FOCUS CENTRAL EUROPE
Issue 7, Dec 09/Jan 10
Central Europe’s largest data center is a Hungary competitor
Despite being hard hit by the financial downturn, Budapest is home to the largest data center in central Europe. It successfully expanded to over 14,000 square meters during the depths of the crisis. By Andrew Donoghue.
operators in the US and Western Europe focused on a size-zero approach to cost and carbon, one central European state appears to have a more calorie-rich take on large-scale computing.
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Hungary opened the largest data center in central Europe last year, at an impressive 14,400 square meters. Run by Dataplex, a wholly owned subsidiary of incumbent Magyar Telekom, in turn owned by Deutsche Telekom, the new facility is actually a 5,600 square meter extension to an existing 8,800 square meter site built in December 2000.
Despite being opened amidst some of the worst fall-out from the financial crisis, the new wing is already fully occupied; in fact, that was one of the conditions of the expansion, admits the company’s commercial director, Alan Hawkins.
“The contract was signed in 2007. The only way I could get money from the parent company was to present a business case that from day one it would be fully let,” he says. “There was no room for speculation in the business planning at that point.”
GLOBAL-LOCAL CUSTOMERS Dataplex has close to 80 customers, which include Hungarian oil company Mol, which has all its main IT running at Dataplex, including SAP and billing, and Hungarian Postal company Magyar Posta, which has several hundred square meters of space, as well as international brands such as Vodafone and BT.
And despite the expansion and the financial crisis that has hit Hungary hard, necessitating a loan in October 2008 from the International Monetary Fund worth around £15.6bn, Dataplex’s customers have continued to pay on time. “One thing that has been apparent during the crisis is that none of our customers have not paid. This is a critical part of their infrastructure. It’s like the electricity, you are always going to pay that bill, so we haven’t
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hile the threat of stringent green legislation and the fall- out from the financial crisis has data center owners and
‘No room for speculation’
had any liquidity issues,” explains Hawkins. According to a data center pricing survey released by analyst company Tariff Consulting recently, Hungary has some of the lowest monthly per-rack rates in Europe at around 700 euros a month – although that figure has increased by around 10% over the last year. The Data Center Pricing 2010 to 2015 survey also outlines that Hungary has 11 major data centers comprising around 61,000 meters of floor space. With nearly a quarter of that, Dataplex has a significant chunk of the market.
SIZE IS EVERYTHING Hawkins says Deloitte runs its IT consultancy for 23 countries – from Estonia to Albania – out of Dataplex. “They choose a provider, sometimes it’s GTS Interoute or Magyar Telekom, but they tender it and get the best price depending on what they need from the carriers.
“You can’t get that same choice from your own office – you have limited options internationally. Basically, you would need
to connect here [Dataplex] and then go out – and that cost to connect is not cheap.”
GREEN FEVER On the issue of cost and efficiency, while Dataplex is under pressure to make its facility as financially sustainable as possible, says Hawkins, its customers haven’t really been caught up in the green IT fever that has enveloped a lot of businesses in Western Europe and the US.
“I have never had a customer come to me and say, ‘I will pay you more per month if you are more efficient’,” says Hawkins. “It has not really hit here, especially in this environment, with the financial constraints for companies to pay more – they want to cut the cost if anything,” says Hawkins.
That is not to say the green energy debate has passed Hungary by – around 5% of every electricity bill is channelled into so-called renewable energy projects, for example.
“If Nuclear power is carbon-neutral, then
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