to our increasingly remote workforce. As we continue seeing more demand for e-
commerce, artificial intelligence, streaming video, virtual reality/augmented reality applications, smart systems, and Big Data
analytics, we expect these numbers to climb drastically. This unprecedented demand for digital services has made the case
that data centers have become as essential as public utilities such as electricity, gas, and water.
Below is an overview of some of those technologies, according to the guide:

Intelligent Power Management Renewable Energy

Intelligent equipment and new controls enable data center Renewable energy can be a great tool for reducing carbon
operators to improve the utilization and efficiency of the critical emissions. Numerous ways to leverage renewable sources
power systems required to achieve high levels of data center include purchase plan agreements, renewable energy certificates,
availability. One strategy we’re seeing used by organizations is and migrating loads to cloud or colocation facilities committed to
utilizing the overload capacity designed into some UPS systems carbon-free operation. Some operators are looking at
to handle short and infrequent demand peaks rather than opportunities to power data centers through locally generated
oversizing equipment based on these peaks. renewable power, which can be accomplished by matching
renewable energy sources with fuel cells, systems that can
produce clean hydrogen from renewable energy, and UPS
systems with dynamic grid support capabilities.

First Steps for Data Center Sustainability Strategy

For organizations in the initial stages of planning long-term efficiency and sustainability goals, beginning such a journey can be
daunting. Fortunately, Vertiv’s guide offers valuable first steps for reducing environmental impact, including:

y Establishing Goals: Data center operators are embracing The Greenhouse Gas Protocol provides standardized global
goals based on the vision of the net zero data center or frameworks that industry organizations and their value
adopting several of the pillars that make up that vision. chain partners can use to understand, aggregate, quantify,
According to Vertiv’s guide, a net zero data center typically and reduce emissions. Find more metrics and frameworks
encompasses: Online.
• Zero losses: Eliminating inefficiencies and maximizing
utilization in data center systems. y Prioritizing Opportunities: Organizations looking to build
• Zero carbon: Eliminating carbon emissions from the power out their sustainability approach can begin by evaluating
consumed by data centers. existing data center systems and prioritizing opportunities
• Zero water waste: Eliminating the waste of water for data based on goals and available technologies. As plans move
center operation. forward, operators should continue to prioritize solutions
that can achieve desired levels of continuity. Some
• Zero waste: Eliminating the e-waste created by data
center operations. priorities include increasing asset utilization, decreasing
data center water usage, reusing data center heat, and
y Defining Frameworks and Metrics: Emissions will often be reducing e-waste.
the primary target when establishing measurable goals for
reducing environmental impact.

The path toward a more sustainable data center is not paved by a single strategy or piece of technology and implementing these
changes will be no easy feat for most organizations. The reduced costs, progress toward corporate goals, limited dependence on
utilities, and lessened environmental impact from these initiatives can help create significant long-term value for an organization.
 DataBank
Orangeburg, NY

Delivering a better world.

AECOM Tishman is one of the world’s leading builders. With more
than 120 years in business, we’ve been responsible for the construction
of more than 600 million square feet of space. A part of AECOM, our
construction management business line is supported throughout the
entire project lifecycle – from planning, design and engineering to
program and construction management.

34 June 2023
 DATABANK

“We have built hunger for technology is growing, and

data centres are the infrastructure that
scalability into fuels that.
“So whenever you pick up your phone or
the business by click on an app you are firing three pieces

creating a forecast of infrastructure. The cell tower that's

capturing your signal, the fibre through
that shows, which the signal travels and the data centre,
where everything ends up.
quarter over “You have to remember our business is

quarter, what the about serving customers of tech companies.

We go where the customers are.”
market looks like” And where DataBank always goes is to the
‘edge’, says Qorri.
“You always want to place your data as
TONY QORRI
VP CONSTRUCTION, close as possible to those who use the data.
DATABANK So you are at the edge of the network.

[Link] 35
 DATABANK

The Ecosystem of Data

WATCH NOW

And also where land is more affordable,

which is why Salt Lake City and Atlanta have
become focal points for the company.
“Those locations have been two we've have been a distribution centre or an office
chased pretty aggressively,” says Qorri. building – and we retrofit that.
“We've got a lot of additional builds “The third is an existing facility that
throughout the nation, but we've got quite a has maybe one to five data halls. We'll
bit of capital being spent in those markets.” go in and expand that building over the
course of time.”
DataBank projects include From front-end to back-end, Qorri and his
greenfield and brownfield sites team hires and manages design consultants,
Qorri’s role is to run and manage DataBank’s contractors and the commissioning firms
expansion and development builds,” that ensure the data centres are functional.
including greenfield and brownfield retrofits, For good measure, he also runs the
and expansions in any of the existing sites”. procurement arm of the organisation, an
He explains: “We've got three models area that in recent years has been pivotal to
of construction. One is brand-new the continued growth of the company.
developments – so a greenfield ground-up Just over a year ago, DataBank hired a
building. Second is a brownfield site, where strategic sourcing manager who works for
we buy a shell – some type of building, could and closely with Qorri.

36 June 2023
[Link] 37
 “As the construction project management scale over the next few years. Continuing to
team continued to grow we wanted to develop the teams we need has been quite a
take some of the sourcing workload off challenge and will continue to be so, but it’s
those guys, because they had challenges proved very important.”
of their own,” he says. “Together, we’ve DataBank’s growth has been consistent
been doing all of the sourcing. We try and strategic. It’s been facilitated by smart
to forecast at least two years ahead, and procurement but also many other factors,
we’ve got to continue evolving that because says Qorri.
we're still seeing supply issues “We have built scalability into
and challenges.” the business by creating a forecast that
Being able to source strategically has shows, quarter over quarter, what the
allowed DataBank to avoid costly supply market looks like, and from this we created
chain delays. a stocking programme.
“It’s enabled us to quickly deploy “We bought everything from transformers
and to not lose six months to a year on to generators, and also downstream. But we
deliverable timelines, which would've lost us didn't want to over-buy, so we were strategic
customers,” he says. “We're actually growing about it, and it’s the best thing we ever
quite rapidly. We've scaled over the past few did because it has allowed us to grow
years and I think we're going to continue to at a sustainable rate.”

38 June 2023
 DATABANK

“Taking a project
from the front-end
to the back-end is
a challenge but a
hugely rewarding
one”
TONY QORRI
VP CONSTRUCTION,
DATABANK

As well as growing its infrastructure,

DataBank has been adding to its knowledge
base with strategic new hires, including
experienced project managers (PMs).
“As we’ve scaled, we’ve taken on more
PM,” says Qorri. “This has allowed me to get
out of the trenches, because I have been
project managing as I was leading a group.
As we continue to bring more people
on board I can focus more on managing
downstream, and helping the organisation
grow from a future planning perspective.”

Strategic advantage, not price,

key to winning contracts
Planning for growth has different drivers
in the post-pandemic world, it seems –
particularly when it comes to winning
new contracts.
 DATABANK

Qorri says: “Back in the day, the most

competitive bid was nearly always the “You always want to plac
winner. Those days have changed a bit. Now
it's not always the most competitive bidder,
your data as close as pos
it's the most strategic bidder in specific to those who use the dat
markets that wins.”
“Strategic often comes down to 'how well – at the edge”
you know a given market, and how strong
your relationships are with the downstream TONY QORRI
VP CONSTRUCTION,
folks in that market'.
DATABANK
He adds: “This is why I tell my guys
to come in not with their client hat on
but their partner hat. I ask them to make
our partners their friends. People always Taking a project from the front-end to the
want to work with their friends, right? back-end – “where we're meeting specific
Friends are going to have your back and customer needs” – is a challenge, says Qorri,
will help you execute.” “but a hugely rewarding one”.

IAD3 Ashburn, VA

Proud to be a Strategic Design LGA3 Orangeburg, NY

Partner for DataBank

Highland Associates is an Architectural

and Engineering firm focusing on the
design of mission critical facilities for
Enterprise, Co-Location and Hyperscale
clients throughout the United States.

[Link]

40 June 2023
ce
ssible
ta
 DATABANK

He adds: “It involves supply chain,

contractor availability in certain markets
and taking a task from A to Z in a very
tight timeframe and bringing it in on time
and on budget.
“Myself, my team, the organisation,
we get a rush out of that. There are
competitors that are able to do it but there
are also a lot of folks who are not able to
accomplish this, and it day-in, day-out
– especially over the past few years, with
the pandemic and multiple supply chain
constraints – is a major achievement.”
He reveals that, post-pandemic, “we’ve
had to micromanage down to a
level that was not needed before”, and that
there is another big difference to the way his
team operates.
“The customer is not always right any
more,” he says. “Instead of demanding
something and getting it, we now have to
work more as partners – with our vendors,
contractors and subcontractors.”
And, of course, there are other changes
and challenges in expanding a business in a
post-pandemic world, not least of which is we partner with from both thermal and
labour problems, Qorri explains. power sides. Vertiv and Powersmiths are
“There's not enough workers to cater very strong partners of ours on the power
to all the projects going on. Bringing in side, and Toshiba and Cummins with regards
the right subcontractors to build-out a to support on the generators and UPS side.”
facility is a challenge. Unlike in warehouse Hitachi is another “huge partner of ours”,
environments, automation is not an option. from a transformation perspective,
You need physical labour. Technology is says Qorri.
advanced – you need guys in the trenches to "Our most strategic partners are our
be able to execute.” general contracting partners. HITT in
But whatever the challenges that Northern Virginia, Tishman in New York,
DataBank faces, it does not face them Layton in the Southwest, and Brassfield
alone; its ecosystem of partners is crucially and Gorrie in the Atlanta market.”
important, says Qorri.
“DataBank has a slew of different
partners,” he says. “We've got vendors that

42 June 2023
[Link] 43
HOW AR
TECHNOLOGIES
ARE IMPROVING
DATA CENTRE
EFFICIENCY
Speaking with Danel Turk, Solution Portfolio Manager
for Data Centres at ABB, we delve into the scope for
AR deployment in the data centre industry
WRITTEN BY: JOSEPHINE WALBANK

n 2019, there were around 0.44

billion augmented reality (AR)
device users in the world. Just five
short years later, by 2024, this
same figure is set to rise to 1.73 billion.
The global AR device market has
skyrocketed at a phenomenal pace. This
uptake has been driven by a number of
different factors and almost every global
industry. In everything from the scope of AR
shopping experiences in the retail sector to
AR driving more efficient operations in high-
tech industries, the potential deployment of
these solutions is exceptionally far-reaching.
In an exclusive interview with Danel Turk,
Solution Portfolio Manager for Data Centres
at ABB, we find out more about the future
scope for AR technologies in the global
data centre industry.

44 June 2023
 DATA CENTRES

[Link] 45
REDUCE RISK
DELIVER CERTAINTY
Late product delivery. Last minute design
changes. Inactive installation teams. All
impact heavily on project timelines and
ultimately the bottom line.

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your IT infrastructure supply chain. With
locations across the world and our long-
standing global vendor relationships, we
are ready to deliver your next Data Centre
project, wherever you are.

SPEAK TO US TODAY

[Link]
 DATA CENTRES

DANEL TURK
TITLE: CO-FOUNDER & DIRECTOR
COMPANY: ABB

Danel studied electrical

engineering in Tallinn Technical
University, Estonia, specialising in
electrical grids, medium and
low-voltage and power generation.
Danel has worked at ABB for almost
20 years in various global roles focused
EXECUTIVE BIO

on supporting new technologies and

industries. He started out in product
management, gaining 10 years experience
in portfolio management and launching
new products. For the last 5 years, Danel has
been leading on new technologies and fast- Now, though, this situation – coupled
growing segments for ABB including solar, with the post-pandemic shift to remote
eMobility, energy storage and data centres. working – has pushed industries forward
and helped IT teams question where remote
technologies are best placed to ensure
The increasing adoption operations are faster and better.
of AR in data centres To this end, AR can be extremely effective
When it comes to ensuring high uptime in keeping uptime high while resolving any
and consistency of service, getting the issues that do slip through the net as quickly
right people to the right place whenever as possible.
an issue arises is critical – but it’s not “Data centres have to be up and running
always as easy as it sounds. all the time. However, getting the right
This was made particularly apparent people to the right place can sometimes
during COVID-19, when lockdowns and take much more time than predicted,”
remote working made it apparent how Turk explains.
much we depend on the required experts “But, if you have AR, you can always
being able to travel quickly. Prior to the have an expert on the other side of the
pandemic, this wasn't really a reliance that line; they can tell you what to switch and
was particularly called into question. where to do it.”

[Link] 47
 ABB RobotStudio® Augmented Reality
WATCH NOW

In that way, you can achieve the same

speed as having someone there on-site
completing the repair, but keep safety
standards high by enlisting a skilled,
professional repair technician.
“So, it’s safe from a cybersecurity
point of view, but it also serves the wider
sustainability goal, too. It means that we don't
need to put the person in the car, and send
them to the site, for example, to identify
which spare part is needed,” Turk adds.
This advantage is particularly valuable in
many emerging data centre markets, which
are typically situated to much more remote
locations many hours outside of major cities.
As a result, AR technologies make remote
or secondary markets a far more feasible
expansion option for providers.

Using AR to secure uptime and

improve customer satisfaction
According to the Uptime Institute Global
Data Center Survey 2022, outages remain

48 June 2023
 DATA CENTRES

all too frequent. In fact, in 2022, 60% of

operators surveyed said that they had an
outage in the past three years.
But, what’s more concerning is the
current trend, which has seen outages
becoming significantly more expensive
for data centre operators.
Although a falling proportion of managers
are reporting serious or severe outages,
Uptime’s data revealed that a quarter of
respondents said that their most recent
outage had cost more than $1m, in both
direct and indirect costs. A further 45% said
that their most recent outage cost between
$100,000 and $1m. As a result, it can be
concluded that more than two-thirds of
all outages cost over $100,000 each.
This means, according to Uptime, that
“the business case for investing more
in resiliency – and, as such, training
– is becoming ever stronger”.
“If you lose a data centre for one hour,
people are going to go crazy. Look back
a year ago, for example, when Meta went
down for six or seven hours – the impact
that this had was very significant. One direct
impact was the fact that they couldn’t sell
advertisements. Another could be a loss in
share prices, because it's not seen as ‘safe’
anymore or the sites are not up there, so
people are immediately wondering what's
going on,” Turk asserts.
“This means companies will do
anything they can to maintain uptime.”
AR will play a critical role in helping to
keep uptime as high as possible, thereby
enabling data centres to build a strong
brand reputation, maintain a high customer
experience, and build trust.

Using AR to support the green energy shift

With the data centre industry setting
sustainability as one of its core focus areas,

[Link] 49
 DATA CENTRES

the big question for AR technologies is:

can they also be used to drive more
“There is a pretty
effective green energy solutions? major impact when
Well, according to Turk, not only can
a data centre goes
AR technologies be used to implement
existing green energy solutions more down, which means
effectively, but they can also help to test companies will do
newer, more experimental sustainable
solutions to a much higher degree anything that they can
of accuracy. to maintain uptime”
“In the field of green energy, some of
the energy sources are still a little bit less
DANEL TURK
predictable. So, the coordination between CO-FOUNDER & DIRECTOR,
the green energy generation – including ABB

50 June 2023
storing it, using it, and optimising it The power of AR and ML
– will definitely be one thing that will Alongside the increasing adoption of AR,
grow,” Turk says. machine learning (ML) technologies are also
“If we take the simple example of battery proving a critical advantage for data centres.
storage and apply AR or ML technologies “Today, it's picking up slowly, but machine
to it, we can optimise it and increase learning is coming,” Turk says. “If the data
the battery lifetime by around 10%. This centre operator has the same size of data
is because we can share the load more centres, with the same design across its
equally, and we can also see the relative sites, in many locations, they can use ML
health of different battery cells (which ones very effectively.
have the higher cycles and which have the “So, if something happens on one
lower cycles). And, using ML, we can divide site, they can do the learning and then
the energy in a better way, allowing us to see – maybe if they have the same issue
increase efficiency.” on another site – what they should do

[Link] 51
 DATA CENTRES

“The data centre industry

is developing so quickly.
We’re happy to be part
of it, but it also puts the
pressure on us to keep
making things better”
DANEL TURK
CO-FOUNDER & DIRECTOR,
ABB

differently. Plus, they can see the loads

so it could be a critical point in a load that
triggered it. ML, together with AR, will
definitely help in these ways.”
Turk explains that ABB is leading the
industry in this field, deploying AR and
ML technologies across its operations to
ensure its services continue to represent
best-in-class.
“The data centre industry is developing
so quickly. We are happy to be part of it,
but it also puts the pressure on us to keep
making things better. We need to make UPS
more efficient, we need to make our digital
switchgear more efficient, particularly from
the cooling point of view.”
“For engineers, they need to challenge
themselves. In the past, things didn't move
so fast, the tenders were longer time
periods, and it was all a little bit more steady.
Today, it's all turned around – everything has
changed. And maybe people are ready for it.”
“So, at ABB, we are using AR to add digital
layers, digital systems, and optimisation
programmes. Also, we’re not just doing
automation or optimisation for one flaw.
We can optimise between cooling and
the motors, and make analyses for our
electricity usage, then we can pull all of
that information together.”

52 June 2023
[Link] 53
 BUILDING AFRICA’S
LARGEST DIGITAL
INFRASTRUCTURE
WRITTEN BY:
LUCY
BUCHHOLZ

PRODUCED BY:
LEWIS
VAUGHAN

54 June 2023
21ST CENTURY TECHNOLOGIES

SITE: BILLINGS WAY, IKEJA, LAGOS

50MW DATA CENTRE UNDER
CONSTRUCTION

[Link] 55
 21ST CENTURY TECHNOLOGIES

Wale Ajisebutu, CEO of 21st Century

Technologies Limited, uses state-of-the-
art infrastructure to offer world-class
services to the people of Africa

21
st Century Technologies
Limited is a 25-year-
old, mission-critical
digital infrastructure and
technology platform
company with the singular aim of delivering
robust infrastructure and skills to support a new
Africa – one where technology, science and
engineering are the drivers of transformation.
The business was built from the
clear vision of creating state-of-the-art
infrastructure in Nigeria while offering world-
class services to customers in support of
critical industry problems through motivated
talents and skilled workforces.
Now, as a leader in data centres, towers,
power, technology platforms, and payment
solutions, the business delivers reliable and
secure services, with sustainability at the
heart of everything it does. To do so, 21st
Century Technologies strives to achieve five
critical elements: infrastructure, customers,
people, partnership and sustainability.
Moreover, the business is positioned to
become the biggest provider of data centre
capacity in West Africa with a total capacity
of 75.5 megawatts across Nigeria’s capital,
Lagos. This includes 1.5MW from five edge
centres producing 300kW each. These data
centre operations span three key sites:
Apapa with 12MW, Lekki with
12MW, and Ikeja with 50MW — a site that is
still under construction.

56 June 2023
SITE: BILLINGS WAY, IKEJA, LAGOS
50MW DATA CENTER UNDER
CONSTRUCTION

[Link] 57
 21ST CENTURY TECHNOLOGIES

“We will do anything

humanly possible to
make sure that we With Wale Ajisebutu, Fellow of the
Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria
provide the necessary and CEO of 21st Century Technologies, we
infrastructure, the right discover the amazing work being done to
build Africa’s largest digital infrastructure.
skilled people and global
partnerships holding Empowering Africa from Nigeria
Nigeria – where 21st Century Technologies is
sustainability at the based – has opportunities totalling a trillion
dollars just waiting to be tapped into. “With
height of it all, to ensure young people and an abundance of resources,
we achieve these goals” Nigeria is home to huge opportunities,”
Ajisebutu explains. “We sleep on gold in this
part of the world. That’s the way I see it.
WALE AJISEBUTU
CHAIRMAN/CEO, “In fact, one in every five people in Africa
21ST CENTURY TECHNOLOGIES is from Nigeria, so the only enablement

58 June 2023
 WALE AJISEBUTU
TITLE: CHAIRMAN/CEO
COMPANY: 21ST CENTURY
TECHNOLOGIES
INDUSTRY: IT SERVICES
LOCATION: NIGERIA

Wale Ajisebutu is the Chief

Executive Officer of 21st Century
Technologies Limited, an Information
Communication Technology Service
Provider that was set up in 1997.
Previous to the arrival of the company
he is presently leading, Ajisebutu was
solely a business man who engaged
in the business of importation and
exportation of households, fashion and
corporate items.
He launched into the ICT space in
1997 to fulfill his curiosity to explore
greater challenges and become more
relevant in the country.
Shortly after his venture into
the sector, Ajisebutu became a big
name that got many talking of his
to tap these resources is building the right exploits which
infrastructure. We decided to build a data not only lifted the
infrastructure that digitally transforms the way sector but also aided
we live, interact and do business. In Nigeria businesses for
today, mobile technology is growing at a very telecommunication
high rate, with citizens now enjoying 5G.” operators.
Technology has positively disrupted
sectors such as education, financial services
EXECUTIVE BIO

and healthcare, which has in turn enabled

the convergence of various industry
verticals. For example, telecommunication
companies are offering banking services
in Nigeria – providing evidence that the
environment is evolving. Nigeria has
proven to be very dynamic when it comes
to technology. This is due, in part, to the
 21ST CENTURY TECHNOLOGIES

Government of Nigeria, which actively

supports the sector.
“We have the best regulatory body in this
part of the world, to be honest,” Ajisebutu
says. “And technology business contributes
19% of our GDP. To me personally, that
shows there are no barriers. There are
no obstacles. You have to determine
within yourself to take advantage of the
opportunity. And the opportunity is there to
be grabbed.”

Five critical elements of 21st

Century Technologies
To ensure the business is performing
to the highest standards, 21st Century
Technologies focuses primarily on five
crucial elements: infrastructure, customers,

Honestly,
we can’t do it alone
Siemens Energy is a trademark licensed by Siemens AG.

Transforming the entire energy system requires

all of us to change how we do business, invest,
govern, consume, and even live.

LET'S MAKE TOMORROW DIFFERENT TODAY

[Link]

60 June 2023
 SITE: 5, JEREMIAH UGWU STREET, OFF

“Poverty is now BABATUNDE ANJOUS STREET, ADMIRALTY

WAY, LEKKI, LAGOS. 12MW DATA CENTRE

defined by lack
of access to
technology, rather The second element, customers,
highlights that technology is not the
than geography” customer's core business, but it is the core
of their business. 21st Century Technologies
is therefore well-positioned and fully
WALE AJISEBUTU
CHAIRMAN/CEO,
mobilised to offer technology solutions as
21ST CENTURY TECHNOLOGIES a service to their customers. “This ensures
that our customers can focus on their core
people, partnerships and sustainability – the business,” Ajisebutu adds, “So, we become
business's core values. core to their business.
To abide by the first element, “That's our philosophy, and why we have
infrastructure, 21st Century Technologies been able to reach over 1,000 companies
is currently building high-capacity, open- in Nigeria. We are doing incredibly well,
access connectivity in Nigeria, which is providing services to all of them. Without
resilient, reliable and protected. “What creating value for the customers, we don't
we’re building is very compelling,” have businesses offering services today.
Ajisebutu explains. “And that's what our We have to be able to create value. We
customers want.” have to be able to make it very agile and

[Link] 61
 21ST CENTURY TECHNOLOGIES

Building Africa’s largest

digital infrastructure

WATCH NOW

“We don't see very compelling for them to be able to use

the infrastructure."

challenges. We To accomplish the third element, people,

21st Century Technologies prioritises youth's
see opportunities. development. For example, the business
assembled and trained youths to rewrite
The greatest the history of technology, while building
the most compelling tech academy in West
obstacle opens Africa, opened by the Consul General of the
American Embassy in Nigeria. The aim is to
to man – as far as train 10 million people in 10 years – to offer
technology to the people of Africa.
I'm concerned – is Sustainability, the fourth element, lies

ourselves”
at the heart of 21st Century Technologies.
“Throughout our infrastructures, we have
installed solar panels,” Ajisebutu says.
“Our 1MW solar panel powers some of the
WALE AJISEBUTU
CHAIRMAN/CEO, critical load we have today, and we plan
21ST CENTURY TECHNOLOGIES to extend it to 10MW in the near future.

62 June 2023
Our mission is: ‘meeting the needs of the that are pioneering in their industries — to
present without compromising the ability of ensure we have experts in every area.”
future generations to meet their own needs’ “Oracle is one of our partners, and I don’t
(United Nations 1987). believe that there's another company in
“We have just acquired 20MW of power this part of the world that understands
plants, and discussion is ongoing to acquire database software to the depth that they
additional 80MW, hydrogen and gas power do. We’re also partnered with Schneider
plants to power our facilities and participate Electric – a one-stop-shop for data centre
in providing power to the grid, so we take infrastructures and software – they provide
sustainability very seriously. Our goal is to excellent products by excellent people
become the first company in Nigeria to coupled with excellent service delivery, we
reach net zero – we hope to achieve this as cannot ask for more. In addition, Siemens is
quickly as possible.” the most advanced power company in the
The final element, partnership, is the key world with local knowledge and a positive
to everything the business does. “We cannot approach to the market, to supply the power
do everything ourselves, so we work with plant with power that is run by hydrogen and
trusted partners to ensure we cover as much gas at the same time.”
ground as possible,” Ajisebutu shares. “We 21st Century Technologies is also partnered
select the best partners in the world – those with Amazon, Microsoft Azure, VMware,

[Link] 63
 SITE: BURMA ROAD, APAPA
12MW DATA CENTRE

64 June 2023
 21ST CENTURY TECHNOLOGIES

Multichoice Group, Super Micro, MIT, Glo,

Airtel, MTN, NIBSS, 9Mobile and Orange.

Values and diversity

Transparency, innovation and integrity
are driving forces behind 21st Century
Technologies. For example, the business
is building a digital hospital to support
operations in Nigeria. “We take our
customers very seriously,” Ajisebutu says.
“We're entering into a good partnership
and committing to our goal is key. We don't
see challenges. We see opportunities. The
greatest obstacle opens to man – as far as
I'm concerned – is ourselves. We all face a
couple of bumps in the road, but they are
just to wake you up.
“We live in an era of exponential growth
with technology and the internet at the heart
of it all,” Ajisebutu shares. “The global data
generated continues to grow rapidly without
any sign of slowing down.
“More importantly, poverty is now defined
by lack of access to technology, rather
than geography. So we must do everything
humanly possible to make sure that we build
compelling infrastructure in this part of the
world. And 21st Century Technologies is at
the forefront of that.”
The business, therefore, feels
compelled to participate in the fourth
industrial revolution, having missed
out on the first, second and third. 21st
Century Technologies is committed to
building infrastructure in Nigeria to build
a reference point for technology in West
Africa. To do so, the business invests
in seven key areas: Connectivity, Data
Centres, technology platforms, payments,
people, security and power.
“We are building 75.5-megawatt Data
Centres. When people question the need
for it, I do not listen to their reservations,

[Link] 65
 SITE: BURMA ROAD, APAPA
12MW DATA CENTRE

“We live in an era of

exponential growth
with technology and
the internet at the
heart of it all”
WALE AJISEBUTU
CHAIRMAN/CEO,
21ST CENTURY TECHNOLOGIES

because I know Nigeria will occupy it at the

appropriate time,” says Ajisebutu.
The business is also powering data centres
with hydrogen and gas-powered turbine
engines. This facility is used to support the
government when helping the population,
ensuring life is made comfortable for the
citizens of Nigeria.
“We're committed to this country,”
Ajisebutu says. “We will do anything humanly
possible to make sure that we provide the
necessary infrastructure, the right skilled
people and global partnership holding
sustainability at the height of it all, to ensure
we achieve these goals.”

The future of 21st Century

Technologies Limited
21st Century Technologies is not slowing
down. In fact, the company is racing to be
a significant part of history, through the
continuous implementation of board and
infrastructure projects – they plan to stay
‘ahead of the curve’.
The business accelerates innovations that
will provide support for intensive network

66 June 2023
 21ST CENTURY TECHNOLOGIES

evolution and fast-track last-mile assets

to digital connectivity, paving the way for
a fully digitised future and supporting the
digital economy. 21st Century Technologies
is therefore investing aggressively to ensure
this is achievable in the future.
By implementing bold infrastructure,
the business continues to accelerate
innovations in the area of technology
solutions as well as provide support for
intensive network evolution such as 3G, 4G,
and 5G fast-track last-mile access to digital
connectivity. Further, they will continue to
deliver unique infrastructure services to our
customers, vendors and partners, enabling
a fully digital future.
Moreover, 21st Century Technologies will
continue to build a compelling platform
that will help to tackle some of the world’s
biggest challenges, spanning AI and quantum
computing to healthcare, aviation, logistics
and construction.
The business will continue to grow at a
rapid rate to become the largest provider
of information security solutions, helping
customers and partners define the risk
in their environment and select the right
technologies and solutions.
21st Century provides value that
enables and drives socio-economic
growth. “Technology has become part
of us,” Ajisebutu explains. “We cannot
remove technology – it’s become part
of everything we do today, and it will
continue to expand. Technology is
fast becoming a resource-liberating
mechanism. More importantly, with our
help, technology will support Nigerians
to do great things in terms of technology
transformation and development.”

[Link] 67
The next evolution
of data centres’
smart energy systems
Steve Brown, the Global Director of the Cloud and
Service Provider Segment at Schneider Electric,
shares his insights into ’Electricity 4.0’

A
s the deadline of The Paris Agreement WRITTEN BY:
draws ever closer and consumer pressure JOSEPHINE
for sustainable solutions continues to WALBANK
mount, the world’s governments are being forced
to take a harder look at their data centres.
The widely-cited prediction is that, as it stands,
data centres are estimated to be responsible
for up to 3% of global electricity consumption
today, projected to touch 4% by 2030; green
energy solutions have never been more critical
to preserving the data centre industry.
According to Schneider Electric – one of the
world’s leading voices in sustainable data centres
– the most viable solution to the current crisis
lies in the latest evolution of industrial energy
solutions: Electricity 4.0.

So, what exactly is Electricity 4.0?

“This is Schneider Electric’s vision for
digital and electric: digital for efficiencies and
electric for decarbonisation, leading towards
a green, smart energy system for a sustainable
future,” explains Steve Brown, the Global
Director of the Cloud and Service Provider
Segment at Schneider Electric.
“We call it Electricity 4.0 because it’s really
a sea change in technological evolution,
occurring over the couple of centuries that
have passed since we first industrialised.”

68 June 2023
SUSTAINABILITY

[Link] 69
SmartDC, Building
the Future
Joint efforts with Green to create a more
sustainable, simplified and reliable data center.
• High energy efficiency
• Space-saving
• Simple O&M
• Short delivery period

Learn More

Building a Fully Connected, Intelligent World

 SUSTAINABILITY

“This is Schneider Electric’s

vision for digital and
electric: digital for
efficiencies and electric
for decarbonisation,
leading towards a green,
What factors are spurring this
smart energy system for new electrical revolution?
a sustainable future” So, how is the combination of digitalisation
and electrification advancements bringing
about this new wave?
STEVE BROWN “Quietly in the background, electrical
GLOBAL SEGMENT DIRECTOR,
SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC solutions have evolved tremendously.
So, it begins with the idea of connectable
Brown defines 1.0 as the very earliest products – products that are smart, that are
days of electrification, 2.0 as mass efficient, and that involve an edge control
electrification for the first time, and layer to extract and manage that information.
3.0 as the establishment of distributed But, importantly, it involves this concept
energy resources. of an app analytics and service library,
“We’re now at 4.0, for the first time. We which allows you to get visibility
can establish electric and digital solutions into your comprehensive energy
at scale, for smart, green energy. And that’s use,” Brown explains.
going to take us from a linear supply of fossil “This is because, if we look at the energy
fuel towards demand without limited control system today, if we want to decarbonise as
and optimisation, to a flexible grid.” a society – and then, of course, data centres

[Link] 71
 SUSTAINABILITY

are a big part of that – half of the equation lies

on the supply side. But, the other half is made
up of reducing our energy consumption
through energy management solutions, and
through the digital technologies that help us
be more efficient, and electrifying processes
that weren’t electrified today. The best
example of that is e-mobility on a wide
scale with electric vehicles.”
Through the advancement of products
and solutions, coupled with the access to
far greater insights into critical performance
data, industries, businesses and individual
users are able to attain far higher
sustainability standards.
“Together, those pieces are really
essential to connect and digitise for
the electric future,” Brown stresses.

Why is electrical energy so pivotal in

the world’s path to decarbonisation?
According to Brown, not only is electricity
the best way to take us toward our global
decarbonisation targets, but it is the only
way to get us there at the speed required.
“Electricity, time and time again, is
shown to be the most efficient type of
energy; in fact, it’s three to five times
more efficient than any other energy “Electricity 4.0 – that
source,” Brown explains. combination of digital
“And right now we’ve made progress over
the last 10 years on our net-zero targets. and electric – is by far
But, looking towards 2050, it’s becoming the fastest way to get
clear that we’re not going fast enough.
“On our current trajectory, we’ll be saving that three times
approximately 4Gt of carbon dioxide per year acceleration and make
annually, as a society, in 2030. We need to get
that number to 10 to 15 gigatons of carbon sure we stay on that 1.5°
dioxide savings per year, every year, starting warming trajectory”
in 2030. So we need to go three times faster.”
Although there are certainly concerns
STEVE BROWN
about the current pace of decarbonisation, GLOBAL SEGMENT DIRECTOR,
Brown remains optimistic. SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC

72 June 2023
 “Electricity 4.0 – that combination of just needs to be pursued today. And that’s
digital and electric – is by far the fastest where the Electricity 4.0 story gets evolved,”
way to get that three-times acceleration Brown asserts.
and make sure we stay on that 1.5° warming “So, over the next five-to-ten years, I think
trajectory. It’s applicable across all of the we’re going to see a rapid adoption of the
segments in society today, but especially types of digital and electric technologies
the data centres of the future.” that enable this vision.”
To this aim, Brown predicts that we will
The technologies required to see the evolution of self-consumption.
realise this sustainability vision This is the concept of providers (and indeed,
“The key is that the technologies required individuals) both producing and consuming
by the systems are here today. There’s not the energy that they require.
one silver bullet that’s going to get us on “On the residential side, that’s going to mean
the net-zero pathway – I think we can all a more widespread adoption of solar and the
be realistic about that. But the technology technology that allows you to feed that back to

[Link] 73
 Use more image
captions as often
as possible

74 June 2023
 SUSTAINABILITY

“We’re now at 4.0 for the first

time. We can establish electric
and digital solutions at scale
for smart, green energy”

STEVE BROWN
GLOBAL SEGMENT DIRECTOR,
SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC

the grid. On the commercial/industrial side,

it’s going to be around microgrid technology
and grid-interactive technology, altogether
working on flexible, bi-directional grids. That’s
going to move us on a three-times-faster
path towards decarbonisation.”
The critical question being asked by data
centre providers across the world is whether
these green energy solutions can be aligned
with the pace of growth required of the
data centre industry? Well, Brown certainly
thinks so.
“One of the major challenges in data
centre history is that we are really facing
unprecedented demand. We’ve seen an
explosion of data – coming out of COVID-19,
we’ve seen almost 70% of boards accelerate
digitisation plans – and then we have these
secular trends of IoT and the metaverse,
which are only going to add further demand,”
Brown outlines.
“So, we’re going to need to deploy
a significant amount of capacity, while
continuing our pathways towards
decarbonisation. But where I’m encouraged
is, when I look at this integrative trend,
strategise, decarbonise, digitise. And then,
we see that happening in real time today.”
“The technology is there, the time is now.
And, especially in the data centre industry,
I think that we’ll be able to maintain our
capacity demands, while at the same time
moving on a path towards net zero.”

[Link] 75
 How data
engineering
is powering
Pinterest’s
global platform

WRITTEN BY:
MARCUS
LAW

PRODUCED BY:
LEWIS
VAUGHAN

76 June 2023
 PINTEREST

Magazine Weblink in layers 77

 PINTEREST

With more than 460 million ‘Pinners’

using its platform each month, Pinterest
is powered by its data architecture,
ML and experimentation platforms

P
interest is the visual
inspiration platform
people around the world
use to shop for products
personalised to their taste,
find ideas and crafts to do
offline, and discover the
most inspiring creators.
Beginning as a tool to help people collect
the things they were passionate about
online, today more than 460 million people
flock to Pinterest’s platform every month
to explore and experience billions of ideas.
Central to powering this platform is data
engineering on a vast scale – as Dr. Dave
Burgess, VP of Data Engineering
at Pinterest, explains.
“In Data Engineering we create and
run reliable and efficient planet-scale
data platforms and services to accelerate
innovation at Pinterest and sustain our
business,” he says. “We do everything from
online data systems to logging data, big
data and stream processing platforms,
analytics and experimentation platforms,
machine learning (ML) platforms, and the
Pinterest Developer Platform for external
developers to build applications using
Pinterest APIs.”

78 June 2023
 DR. DAVE BURGESS
TITLE: VP DATA ENGINEERING
COMPANY: PINTEREST
LOCATION: CALIFORNIA, US

Dr. Dave Burgess is the VP of

Data Engineering at Pinterest.
He has over 25 years’ experience
building high-performing teams
with innovative and collaborative
cultures, and delivering intuitive,
scalable and highly-available
products. Before Pinterest, Burgess
completed a doctorate at Oxford
University and postdoctoral research
at Stanford University in Numerical
Analysis and Computing. He was
EXECUTIVE BIO

the 4th engineer at E2open, which

provided visibility into supply chains,
Chief Architect of Global Display
Advertising Solutions at Yahoo!,
CTO of a couple of startups in
online advertising and social
networking, and head of
Data Engineering at Twilio.
 PINTEREST

As Burgess explains, one of the

biggest challenges in data engineering
is improving Pinterest’s developer
productivity, which is measured through
surveys and the time taken to complete
tasks: “For example, the time it takes to
train and deploy a new machine learning
model or run an experiment.”
From the survey results, a developer
productivity NPS (Net Promoter Score)
is calculated, from +100 to -100. “When
I first started at Pinterest four years ago,
our developer productivity NPS was -5
and now it’s +65.”
Since joining the business four years ago,
Burgess has overseen the replacement
of many of Pinterest’s data engineering
systems with the latest in open-source
software. “We’ve also built machine
learning and experimentation platforms
on top of our data platform, increased
ML Engineering velocity by 10x and run
hundreds of new experiments every week,”
he adds. “We’ve also democratised our data
so that everyone in the company can use
data to make decisions, build applications
and experiment. All of this has significantly
improved our agility, developer productivity,
and the products for our customers.”

2010 $2.8bn
Year Revenue
founded in 2022

4K+ 460m+
Employees Monthly
around the globe users

Magazine Weblink in layers 81

 PINTEREST

How data engineering is powering

Pinterest’s global platform

WATCH NOW

“In data engineering, Pinterest’s machine learning

we create and run

and experimentation platforms
‘Under the covers’, according to Burgess,

reliable and efficient Pinterest is a ‘massive ML machine’: “We use

ML to generate recommendations for our
planet-scale data home feed, search results, related products,

platforms and
advertising, and also have augmented reality
for our Pinners (the affectionate name we

services to accelerate call our users) to see makeup on their face.”

Central to Pinterest’s success is its ML
innovation at platform. Used to power everything from
product recommendations and image
Pinterest, sustaining categorisation to online advertising and

our business” spam filtering, Burgess explains that it

enables Pinterest’s engineers to be
significantly more productive.
DR. DAVE BURGESS “Our ML engineers can iterate much more
VP DATA ENGINEERING, quickly, building and deploying new ML
PINTEREST
models in a day, performing offline training

82 June 2023
to iterate and improve their models offline to train ML models and automatically deploy
before testing them with real production them into serving systems for ML inference.”
traffic, and have production ML systems be Pinterest is an organisation defined by
automatically monitored and self-healed,” a culture of experimentation. As Burgess
he comments. describes, its Experimentation Platform
One such tool is Pinterest Lens, a visual encourages experimentation and data-
search tool allowing users to search for ideas driven decision-making throughout the
and products using images. The tech trick whole organisation, while also enabling the
behind this feature is computer vision, which organisation to test thousands of new ideas.
identifies objects in photos to suggest related “Our Experimentation Platform is
content, allowing users to find similar items on designed to support rapid iteration and the
Pinterest. These innovations, Burgess explains, continuous improvement of our products,
are powered by open-source and internal and allow us to quickly test and refine new
advancements in ML technology. features, user interfaces, and other elements
“Our ML platform is built with a of the user experience. By using data to
combination of open source ML technologies, guide our product development decisions,
like PyTorch, Tensorflow and MLFlow, and Pinterest is able to better meet the needs
tech that integrates with our own big data and and preferences of our users, as well as
online systems,” he explains. “That enables us increase inspiration.”
As Pinterest went in search of a next-generation, unifying data storage
system, the company found the perfect solution in PingCAP’s TiDB

Pinterest had long recognised the need evaluated more than 15 solutions and settled
to optimise its data storage system. on TiDB in 2020. Pei says the reason for
Using HBase, the image sharing platform Pinterest choosing PingCAP came down
was carrying a large footprint, with more than to TiDB’s robust technical capabilities and
50 clusters and data totalling one petabyte. PingCAP’s high-quality enterprise support.
Enter PingCAP, an enterprise company
launched in 2015 by seasoned infrastructure PingCAP brings lasting benefits
engineers frustrated with the way databases to Pinterest data operations
were managed, scaled and maintained.
TiDB is set to bring a host of benefits
Seeing no capable solutions on the market, to Pinterest’s day-to-day operations.
they built TiDB, an advanced, open-source, When carrying out the project, PingCAP
distributed SQL database for powering evaluated Pinterest’s secondary index
modern applications with elastic scaling, real- services system and, using TiDB, achieved
time analytics and continuous access to data. better performance and 80% cost reduction.

What was Pinterest trying to achieve? “Because of TiDB’s capabilities, we were able
to reduce the system from six components
“Pinterest’s storage and caching team to one, greatly reducing the maintenance
wanted to find their next-generation, burden,” adds Pei. In the long run, TiDB’s
unifying storage system,” explains Liquan expressiveness and scalability should also
Pei, Principal Technologist at PingCAP. help Pinterest’s IT teams from a practical
“As a NoSQL database, HBase offers perspective. Pei continues: “People from
a very simple key value interface, Pinterest will enjoy peace of mind because
but the business logistics are complex. a lot of work is handled by TiDB, so they
To add new features, Pinterest had to build can focus instead on more impactful work.”
additional layers on top of HBase, which
incurs a very high maintenance workload.”
With those motivations in mind, Pinterest
 PINTEREST

A next-generation data warehouse

One of the number of changes made
in Pinterest’s data systems involves
the building of a next-generation
data warehouse and the transition
to a Data Mesh: an emerging approach
to data architecture that aims to
address the challenges of managing
large and complex data environments,
which was first introduced by Zhamak
Dehghani – a software architect
at ThoughtWorks – in 2019.
“At a high level, Data Mesh is a
decentralised data architecture that
emphasises data ownership and
autonomy,” Burgess explains. “Rather than
having a central data team manage all
the data for an organisation, Data Mesh
encourages each business unit or team
to take ownership of their own data
domains, managing their data in a
way that is best suited to their needs.”
This approach involves breaking down
data into smaller, more manageable
domains that can be owned and
managed by individual teams. Each team
is responsible for the data within their
domain, including defining the schema,
ensuring data quality, and providing access
to other teams that need to use the data.
To enable collaboration and sharing
across domains, Pinterest has a catalogue
of schemas and metadata stored in
Apache DataHub, has standardised its data
vocabularies and metrics, has tiered the
quality of its data, and has integrated
its open-sourced Querybook platform
to collaborate and share SQL queries.
“Querybook is an open-source data
collaboration platform developed by
Pinterest,” Burgess explains. “It has a user-
friendly interface for data analysts and
engineers to collaborate on data analysis

86 June 2023
 “By using data to
guide our product
development
decisions, Pinterest
is able to better
meet the needs
and preferences
of our users,
while increasing
inspiration”
DR. DAVE BURGESS
VP DATA ENGINEERING,
PINTEREST

tasks, allowing them to share queries,

datasets, and insights with one another.
It’s the most popular and highly-rated
internal tooling platform at Pinterest.”
As Burgess describes, Querybook also
benefits from advanced data analysis
capabilities for ad-hoc data analysis,
generating visualisations, and even building
machine learning models: “We’ve also built
a ChatGPT-like interface to automatically
generate and execute queries from a text
business statement. For example, you
could ask it how many daily active users
there are on Pinterest over the past month
and it will generate a SQL query with the
right tables and fields.”
“Overall,” Burgess asserts, “Data Mesh
represents a new way of thinking about
data architecture that helps us to manage
our large and complex data environment
more effectively, while also fostering
greater collaboration and innovation.”

Magazine Weblink in layers 87

Building a successful partner ecosystem
Pinterest’s Data Engineering department
works with a number of third party
partners, including AWS for cloud
infrastructure and Percona for MySQL
support, along with a number of other
companies on open source software
such as Netflix, Lyft, AirBnB, AWS,
Starburst (for Presto/Trino), StarRocks
Technologies, and Preset (for Superset),
as well as close collaborations with
the open source community.
Another of Pinterest’s partners,
PingCAP, has assisted with the
deployment of its TiDB system:
a distributed SQL database engine
that provided users with better data
consistency, reducing tail latencies
by 30-90% while reducing hardware
instance costs by more than 50%.
“We had been using an older version
of HBase for many years, which is a
scalable open-source, distributed,
column-oriented NoSQL database,”
Burgess explains. “We’ve made many fixes
to HBase over the years to make it fault-
tolerant at our scale on AWS, used it for
different kinds of use cases, and added a
lot of functionality on top.”
“The biggest pain points with this older
version of HBase were: the total cost
of ownership to maintain and run this;
limited functionality, which led to lower
engineering productivity and increased
application complexity; the lack of data
consistency across tables, affecting our
users’ experience; and the scalability
requirements our internal users wanted
to run at.”
This partnership with PingCAP to use
TiDB is already reaping benefits, providing
better data consistency, a lower total cost
of ownership, and more powerful features
than the previous solution, HBase.
 PINTEREST
Use more image
captions as often
as possible

“Data Mesh represents a new way

of thinking about data architecture
that helps us to manage our large
and complex data environment
more effectively, while also
fostering greater collaboration
and innovation”
DR. DAVE BURGESS
VP DATA ENGINEERING,
PINTEREST

“As a NewSQL database, TiDB provides storage applications faster without making
a scalable solution in a huge problem painful tradeoffs.”
space for use cases that need stronger “All these factors combined enable us
consistency or richer functionalities”, to more easily build and scale business-
Burgess explains. “It fills in the gap critical applications including shopping
between our existing SQL and NoSQL catalogues, advertising index systems,
systems, allowing developers to build trust and safety systems and many more.”

Magazine Weblink in layers 89

“We will make it easier for Pinners
to shop for the things they love.
Pinners will be able to go from
being inspired to making this
a reality in their lives”
DR. DAVE BURGESS
VP DATA ENGINEERING,
PINTEREST
 PINTEREST

What are Pinterest’s main

aims for the next five years?
As Burgess describes, central to Pinterest’s
plans for the future is innovating and creating
new technologies and products that put
Pinners first. “This means enhancing the user
experience and driving growth internationally.”
The organisation will also look to improve
its advertising products and expand its
advertising partnerships with businesses
of all sizes, while becoming a more
sustainable and socially responsible company.
Reducing its environmental impact is part
of the latter, as is promoting diversity and
inclusion, in addition to supporting causes
related to social and environmental issues.
“We will make it easier for Pinners to shop
for the things they love. They’ll be able to go
from being inspired to making this a reality
in their lives,” Burgess adds. “We will also be
a more sustainable company, with almost
100% renewable energy for our operations.
This includes renewable energy for our offices
and data centres.”
With the space moving quickly, making
the most of the opportunities presented
by developments in ML and AI will also be
central to Pinterest’s success going forward.
“This space is changing quickly with the
recent advances in Large Language Models,
Stable Diffusion, and Transformer models,”
Burgess concludes. “We have the ability to
generate images and text answers, augment
ML models with more data, recognise
objects in images, and create an augmented
reality. We can also significantly improve
our productivity with AI-assisted bots that
generate code and answers.”
“There are many applications of this
and it’s going to be a game changer.”

Magazine Weblink in layers 91

 SITE SECURITY
– CONVERGING
THE CYBER WIT
THE PHYSICAL

WRITTEN BY: JOSEPHINE WALBANK

In an exclusive interview with

Nick Smith, Business Development
Manager at Genetec, we explore
why greater emphasis needs
to be placed on physical security

92 June 2023
 DESIGN & BUILD

Y W
ithout a doubt, cybersecurity is
one of the most widely discussed,
pressing topics in the data centre
industry right now. Understanding and

G
mitigating these risks is one of the biggest
areas of focus for providers – and with
good reason.
But, all too often, providers make the

TH
mistake of neglecting the physical aspects
of security in favour of the cyber angle.
We spoke to Nick Smith, Business
Development Manager and physical security
specialist at Genetec, to find out more
about the current vulnerabilities in physical
security protocols, and why cyber and
physical security need to be perceived
as a single entity.

The greatest vulnerabilities

in physical security
“Your greatest vulnerability and your biggest
threat is always going to be the people.
Ultimately, we’re the biggest threat to any
system,” Smith explains.
Generally speaking, this threat takes two
main forms – people attempting to gain
access to areas where they are not allowed
and the insider threat (where someone is
allowed access, but they are there with
malicious intentions). To address these
key threats, a more sophisticated approach
to physical security is required.
“I suppose it’s easy to spend a lot of
money putting lots and lots of cameras
around a fence line, installing fence line
detection systems, razor wire, and really
securing your perimeter, but it’s far more
effective if we take what we call a layered
approach,” Smith adds.
“So, we look at the perimeter – and
that’s going to be typically what you see on
most secure sites, with cameras, fence line
detection, a gate in the middle, a guard hut,

[Link] 93
 A part of the [Link] Group.

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with a technician on site to take action
according to the agreed service level
– around the clock – all year round.
 DESIGN & BUILD

NICK SMITH
TITLE: BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
MANAGER
COMPANY: GENETEC

Experienced and technical Sales

Manager with a demonstrated
history of working in the computer

EXECUTIVE BIO
software industry. Skilled in Software
Solutions, Databases, SaaS, Video
Surveillance, Identity & Access
Management (IAM), Intrusion Detection,
and Counter-terrorism. Strong
sales professional graduated from
Bournemouth University.

and somebody checking you in and out.

But, then, once you’re within the facility,
you’ve also got other layers to then get
access into individual buildings and from
buildings into the halls.”
At the same time, these procedures need
to be implemented while still considering
the experience of people who are trying to
get access.
“Ultimately, most data centres have got
customers and tenants. So you need to be
secure, but they need to be able to get to
where they need to go, without it taking up
too much time. So there’s a bit of a trade-off.”
Smith explains that providers have to
assess each one of those layers – and the
threats present within them – independently.
From a perimeter perspective, it’s about
minimising unauthorised intruders, while

[Link] 95
“I think the key thing is trying
to get people to understand
that cyber and physical
security are not two different
things; they should be talked
about together in tandem”

NICK SMITH
BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT MANAGER,
GENETEC

from an inside perspective, it’s about

evaluating the building layers and the hall
layers, and managing the insider threat
through authorisation. Through technology,
providers can build sophisticated tools to
provide this high security.
For instance, Genetec provides a ClearID
identity management system. Typically, if
you needed access to a cage within a data
hall, you would need to email somebody
so they could perform the required checks.
This could take days. Or, if emergency
access is required, the likelihood of human
error increases due to the added pressure.
Through the ClearID product, Genetec
essentially puts that request back on
the owner.
“Because it uses the cloud to leverage
that whole permission process, the person
who owns that area gets my request. They
can then do their due diligence, they can
authorise it, and then the access can be
granted immediately. So what we’re doing
is taking that process away from a security
control room, which doesn’t know you as
a requester and doesn’t know the area as
an owner, and bringing it back to the owner.
In this way, we’re making it a seamless,
immediate access request and authorisation
by utilising the cloud and getting away
from emails that sit in an inbox for days,”
Smith explains.

96 June 2023
 DESIGN & BUILD

A systematically overlooked
element of data centre security
Although it’s the cyber risks and cybersecurity
initiatives that are making the big headlines
at the moment, Smith urges that physical
security is equally as important.
“When you consider the current climate,
we’ve seen geopolitical instability, we’ve
got rogue states, we’ve got nation states
with malicious actors, and we know that
data centres sit under critical national
infrastructure. They’re a genuine threat
or a genuine target for nation states.”
Data is being increasingly targeted. But
despite this, Smith explains that physical
security is systematically overlooked in favour
of its cyber cousin. “I think that physical security
is overlooked 9 times out of 10,” Smith asserts.
“For example, what’s not so clear is what
we should be putting into a site (in terms
of the software platform, or from a device
perspective, such as the cameras). And
I think that’s where you have to do the due
diligence on the suppliers and understand,
have they got the required ISO certifications?
How do they deal with known vulnerabilities?
Do they publish them? Do they take cyber
vulnerability seriously? Do they go through
independent cyber testing?”
“They’re the things that give you the
confidence that you’re then working with
a manufacturer or supplier who essentially
is working from the same hymn sheet as
you are, both from a compliance perspective
and from a cybersecurity perspective.”

The next wave of physical

security technologies
Improvements in data collection and
analytics capabilities, and the technology
required to gather this information, are set
to drive major advancements in physical
security technologies.

[Link] 97
 “There’s a significant evolution with When it comes to perimeter detection,
hardware. I think cameras are going to keep traditionally, video systems have been
increasing in quality, but it’s the intelligence widely used to detect if somebody is going
that you now get with these devices where over a fence. But, the primary problem
we’ll see the biggest impact,” Smith asserts. with that approach is false alarms.
“So now they aren’t just giving you an “The more false alarms you get from
image. Now, you’re seeing analytics get animals or wind, the more the integrity of
a lot better within cameras. This means we’re those alarms diminishes. So, with technology
getting more information about what’s going like radar – and, more importantly now, lidar
on, we can detect things, we can tell a video – being more accurate, becoming more
management system to look for specific cost-effective, and something that can be
things and set alerts for specific things.” deployed at scale, we’re seeing that these

98 June 2023
 DESIGN & BUILD

seeing an aggregation of more data

coming into physical security.”
“There’s a lot more information that we
can take now, and we can give a far better
view of situational awareness to operators,
rather than just expecting them to look at
200 cameras on the screen and hope that
they notice something’s happening.”
While the wave of new data-driven
technologies significantly improves
security performance, to ensure
the maximum degree of security in a data
centre site, physical equipment needs to
be evaluated for its cyber risks, too.
As part of your software platform, you are
essentially connecting all of these devices
onto an open platform. What’s more, you will
inevitably need to work together with third
parties to install and connect these different
pieces of hardware. When this happens,
it multiplies the cybersecurity threat.
“So, we have to build tools within our
software to ensure that we are, firstly,
ensuring that those products are up to date
and don’t have any vulnerabilities that we
know of. Then, secondly, if they do, we can
notify the data centre security department.
So, we dynamically monitor these devices,
to ensure that they are immediately
patched, so that we don’t introduce any
major risks within the security system.”
traditional technologies (such as fence-side “Again, it’s about ensuring that the systems
detection and optical) are being replaced that are in place are trusted. This means
by lidar technology.” that the manufacturers are trusted, and the
These new technologies, coupled with integrators (the people who are delivering
more advanced data analytics capabilities, that) are trusted. So, you have that full chain
are driving far more efficient and effective of custody, that full chain of trust.”
physical security solutions. “There is no one silver bullet, but what
“So, we’re seeing those different I think we need to do is more due diligence
types of technology now being used for on suppliers that aren’t typically IT related.
security, we’re seeing analytics being used Sometimes, I think physical security is not
for security, and we’re seeing analytics seen as an IT platform, whereas in reality it’s
becoming a lot more reliable. We’re also a fully IT system. It is part of the IT system.”

[Link] 99
100 June 2023
 GLOBAL SWITCH

GLOBAL SWITCH
LONDON,
A BLUEPRINT FOR
A GREENER FUTURE
WRITTEN BY:
MARCUS LAW

PRODUCED BY:
LEWIS VAUGHAN

[Link] 101
 GLOBAL SWITCH

Global Switch’s London

Campus located in the
Docklands, the capital’s
premier connectivity hub, is
home to the world’s leading
networks and cloud on-ramps

G
lobal Switch is an owner,
operator and developer of
large-scale, carrier and cloud-
neutral, multi-customer data
centres across Europe and
Asia-Pacific. Founded in 1998, today Global
Switch is one of the highest credit-rated
data centre companies in the world with
investment-grade credit ratings from Fitch
Ratings, Moody’s and S&P Global Ratings.
Global Switch’s portfolio compromises 13
world-class data centres that house a myriad
of organisations seeking high-specification
technical data centre space for their
mission-critical equipment.
“We have around 430,000 square metres
of floor space and are occupied by a broad
range of customers, global and national,
large and small including government
organisations,” says Matthew Winter, Global
Switch’s Chief Design Officer.
“The company's focus is on highly
resilient, central, low latency, network-dense
locations in prime city centre locations and
internet hubs close to customers on the
edge of financial and business districts,” he
adds. “Our data centres operate exclusively
in the Tier I markets of Europe and Asia-
Pacific and provide an ‘Always On’ service,
serving our growing customer base across
the two regions.”

102 June 2023

[Link] 103
 GLOBAL SWITCH

Global Switch’s state-

of-the-art London campus
Global Switch’s London campus is a state-
of-the-art data centre environment located
in the heart of the city’s connectivity-
rich London Docklands, with access to an
abundance of carriers and cloud providers.
The original home of London’s internet,
and in close proximity to Canary Wharf and
the City of London, the Docklands area
continues to attract global businesses seeking
resilient, highly connected data centres, with
Global Switch central to this hub.
The Global Switch London campus was
established in 1999 with the redevelopment
of the historic Nick Grimshaw-designed
former Financial Times newspaper
printworks, creating the London North data
centre, explains Adam Eaton, Global Switch’s
Executive Group Director for London.
“The campus grew in 2002 with the
launch of the 12-floor, purpose-built London
East data centre with over 65,000 square
metres of space,” he says. “The campus is
fantastically positioned, only a stone's throw
from the financial district of Canary Wharf
and located on the site of London’s earliest
network and connectivity hub.”
While other data centre hubs have sprung an operations team that has a pinpoint
up in other London locations, the Docklands focus on health and safety and operational
area is still the capital’s premier connectivity performance.”
hub with the largest availability of networks
and cloud on-ramps, Eaton comments. “The Extending and expanding
Docklands hub continues to see significant the London campus
data centre development and has available Global Switch’s London campus, which
power, unlike Slough and other areas west of enjoys allocated power in excess of 125MVA
London where new power coming to market and has, for a number of years, purchased
is already reserved,” he says. 100% renewable electricity to cover Scope
“In terms of performance, Global Switch 2 emissions, is currently in the midst of a
has operated data centres on the London redevelopment programme.
campus for nearly 25 years,” Eaton assets, Both London North and London East are
“developing a wealth of knowledge and in the process of redevelopment that will
experience that has permeated through deliver additional highly energy efficient, low

104 June 2023

 MATTHEW WINTER
TITLE: CHIEF DESIGN OFFICER

Matthew joined Global Switch

in 2014 and has held several
roles, including Engineering Director
and Group Projects Director before
being promoted to Chief Design
Officer in 2020. He started out as
a design engineer in 1990 working
in leading engineering consultancy
practices, and holds a Master’s degree
in Intelligent Buildings as well as a
Bachelor’s degree in Building Services
Engineering Design & Management.
He is also a Chartered Member of
CIBSE and an accredited Uptime
Tier Designer. Since joining Global
Switch Matthew has extensively been
involved in the design and engineering
of Global Switch data centres. As Chief
Design Officer, Matthew sits on the
Executive Committee.

“In terms of
sustainability, it is
better to redevelop,
reducing unnecessary
EXECUTIVE BIO

emissions of already-
built forms than
replace them with new”
MATTHEW WINTER
CHIEF DESIGN OFFICER,
GLOBAL SWITCH
 GLOBAL SWITCH

power usage effectiveness (PUE) suites. The “The campus is fantastically

campus has been built to support a variety
of different customers, from hyperscale positioned, only a stone's
multi-megawatt deployments through to
enterprise and single rack colocation.
throw from the financial
Furthermore, the campus will be further district of Canary Wharf as
extended and enhanced with the planned
development of a third data centre on the well as the City of London,
campus, London South, which is expected to and is located on the site of
come online in the next few years.
“We started the redevelopment London’s earliest network
programme with London North and
upgraded space within the data centre to
and connectivity hub”
provide high-density technical suites with
increased IT power,” Winter comments. ADAM EATON
EXECUTIVE GROUP DIRECTOR,
“These spaces reflect our reference design GLOBAL SWITCH
principles with no raised floor and flooded
room cooling, delivered by a fan wall product.
These initial spaces are already contracted to
a global Enterprise customer. The completion
of the Phase 1 redevelopment will see the
delivery of additional high-density suites.”
Similarly, in London East, Global Switch has
a power densification programme which will
see existing suites refurbished to provide higher
power density. “This commenced with a single-
floor feasibility study which was immediately
let to a hyperscale customer,” Winter
comments. “Through this first phase, we have
extended the study to look across the whole
data centre to offer further improvement in
terms of PUE and high-density space.
“While London North and London East
are focused on continuous improvement,
we also have our planned new development
London South which will sit alongside
our other data centres as a part of a
single campus but with diverse utility
and connectivity services,” adds Winter.
“This state-of-the-art data centre will
complement the other data centres on our
campus and expand upon the IT power and
services that we can offer.”

106 June 2023

Redeveloping a working
Grade II* listed data centre ADAM EATON
Originally designed by Sir Nicolas Grimshaw TITLE: EXECUTIVE GROUP
for the Financial Times as a printing press DIRECTOR, LONDON
facility, and opened by then-Prime Minister
Margaret Thatcher in 1988, Global Switch’s Adam joined Global Switch in
London North site was converted into a data 2022 having previously owned
centre in 1999, transforming the building and lead his own cloud and managed
from communication in the printed form to hosting provider. As Executive
one of digital communication. Group Director, Adam is responsible
With the building named a listed building for maintaining a best-in-class
in 2016 by Heritage England on account of operational environment for the
the standing of the architect, there were London Campus while continuing
a number of challenges faced by Global to drive business development, new
Switch when it came to redeveloping a live initiatives and new developments,
data centre in a historic building. including the redevelopment of
London North and London East and
the development of a third data
centre on the campus, London South
which will increase the campus by
a further 27,000 square metres to
around 115,000 square metres.
EXECUTIVE BIO
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 Global Switch London,
a blueprint for a greener future

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2030
Target to purchase
100% renewable
electricity across all
of Global Switch’s
data centres

110 June 2023

 GLOBAL SWITCH

“Redeveloping existing data centres

means that they are generally operational
and so the works need to be meticulously
planned to avoid any consequential
downtime,” Winter explains. “This means
that projects can sometimes take more time
to complete when compared to new builds.”
“With London North, it meant that we
could not modify the façade nor a spine
wall inside the building, which gave us some
challenges adding to the complexity of the
project. Nonetheless, the data centre has
been upgraded to a high standard including
the entrance.”
One of the most significant challenges
when redeveloping the site was
strengthening the floors which required
additional structural foundations to be
installed in an operational environment, all
while restricting vibration.
“Great care has been taken to look at the
plant loadings on the roof while replacing
the two historic cooling systems with a new
system of free-cooling chillers,” Winter
describes. “In all, we have received very
positive reviews of the already-let new space
that has been created that will ensure the
building continues to be suitable to meet
current and future demands.”

Energy efficiency programmes

at the London campus
Sustainability is a fundamental part of Global
Switch’s business, which is continuing to
reduce its carbon footprint across its global
portfolio. All new European developments
target a minimum of BREEAM ‘Very Good’
with a PUE of less than 1.2 and all Asia-Pacific
developments target a minimum LEED
‘Gold’ with a PUE of less than 1.4, as well as
other local sustainability certifications.
Global Switch’s London campus, in
particular, has been subject to a number of

[Link] 111
 GLOBAL SWITCH

energy efficiency initiatives, which are also

being rolled out to Global Switch’s other sites,
starting with its other European data centres.
“In London North, we replaced the two
legacy cooling systems with one common
system comprising free-cooling chillers,”
Winter explains. “We also replaced all the
CRAH units within technical suites and
elevated the temperature of the water
that is used as the medium to circulate
cooling to the suites while also raising the
leaving air temperature from the computer
room air handlers to the servers under a
supply air control strategy to reduce energy
consumption; the data centre had historically
been developed with return air control.
“In the redeveloped spaces where we
have fan walls installed, the design has been
validated by CBRE meaning they calibrated

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112 June 2023

their virtual twin of the infrastructure using builds,” he says. “In this respect, we have
the Romonet software against the installed been piloting a new BREEAM scheme for the
plant which will at full load achieve an fit-out of our data centres, which has in the
annualised PUE below 1.3. past only been applied to new builds.”
“As part of this European-wide programme A number of steps have been taken to
we aim to power intensify vacant suites as meet Global Switch’s targets of reducing
the power requirements of customers today carbon emissions and environmental impact.
are often much higher than they were 5-10 “We have set a target to purchase 100%
years ago: 10kW racks are not uncommon renewable electricity across all our data
and equate, depending on their layout of up centres by 2030 for both our infrastructure
to 3,000 watts per square metre. and the customer IT load and in 2022,
As Winter explains, Global Switch is we purchased 78% of renewable energy
embracing redevelopment rather than against our total electricity consumption,”
solely focusing on new builds that are says Winter. “We are presently reviewing a
also underway, reducing unnecessary science-based target with the aim of limiting
emissions and helping the company meet temperature to 1.5° based on an ICT sector
its sustainability goals. methodology for Scope 1 and 2 to achieve
“In terms of sustainability, it is better to a near-term target for 2030 and so we are
redevelop, reducing unnecessary emissions well on our way to achieving this. Our next
of already-built forms than replace them challenge is to further understand our Scope
with new, which is why redevelopment 3 emission reduction and we need to work
should be showcased instead of just the new closely with our partners to achieve this.”

[Link] 113
 GLOBAL SWITCH

“We have set a target to purchase 100% renewable

electricity across all our data centres by 2030 for both
our infrastructure and the customer IT load and in
2022, over 75% of our data centres had achieved this”
MATTHEW WINTER
CHIEF DESIGN OFFICER,
GLOBAL SWITCH

Key partners helping

enable sustainability goals
When it comes to enabling these
sustainability ambitions, Hi-Ref and Jaeggi
have been key partners for Global Switch,
supplying critical cooling equipment in its
new data centre in Frankfurt and beyond.
“Both Hi-Ref and Jaeggi have been key
partners who have supplied critical cooling
equipment in our new Frankfurt North data
centre and their partnership will continue
with the expansion of new developments
and our ongoing redevelopment
programme,” Winter describes. “The Jaeggi
hybrid coolers are a key workhorse in our
cooling reference design and help us to
achieve potential free-cooling for over half
the year. Hi-Ref, while supplying CRAH units
in Frankfurt North, has also been assisting
us in the analysis of raising the chilled water
temperature in our existing data centres
through the redevelopment programme.”
To achieve its Scope 3 goals, Global
Switch’s partners are key to achieving its
goals. “The supply chain represents the
majority of our Scope 3 with Fuel and Energy
Related Activities (FERA) also being a key
proportion,” Winter adds. “We are aiming
to work closely with our partners to identify
where the embodied carbon savings can
be made while still achieving the objective
output. I have been encouraging partners

114 June 2023

 GLOBAL SWITCH

through our briefs that they provide

Environmental Performance Declarations
(EPDs) but accept there is a transition period
for these to become common practice.”

Global Switch to help drive

future connectivity needs
These are exciting times for Global Switch,
with a sale process underway and significant
developments planned and ongoing across
the global footprint.
“In 2022, despite the macro volatility as a
result of the war in Ukraine, the energy crisis
and broader geo-political concerns, Global
Switch demonstrated the resilience of its
business model, which stands us in good stead
for the next 12 to 18 months,” Eaton explains.
Significant growth in the sector of data
and cloud computing and the growing
adoption of applications from SaaS, PaaS
and IaaS to mobile payments and gaming
and video streaming will continue to
drive significant data centre demand.
“Furthermore,” Eaton adds, “the growth
of data-generating devices, such as smart
meters and autonomous vehicles, as part
of the Internet of Things, and 5G system
deployments are new sub-sectors that will
undoubtedly require vast volumes of data.
‘Always On’ data centres and high levels of
connectivity, both of which Global Switch
is well known in the market for, are critical
components to deliver that demand.”
Global Switch is continuing with its proven
strategy of redeveloping and densifying
existing data centres and building new
data centres in existing Tier 1 markets,
in particular, adjacent to existing data
centres. “This,” Eaton adds, “will deliver the
required capacity to support growth in our
existing customers as well as the forging
of significant new relationships across the
Hyperscale and Enterprise sectors.”

[Link] 115
 GLOBAL SWITCH

“Global Switch has operated data centres on the London

campus for nearly 25 years, developing a wealth
of knowledge and experience that has permeated
through an operations team that has a pinpoint focus
on health and safety and operational performance”

ADAM EATON
EXECUTIVE GROUP DIRECTOR,
GLOBAL SWITCH

With increasing scale, Global Switch with local communities, there are significant
continues to evolve and the near future developments in sectors new to the
will see an even greater focus on ESG industry which are driving data adoption and
responsibilities. “We continue to evolve enterprise architectural challenges.
our operational processes to drive an ever- “New technology often requires greater
evolving ESG strategy and our comprehensive cooling capacity and we are seeing this
development and redevelopment with the growth of liquid cooling, however,
programmes will ensure that, over the next any development will require a laser-sharp
period, the business focuses on many of the focus on environmental impact,” Eaton
topics that are front of mind in the world.” comments. “As our industry matures, I
believe governance levels will increase and
Significant developments all that we do as an industry will become
driving data adoption more public and under greater scrutiny.
From new technologies to more integration New developments will require more

116 June 2023

integration with local communities and delivering more proactive, condition-based
an understanding of how the buildings maintenance programmes that will extend
integrate with the surrounding areas in the life of equipment while reducing the
which they exist will be paramount. We environmental impact of maintaining for
must explore how we can utilise our waste the sake of maintaining,” he concludes.
heat more effectively and to a greater good, “Automation within the campus will increase
for example utilising our waste energy to and we will become smarter at managing the
deliver local heating benefits.” infrastructure, allowing for greater operating
Innovative technologies such as AI and temperatures, improved efficiency and
automation will also be used to drive changes reduced environmental impact.”
in data centres globally, Eaton predicts.
“Operationally we will become smarter,
utilising AI to drive changes to the maintenance
regimes in the data centre campus and

[Link] 117
 CLOUD COMPUTING

The factors driving

the cloud repatriati
Speaking with Jake Madders, the Co-Founder and
Director at Hyve Managed Hosting, we explore what
is fuelling the emerging trend of cloud repatriation

T
WRITTEN BY: he global cloud computing market
JOSEPHINE WALBANK is set to surpass $1tn by 2028
– a shift that’s redefining the world
of both businesses and employees at
a phenomenal pace.
But, despite the extraordinary popularity
of cloud technologies, the current global
climate is putting increasing pressure on
businesses to cut down their infrastructure
costs. And, one of the most effective ways to
do this is to repatriate workloads away from
public clouds. In fact, a recent 451 Research
survey found that a staggering 48% of
respondents had repatriated at least
some of their workloads.
Jake Madders is the Co-Founder
and Director at Hyve Managed Hosting,
a fully-managed global hosting provider.
Alongside fellow Co-Founder Jon Lucas,
Madders has been instrumental in driving
Hyve’s phenomenal pace of growth, from
small-scale start up to award-winning
cloud leader in just 16 years.
In an exclusive interview with Data Centre
Magazine, Madders shares his insights into
the rise of cloud repatriation and into what
is driving this widespread trend.

118 June 2023

ion trend

[Link] 119
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 CLOUD COMPUTING

JAKE MADDERS
TITLE: CO-FOUNDER & DIRECTOR
COMPANY: HYVE MANAGED HOSTING

Jake Madders, along with his

business partner Jon Lucas,
founded Hyve Managed Hosting, in 2001.
Since then, in his role as Director, Jake
EXECUTIVE BIO

has facilitated the growth of Hyve from

a small start-up to a hugely successful
managed cloud hosting company with
a global customer base. With a long and
established career in IT, Jake previously
worked in infrastructure, internet services
and architecture for an array of tech
companies, including Microsoft, before
founding Hyve.

The growth of Hyve From here, Hyve was founded with the
Madders and Lucas initially worked together focus of creating a much more attentive,
at Microsoft, with Madders helping to run bespoke, flexible and personable solution.
the MSN infrastructure, while Lucas’ work “We realised that all of our clients want
was more code-based. private cloud infrastructure, which offers
“But over time, we sort of got together, really secure, single tenant servers. And
because we knew we could create they want that bespoke management layer,
something better,” Madders explains. where we are looking after them and working
“The bills at Microsoft for running all with them. They can just pick up the phone
their MSN infrastructure were just insane, and speak to somebody who knows them
and we could see how the same thing and their platform,” Madders adds.
could be done at a way smaller price point. “That’s what you don’t get from the
And that’s what gave us the idea for big hyperscalers – you’re on your own.
a hosting company.” And that’s a key repatriation point.”

[Link] 121
 CLOUD COMPUTING

The increasing pace of cloud repatriation

Cloud repatriation is the term coined for
when companies move away from the
public cloud in favour of either private
cloud or on-premise solutions. It’s a trend
that is rapidly growing in momentum,
and is proving key to fuelling the next
phase of growth for Hyve.
“Private cloud is huge, and this
repatriation trend is such a big factor
in our sales currently,” Madders says.
“I think it’s because, when they’re
building an app or a site, people start off
with their online infrastructure, and their
developers just automatically build it and
deploy it to Amazon or Microsoft. In fact,
in a lot of cases, the actual place where
they’re writing the code has buttons that
push straight out to Microsoft Azure
– you just press a button and it goes
and deploys immediately.”
Although this is ideal for a developer, it
quickly proves problematic for businesses.
“But, when you roll that from
development into production (and the
developers leave them to it), at that point,
that’s when it becomes very challenging
to run. Then, they usually have to
recruit a third party to actually run the
infrastructure,” Madders explains.
“So, they’re paying Microsoft or Amazon
to host it, and then they pay another
company to run that infrastructure for
them. Since there are so many variables
and it’s all self-service, you’ve got to
know exactly what you’re doing.”
Then, when it gets to the point where
there is an issue – or even an outage – and
the company realises that there is no one
in the team who knows how to resolve
the issue within the infrastructure, the
appeal of repatriating to a managed host
becomes clear.

122 June 2023

“That’s where the
repatriation bit comes
in – because you’ve
been burned, and so
you start looking to
find a managed host”
JAKE MADDERS
CO-FOUNDER & DIRECTOR,
HYVE MANAGED HOSTING

“When you’re load balancing and you’re

directing traffic between sites, it’s not that
simple. Say in the instance that something
happens to your primary data centre, you
want the second to take over. When you get
under the hood of that stuff, you’ve got to
know what you’re doing. And it’s very hard
to run that stuff on the big platforms, unless
you really know your thing or you’re paying
a third party.”
“This is one of the key drivers to cloud
repatriation. It often comes from the
situation where your developers have put
something live for you, that you don’t really
know how to run or control, so you have
to contract a third person. When you go
to a managed host, obviously, we do all
of that work for you.”

Support, compliance and budget

management in a cloud-first world
One of the critical – and increasingly
sought-after – advantages of a boutique
host environment is that the customer
support is both personally tailored and
readily accessible.
“That’s where the repatriation bit comes
in, because you’ve been burned, so you
start looking to find a managed host.”

[Link] 123
 CLOUD COMPUTING

One key example of the benefits of this at the moment. There’s a big trend of cloud-
bespoke approach and one-to-one support first strategies. So, most IT departments are
can be seen in the case of compliance. automatically looking for cloud solutions.”
“We can tick the boxes for every single “But, a lot of companies are seeing that
type of compliance there is. We’ve got and they’re concerned, because right now,
a department that does all of that for our people are tightening up their purse strings.
clients,” Madders adds. Power prices are going up, and actually,
“A lot of our clients need a certain type the hyperscalers are putting their prices
of compliance requirement, and you can’t up as well.”
really do that with the public cloud.” With prices skyrocketing across the
Another critical factor driving the rise board, businesses are becoming increasingly
in cloud repatriation is the increasing concerned by the fact that, with the public
importance of cost management. cloud, they can’t predict their monthly cost.
“There is huge growth and it keeps getting So, in a climate where budget concerns take
bigger. I mean, everybody’s going to the cloud top priority, this is leading more and more

124 June 2023

 businesses to look for someone
“Right now, people are with a fixed billing model.
tightening up their purse “The industry has a trend of people
trying to cut costs and choose solutions
strings. Power prices are that predict their yearly hosting bills,”
going up, and actually, Madders explains.
“So, another big reason behind repatriation
the hyperscalers are is because they want to know, ’What is my
putting their prices three-year contract going to look like?’.
And we can tell them exactly, to the pound.
up as well” It is a fixed billing model that we provide for
them. And then, if they need to, they can
add further resources later on down the line.
JAKE MADDERS
CO-FOUNDER & DIRECTOR, But that occurs because they’re growing,
HYVE MANAGED HOSTING so they’re happy to do so.”

[Link] 125
LOGO

AD FEATURE
WRITTEN BY:
LUCY BUCHHOLZ

PRODUCED BY:
LEWIS VAUGHAN

THE FUTURE OF
SUSTAINABLE
DATA CENTRES
126 June 2023
 QTS

Sustainability
features surrounding
QTS’ Eemshaven
mega data center

[Link] 127
 QTS

Travis Wright, Vice President of Energy

and Sustainability at QTS, discusses how
data centres impact the planet while 2003
Year Founded
showcasing QTS’ pioneering programmes
873

Q
Number of Employees
TS Data Centers – a leading
provider of enterprise,
hyperscale, and US
government data centre
solutions – is a pioneer in
delivering sustainable IT infrastructure
putting its Environmental, Social and
Governance (ESG) report and sustainability
goals at the heart of everything it does.
Travis Wright, Vice President of Energy
and Sustainability at QTS, has been leading
the company’s sustainability initiatives since
2018, advocating for greater focus to be
placed on carbon-free energy while leading
QTS’ philanthropic ventures.
Wright reflects on how data centres can
be used as a force for good while highlighting
ESG initiatives and goals that set the
company apart from others.

The future of sustainable energy

Data centres have become an integral part of
our lives. These sophisticated buildings full
of computers manage the information we all
use virtually every minute of the day, (think
navigation, voice and video streaming, social
media, text, email, etc) and as such they have
become massive consumers of energy on
behalf of society as a whole.
As an industry, it is essential for data
centres to maintain and expand their focus
on decarbonising the grid. They have the
potential to either positively or negatively
impact this goal making it imperative to take
responsibility in aiding this endeavour.

128 June 2023

[Link] 129
“WE DO A LOT OF
PHILANTHROPIC WORK AND
VOLUNTEERING, WHILE ALSO
ENSURING WE’RE ACCURATE
AND TRANSPARENT WITH
OUR ACCOUNTING AND
BUSINESS PRACTICES”
TRAVIS WRIGHT
VICE PRESIDENT OF ENERGY
AND SUSTAINABILITY, QTS

“When QTS decided to take on the offsetting it with renewable resources such
challenge of sustainability, we did it with as solar and wind.”
an open mind and the need to provide That commitment has since shifted
total transparency and public disclosure from pure-play solar and wind renewable
for our employees, our customers, and our to carbon-free which includes nuclear and
shareholders,” Wright said. large-scale hydro. This shift is predicated
According to Wright, QTS’ board of upon the fact that data centres are
directors, led by CEO Chad Williams, was becoming so big that they are impacting not
adamant in the belief that it could create only the environment but the stability and
value for our investors and benefit society at resiliency of the utility grid.
the same time. “Solar and wind generate electricity
“After a comprehensive vetting process, in a less predictable way, referred to as
we determined our core environmental intermittent generation. When we go
pillars to be energy, water and waste. into a new market and introduce a large
We formalised key goals including a 200-400-megawatt data centre campus,
commitment to procure 100% of our power we are taking flat, predictable baseload
from renewable sources and we would do it energy off the grid. If we then turn around
by reducing the amount of utility power and and develop a solar or wind facility to offset

130 June 2023

 QTS

TRAVIS WRIGHT
TITLE: VICE PRESIDENT OF ENERGY
AND SUSTAINABILITY

Travis Wright is the Vice

President of Energy and
Sustainability. He pioneered QTS’
environmental and sustainability
strategies and has been the driving
force behind QTS’ expanding
sustainability leadership position. He
played a key role in the development
of QTS’ Environmental, Sustainability
and Governance (ESG) report – one
of the first in the data centre industry
– that documents QTS’ commitment
to procure 100% of its power from
renewable sources by 2025.
Under his leadership, QTS has
become one of the largest users of
green power among all data centre
companies and the 13th largest among
Top Tech & Telecom companies
the energy used with renewables, we are overall. Travis was instrumental in QTS
removing that flat, predictable baseload being awarded the prestigious GRESB
energy, and replacing it with unpredictable benchmark ranking QTS #1 among
intermittent generation. This causes data centres for ESG initiatives globally.
instability in the grid.
“We need to keep our eye on the ball,”
Wright adds, “if the goal is to decarbonise
the grid, then we need to do it in a
thoughtful way that allows us to serve
society without destabilising the grid. Until
we solve the storage problem, we need to
EXECUTIVE BIO

focus on carbon-free energy that provides

baseload energy.
“Carbon-free is the focus, but we still
intend to source the maximum amount of
renewable power possible. As an industry,
this challenge will be made possible once we
start to solve storage challenges associated
with energy from renewable sources.”
 QTS

QTS: The future of

sustainable data centres

WATCH NOW

“IT’S LESS TO DO WITH CORPORATE PROFITS AND MORE TO

DO WITH GOING OUT INTO THE WORLD AND CREATING
GOODS. IN A WAY, WE’RE LEADING THE INDUSTRY DOWN
A PATH AND ENCOURAGING OTHERS TO FOLLOW”

TRAVIS WRIGHT
VICE PRESIDENT OF ENERGY
AND SUSTAINABILITY, QTS

A holistic approach to
sustainable data centres
QTS prides itself on approaching sustainability
in a holistic way which is demonstrated
through QTS’ Freedom standard design and
building specification – the basis of all new
greenfield builds. This standardised design
accelerates rapid deployment of data centre
space and aligns with the logistical and
sustainability requirements of the world’s
most sophisticated companies who benefit
from Freedom’s modular approach and

132 June 2023

ability to pinpoint and optimise power and
cooling to specific spaces.
This includes Water Freedom as a key
feature. Water Freedom is the industry’s first
true zero-water cooling solution paired with
100% renewable energy making QTS’ data
centres some of the most water-efficient
data centres in the world.
“Previously, companies could do zero-
water cooling systems, but they required
a lot more energy,” Wright explained.
“This meant there was a trade-off
between being either energy-efficient or
water-efficient. Water Freedom uses a
low-pressure, pumped, refrigerant system
that uses outside air economisation to
deliver world-class energy efficiency
metrics, as well as using minimal water. It’s
a game-changer.”

Going above and beyond ESG goals

Technology companies are renowned for
having aggressive decarbonisation goals and
QTS is expected to match their standards in its
data centre builds. “Whenever we go into new
markets, we strive to achieve what others have QTS’ success-based giving programmes
never done before,” Wright explains. “It’s all The company has also introduced unique
about being good to society and our bottom “success-based giving programs” based on
line at the same time. We want to lead the the amount of energy contracted by each
industry and encourage others to follow.” customer.
Although sustainability means something While attending a sustainability
different to everyone, QTS places great conference in San Francisco, Wright
importance on their program being “financially, and his team met American Forests – a
culturally, and operationally” sustainable, to non-profit conservation organisation,
ensure the company achieves its ESG goals for dedicated to protecting and restoring
years to come. As a result, QTS is passionate healthy forest ecosystems.
about creating new initiatives that create value “We loved their mission, but we couldn’t
for stakeholders, while also benefiting society immediately come up with a way a data
at the same time. These initiatives consider centre company could work with a tree
QTS’ influence and impact on the environment planting organisation,” Wright explains. “As
through energy, water and waste while the team was brainstorming, we came up
addressing the company’s relationship with its with the idea of linking the success of QTS to
employees and communities. planting trees.”

[Link] 133
 QTS

“THERE ARE VERY WATER- “We measure our business in energy

and we sell based on kilowatts (kW). So, we
STRESSED AREAS IN THE developed a program that for every 100
WORLD, SO WE DECIDED TO kW that a customer signs with us, we would
plant one tree per month for the entire life
WORK WITH SOME OF OUR of their contract.
BEST SUPPLIERS TO JOINTLY “After doing the calculations, we realised
it was a good place to start – but we wanted
DEVELOP A SUPER-EFFICIENT to do more. So, we decided to go back in
METHOD OF USING ZERO- time and plant trees for everybody who’s
ever signed contracts with us in the past.”
WATER COOLING SYSTEMS” Five minutes into pitching the idea to Chad
Williams, QTS’ CEO, the idea was approved,
TRAVIS WRIGHT and Williams insisted that Wright and his
VICE PRESIDENT OF ENERGY team launch a similar project with clean
AND SUSTAINABILITY, QTS water resources in impoverished nations.

As part of QTS success-based

giving initiatives, pictured here
is a waterpoint established in
Burundi, East Africa

134 June 2023

 QTS

After some research, QTS partnered with also appreciate them. These initiatives are
World Vision to create a programme that so different from what our competitors
would supply three people with clean water are doing and our customers are telling us
for every 100kW sold. In addition, when a large they choose QTS because they’ll be doing
company signed a 12 MW deal or larger, QTS good in the world, while also benefiting
would build a water well in a community in a from highly sustainable data centre and IT
developing country, providing thousands of infrastructure services.”
people with access to clean water for decades. QTS’ passion for success-based giving did
QTS’ third success-based giving programme not go unrecognised. Last year, QTS won the
with the U.S. Dream Academy involves award for Best Initiative for Philanthropy and
sponsoring children of incarcerated parents in Corporate Giving based on the programs.
Dream Academy Learning Center programs. Wright says: “Winning this award meant so
Since its inception, QTS has sponsored more much to all of us, simply because it shows
than 40 children with great success. the positive impact we’re having on the
“Not only do these projects have fantastic world and demonstrates the importance of
repercussions globally, but our customers being good corporate citizens.”

Creative sustainability initiatives

Other unique QTS sustainability initiatives
are taking place in the Netherlands
where QTS has data centres in Groningen
and Eemshaven. In partnership with
WarmteStad, the sustainable utility company
for the municipality of Groningen, QTS is the
first to supply residual heat for a large-scale
sustainable district heating project.
“WarmteStad developed a way to capture
the heat generated by data centres and
use it to heat homes and buildings in the
communities including a university campus
situated nearby in the city of Groningen,”
Wright said. “The district heating system
takes heat directly from the data centre
to heat water that is pumped through the
existing hot water heating system in the
buildings in the community.”
It is estimated that the district heating
project will produce sustainable and
affordable heat for more than 10,000
households, buildings and knowledge
institutions in the northern districts of
Groningen by 2026. By heating with water,
buildings can operate without a natural

[Link] 135
 WHAT IS YOUR
VISION FOR THE FUTURE
OF DATA CENTRES?

“They’re just going to get bigger,”

Wright says. “Now, the world is
moving into a new era of technology,
with AI and autonomous vehicles at the
forefront. There are a lot of things that are
now cropping up as being the big drivers
of data, and that curve of data usage is just
exponentially growing.”
“So we’re getting more efficient in how we
build data centres, but ultimately, we’re going gas connection which significantly reduces
to be growing at a rapid rate. We’re going to CO2 emissions and supports Groningen’s
start seeing gigawatt-sized campuses for data environmental goal to be completely CO2
centres in the distant future.” neutral by 2035.
“Our electricity grid may not be able to This revolutionary system is much more
support that, so we will probably end up common in Europe than in the US, mainly
doing on-site preservation. We also may because the infrastructure is typically closer
have small-scale nuclear reactors on-site, together. The Dutch government advocates
in the next seven or eight years away in the these systems and therefore incentivises
US – less than that in Europe.” companies, so there is a third party taking
“I do think the carbon-free resource of the heat from QTS and delivering cold
generating electricity onsite is the future, in return. This cold return water allows
which I think it’s pretty exciting.” increased efficiency of the data centre
cooling system.

136 June 2023

 QTS

Another creative QTS sustainability

initiative addressing energy and water
conservation is the North Water initiative.
“Until recently, data centres in certain
parts of the Netherlands were cooled
using valuable clean public drinking water.
QTS’ Eemshaven data centre and Google
are now using North Water’s sustainable
‘industry water’ to provide energy-
efficient cooling for data centre servers
while freeing up millions of gallons of
clean drinking water for the surrounding
community,” Wright explained.
In addition, QTS recently launched the
data centre industry’s first sustainability
dashboard as part of its API-powered
Service Delivery Platform. It enables
customers to get a real-time view of
the environmental impact of their IT
infrastructure hosted in the data centre.
The dashboard allows customers to
see their building-level power usage
effectiveness (PUE) and water usage
effectiveness (WUE) data, typically
difficult to obtain but often required for
ESG reporting. Customers gain added
insight into their environmental impact
with access to data illustrating renewable
energy, power and water consumption,
“SIMILAR TO THE OTHER carbon footprint and carbon savings.
PROJECTS, EVERY TIME A “All of this gives our customers real-time
energy and water use that other companies
DEAL IS MADE BETWEEN ONE aren’t providing,” Wright explains. “This
AND 12KW, WE WILL SPONSOR allows us to open up the books and
to show that we’re being completely
A CHILD FOR A YEAR. SO FAR, transparent. More companies are required
WE’VE SPONSORED OVER to report on their sustainability footprints,
so they need our data to ensure they are
40 CHILDREN” being completely transparent.”

TRAVIS WRIGHT
VICE PRESIDENT OF ENERGY
AND SUSTAINABILITY, QTS

[Link] 137
 ONES TO W

Spanning a wide variety

of companies, roles, and
specialisms, we showcase
our pick of 10 ‘ones to watch’
in the data centre industry

WRITTEN BY: JOSEPHINE WALBANK

138 June 2023

 TOP 10

WATCH IN THE
DATA CENTRE
INDUSTRY
E
ven though the data centre industry is
enjoying a period of extensive (largely
unprecedented) success, the future
of the sector is by no means secure.
Many of the challenges that it faces
are shared by industries across the world
climate change, sustainability, supply chain
obstacles, and energy prices.
But, undoubtedly, one of the single
biggest threats to the sector is simply the
challenge of attracting new talent. The
combination of the talent shortage and the
widening digital skills gap are, at surface
level, simple obstacles. But, recent years
have proven that, without immediate action,
the situation could prove critical.
Thankfully, we are beginning to see the first
signs of resolution: DEI initiatives and greater
STEM training programmes are attracting the
next generation of data centre talent.
So, we wanted to use this issue’s Top 10 to
feature some of the exceptional young talent
in our industry, set to be amongst our next
wave of data centre leaders.

[Link] 139
 TOP 10

10
Sebastian Gierlinger
VP of Engineering
Storyblok

Sebastian Gierlinger is an
experienced developer, team
builder, and leader. He has
more than 10 years of experience

09
in CMS systems security, with
performance and usability his
primary focus within his
current role.

Kurtis Looby
Director of Mission
Critical, EMEA
Gleeds

Kurtis Looby is the Director of

Mission Critical for the EMEA at
Gleeds, a global real-estate and
construction consultancy. Looby
has extensive experience leading
the commercial management
of hyperscale data centre and
corporate real-estate projects.
Prior to joining Gleeds, Looby
worked at Rider Levett Bucknall
for four years, rising the ranks from
Assistant Quantity Surveyor to
Associate Project Cost Lead.

140 June 2023

08
Thomas Parker
Director of Operations
Iceotope

Thomas Parker has been working

with the data centre cooling
pioneer for almost seven years.

07
During this time, he has held
a number of roles, rising the
ranks to his current position
of Director of Operations.
Within his current position,
Parker plays a critical role in the
James Carmillet
development of Iceotope’s
Director of Cost Management
chassis-based precision immersion
cooling technology – solutions Business Critical
that are being deployed across Solutions
the global data centre industry.
James Carmillet has been working
with BCS Data Centres Limited for
over two years and took on the
Head of Cost aManagement role
at the end of 2022.
He currently oversees the
group-wide cost management
service for its global network
of clients. Carmillet also has
extensive experience in the fields
of contracting, consultant, and
client environments.

[Link] 141
TOP 10

Join the Event

Disrupting
Sustainability
6 - 7 September 2023
Business Design Centre, London

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 TOP 10

06
Rikke Dishington
Service Management
05
Laura Allwood
Coordinator, ITSM
Green Mountain Trainee Project Manager
Arcadis
Rikke Dishington has been working
with Green Mountain for the last Despite having only been in the
four years, initially starting out as industry for just over two years,
a Service Management Trainee, Laura has nevertheless had an
before being promoted to her extensive impact, working with
current role in 2020. clients from hyperscalers to
“Our vision and our values are enterprise facilities to bring new
our DNA. As a company, it should talent into the industry. To this aim,
run through our veins and should within her role, she has both led
feel as natural as breathing. So as internal training and conducted
a client, you can expect to see that school outreach programmes.
demonstrated in whoever you talk She has shared her industry
to at Green Mountain.” experience on a number of
podcasts (including Inside Data
Centre Podcast) and participated
in several panels at this year’s Data
Centre World, discussing data
centre careers and pathways.
“She is a future leader within
the data centre community and
a fantastic ambassador not only or
Arcadis but also for apprenticeships
and data centres in general,”
said James Rix, Project Director
at Arcadis.

[Link] 143
 TOP 10

04
Kimberly
Marreros Chuco
Business Programme Manager
Microsoft

Now the Business Programme

03
Manager for Data Centre Excellence
and Innovation at Microsoft,
Kimberly Marreros Chuco initially
started working with Microsoft as
an Intern in 2020. She then rejoined
the company the following year,
in the role of Business Programme
Eloise Cotton
Head of Sustainable
Manager for Data Centre Learning
and Mixed Reality.
Development UK&I
Marreros Chuco is a first- Schneider Electric
generation college graduate,
receiving her business major in With a background in sustainability
Management Information Systems research – and an MSc in
and Operations Technology from Environmental Technology from
Boston University in 2021. Imperial College, London – Cotton
She also works to mentor has extensive experience working
undergraduate university students, in the energy sector and facilitating
supporting new entrants to the its sustainable transition.
fields of programme management, And, as the Head of Sustainable
landing an internship as an Development UK&I at one of the
international student, and breaking world’s leaders in sustainable
into the industry with a non- energy, Cotton is already having
technical background. an extensive impact on the green
energy standards of the industry.

144 June 2023

02
Cameron Conn
AI Technical Manager
QiO Technologies

Conn is an AI Technical Manager

at QiO Technologies, an AI
sustainability start-up, which
supports energy-intensive
businesses in their work towards
reducing their energy consumption.
He has worked at the company
for four years, during which time he
has risen from a Graduate Software
Engineer to his current position.
Conn also held a critical role in
the team that developed QiO’s
newest product, Foresight Optima
DC+, a solution that recently
secured the title of Innovative
Product of The Year at this year’s
Data Centre World.

[Link] 145
TOP 10
 TOP 10

COMING SOON

THE TOP 100

COMPANIES
IN DATA CENTRE
Discover the companies leading the way,
setting the pace and inspiring global
business change.

Join the community Sponsor opportunities

Digital Content for Digital People

 TOP 10

WATCH NOW

148 June 2023

Rob Farrow
Head of Engineering
Profusion

Rob Farrow is Head of Engineering

at the data science consultancy
Profusion, which works with
clients including HSBC, first direct,
and B&Q to complete complex
data-intensive applications and
machine learning projects.
Farrow is responsible for
the successful delivery of data
projects spanning data lakes
to bespoke machine learning
products and a wide variety
of web applications. His role
includes not only ensuring that
all processes are adhered to, but
that they are fully understood by
the businesses, too. This includes,
but is not limited to, engineering
process adoption and building,
software development plans, pull
requests, branching strategies,
unit testing, and poker planning.
Prior to joining Profusion, Robert
was a Full Stack Data Engineer at
HTK, a Data Developer at Marsh,
and a Business Intelligence
Programmer at NHS Norfolk &
Suffolk Foundation Trust.

[Link] 149
SARADAN
DATA CENTRE SPECIALISTS

CONSULT
DESIGN
BUILD
MANAGE
G L O B A L E X P E R T I S E F O R
C O R E T O E D G E
C R I T I C A L F A C I L I T I E S

C L I C K T O D I S C O V E R M O R E