FOCUS COLT/VERNE GLOBAL TOUR
Issue 20, Feb/March
LAND OF VIKINGS AND DATA CENTERS
With the opening of its Iceland data center, Verne Global is being hailed as a pioneer. Also revealed was a deepening of the relationship between it and Colt, with both fi rms’ business models becoming clearer. Ambrose McNevin trekked to Reykjavik to explore the data center and business landscape
Iceland was settled by Vikings around the year 870. Today, delivering a data center to the island is less problematic I
t is just a few minutes down the road from the Keflavik International Airport in Iceland towards the capital Reykjavik that, if you look carefully, you will see
several nondescript warehouses, all beige in color. From the road it is impossible to see the security fencing that marks them out as anything special, but if you take the turn and drive the few kilometers to the entrance you will be met by a manned security gate.
This is Asbru in Reykjanesbaer, the site of Verne Global, one of the two main data center players in Iceland. The site is an ex-NATO facility consisting of several buildings – it has the potential to be scaled to 400,000 sq ft of data center space. Each building has the potential to be a standalone data center. Inside the main building Verne has a fully functioning facility in the form of a 500 sq m Colt Modular Data Center.
This was manufactured in the North of England, packed into 30 shipping containers, and delivered by boat and truck. From the dock
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it was transferred to the site and assembled. From factory fl oor to fi nal assembly took less than four months.
COLOCATION AT SCALE
Verne Global is building a colocation business that
offers green, connected data center
facilities that scale. The relationship with Colt involves not just the use of its Modular Data Center. Colt has also committed to making the Verne data center a Point of Presence (PoP), linking into its European network with connections to London and Amsterdam.
Sitting in a Viking Museum (there are many in Iceland) beneath the reconstruction of a traditional Viking vessel, Bernard Geoghegan, Executive VP of Colt Data Center Services, says: “The fact that the delivery to Verne and assembly in Iceland was the fi rst Colt Modular Data Center to be provided to an external customer certainly put an edge on the project. But it would be somewhat unfair to earlier projects that we delivered to say it presented particular engineering diffi culties. [Some of
Colt’s own data centers house the company’s Modular Data Center, including the fi rm’s site in Welwyn, just north of London].
“We’ve positioned ourselves well for those who want a data center solution that gives fl exibility. The point about the way the Colt Modular Data Center is designed is that it is a fully functioning facility, with all the attributes of a traditional data center, that can be manufactured, shipped and deployed.
“This is not a container but a raised fl oor, cold-aisle contained data center, cooled using outside air, with full UPS (uninterruptible power supply) backup.”
DESTINATION OF CHOICE
The Verne opening has sparked a good deal of interest in Iceland as a data center hub. Of the usual prerequisites mentioned in connection with data center developments, power, is a given. The facility is served by hydro and geothermal power stations. In fact, 99% of all power in Iceland comes from renewables.
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