FEATURE
Gerard Thibault, Chief Technology
Officer, Kao Data
constrained. Colocation providers now
seek new locations that allow greater
levels of scale but maintain close
proximity to key metro markets. Kao
Data Campus is within the UK Innovation
Corridor and is positioned to serve the
life sciences and research cluster of
Cambridge, while easily accessible to
London. Europe has seen an increase in
campus models in recent years as this
provides significant advantages in terms
of scalability. 40 billion connected devices, generating
79.4 zettabytes of data – the deployment
of digital infrastructure and the related
technologies will only increase, with
greater cloud adoption and a growing
requirement for Hybrid IT applications.
“Technologies, such as AI and Machine
Learning are seeing increased levels
of adoption but are power-intensive
applications and need to be liquid cooled.
Building, maintaining and refreshing
data centre infrastructure is not core
business for users of such technology.
The colocation market has yet to see
significant AI-supporting technology
deployed, although new facilities from
focused providers such as Kao Data
are the most efficient way to meet the
increasing AI and HPC demand. Dave Locke, EMEA Chief Technology
Advisor at World Wide Technology
(WWT), commented: “The boom has
multiple drivers. Business’ need for data
is ever-growing, as is their need for the
latest technology. Modern businesses
now process exponential volumes of data
and this has a huge computational cost.
It is this need to modernise and upgrade
that is driving the boom in European data
centres. As companies have to process
ever denser amounts of data to be
competitive, their need for modern data
centres grows in conjunction.
“In addition to large scale ‘data
warehouses’, businesses and service
providers are now making use of smaller
Edge data centres, which in turn drives
data centre growth.
“Data has become a valuable asset to
organisations as they seek to reduce
costs, increase productivity and
efficiencies, as well as create new revenue
streams. With the volume of data being
produced growing year on year – IDC
forecasts that by 2025, there will be over
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Issue 13
“At Kao Data, we believe that location,
access to power, environmental
sustainability and delivering value-added
services at a competitive cost will be the
key drivers for future decision-making.”
“Another factor is the desire for security,
both physical and cyber. If a business
needs to process highly confidential
data in a highly regulated industry where
harsh penalties exist for non-compliance,
then a data centre provides the most
secure method of doing so. If the
business controls the data centre, it can
ensure that the cybersecurity is as robust
as possible. A shared responsibility
model does not work for all industries.
Highly regulated companies such as
Dave Locke, EMEA Chief
Technology Advisor at World
Wide Technology (WWT)
banks will often feel the need to own and
control the whole ecosystem, leading
them to build their own data centres.
It can also put procedures in place for
physical security, locking down the data
centre and controlling who accesses the
facility and when, with caged secure
areas, smart card access and constant
camera monitoring.
“The location of the new data centres is
also important, as there is a desire for
the centre to be as close to the business
as possible, helping with compliance.
For companies with European operations
this means building data centres in that
jurisdiction, helping to drive the European
data centre boom. The proximity of these
new data centres is also a boost for
performance as companies seek to gain
every edge possible.” ◊
www.intelligentdatacentres.com