In an email interview with the WHIR, Lisa Rhodes, vice president of marketing and sales at Verne Global, discusses the company’s recently announced 430,600-square-foot data center complex project in Iceland.
(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — With its low-cost and environmentally-friendly power resources, Iceland has been seeing growing demand for data center activity in recent years.
Earlier this month, wholesale data center developer Verne Global (www.verneglobal.com) announced it is converting a former NATO command center into the first international data center in the country.
KEF001 will be the first of four building phases, with the first phase of construction financed by equity investment from London-based charitable organization Wellcome Trust (www.wellcome.ac.uk).
The 430,600-square-foot facility is designed around LEED Gold standards to benefit from Iceland’s infrastructure and environment, using free cooling, renewable energy sources and constant power rates.
The facility will use the same innovative practices of HVAC and adaptive reuse as the world-class facilities that Verne Global employs in all its data centers. KEF001 will exceed the Uptime Institute’s Tier III standard for facility infrastructure.
The data center site will offer both redundant access to Iceland’s renewable power resources and the secured campus area, allowing for customized building solutions of up to 14,763 square feet of critical environment and up to 140MW of total renewable power.
In an email interview with the WHIR, Lisa Rhodes, vice president of marketing and sales at Verne Global, discusses the new international data center complex in Iceland.
The WHIR: What kinds of eco-friendly features will the data center have?
Lisa Rhodes: Due to Iceland’s abundance of hydro-electric and geo-thermal power resources, Verne Global’s power consumption comes from sustainable resources with limited carbon emissions. This gives us a very unique position within the industry as traditionally data centers have been one of the largest sources of Greenhouse Gas emissions. With our model, however, we are trying to change that and provide an alternative for the industry. In addition, Verne Global is also able to provide 100 percent free cooling all year round based on Iceland’s natural atmospheric cooling benefits. With an average high summer temperature of 50 degrees Fahrenheit and a low of 30 degrees Fahrenheit in the winter, the outside cool air is circulated into the data center facilities to keep them cool without any type of power-hungry air conditioning units.
What kinds of services will be offered out of this data center complex?
LR: As a wholesale data center campus, Verne Global provides the hosting, connectivity, security and power requirements for our customers to be able to offer services that are applicable to their business which can range from cloud computing to web hosting to banking just to name a few.
When are the other three building phases scheduled to be completed?
LR: We are currently expecting the first phase to be completed in 2010 and future phases will be built out as customers demand.
How many other data centers does Verne Global own and operate?
LR: Our first location is in Iceland as it met three key criteria for Verne Global in deciding where to put a data center – stable, low cost power resources; good connectivity in and out of the country and environmentally sustainable power sources. All three of these criteria are essential to our business model and down the road we’ll explore other locations that meet these criteria as well. Canada, for example, could be a strong possibility. The Atlantic provinces of Canada are looking to bring industry to the region and they have a great sustainable profile for their energy, being about 60 percent hydro powered.
Why is Iceland such a fast-growing market for data center activity?
LR: In the industry today, where you put your servers is changing and data centers are starting to become un-tethered from traditional Tier 1 urban locations. To Verne Global, Iceland is a very attractive location for the reasons I mentioned earlier – stable, low cost power resources; strong connectivity and environmentally sustainable power resources. We are the first ones setting up shop, but know there will be others behind us. The more companies that come, the better the networks will get and by 2013 when we reach the bandwidth capacity of transatlantic cables, Iceland will be an even better data center location.
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