To undestand the data center market, look at the Apps!
NDC-GARBE 26/10/2022
Germany has been a primary market for cloud and hyperscale deployments in past decades. Its centralized geographical location, coupled with vast communication networks and secure land and power connections, played a pivotal role in attracting data center investments. Germany has also demonstrated its ability to deliver the required solutions consistently while maintaining the highest availability and quality.
Thus, the relationship and trust have grown within the hyperscales. The challenge for data center developers is to evolve with technologies and work with their customers on their technology and business goals. Currently, there is growth from hyperscalers, which are deploying services within key regions in Europe, especially in Germany, to keep up with the current and future demands
of their end customers.
THE 2ND WAVE OF DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION
While other countries are moving to more interconnected, decentralized, and autonomous systems, in Germany, the next wave of digitization is only at the starting point. The digitization process within enterprises has not yet fully matured, as companies run only a limited amount of applications on the cloud. Soon, organizations will experience and discover the full potential of hyperscale offerings, which will enable them to scale their business further in a short time. We will witness advancements and adoptions of new technologies and solutions, such as IoT, AI, and Machine Learning.
Those applications require reliable power sources to process, distribute and store a large amount of data. Furthermore, the generated data must be constant, instant, reliable, and accessible anywhere. To distribute relevant content and reach the end customer much faster, hyperscale and enterprises will drive Edge deployments as “satellite” data centers within each region in
Germany.
As already mentioned, Germany’s central location has not only played an essential role in the past but will continue to play it in further boosting the growth of each region. The excellent ecosystem of highly connected telecommunications networks will allow hyperscalers to reach any European location with full redundancies. In addition, some hyperscales are expected to integrate services and applications amongst themselves, opening new Availability Zones depending on current configurations.
INHIBITORS
In addition to the problem of a shortage of suitable land throughout Germany and particularly in Frankfurt we are witnessing a reduction in electricity due to the current geopolitical situation. Hence, collaboration with energy partners with renewables and alternative solutions will be paramount to maintaining growth within Germany.
Here, the challenge for data center developers is to provide alternative energy solutions. For example, fuel cell technology can act as a primary or secondary power source and provide the required resilience and redundancy in the short to medium term and until the current power grid is upgraded in 2026.
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?
To support the current and future growth of each hyperscale, it is important for data center developers to identify individual requirements and flexibly adapt to their business models and technical solutions. For 2023, three aspects should be considered:
- Alternative power solutions and resourcing: New and innovative ways to provide alternative and more environmentally sustainable energy sources need to be explored. One example is fuel cell technology, which can be used as a primary or secondary power supply and combined with cooling solutions that enable high production efficiency. These solutions will offer full redundancies and resilience, providing SLAs similar to the grid power. That will allow operators the flexibility and the speed to deploy services within certain availability zones currently under power constraints.
- Better understanding of customers’ technologies: To provide the right solution at the right time. As each customer seeks to improve and enhance the efficiency and latencies of their applications to reach the end customer faster, understanding the applications and solutions used in data centers is indispensable. In this way, data center developers are able to become trusted partners and can provide a tailored solution to support their customers’ core nodes of computing, production, storage, and edge/connectivity deployments.
- Consistencies on sustainability: Sustainability in digitization is imperative. It is not only about designing and deploying data centers that are as energy efficient as possible but improving every aspect of the solutions to meet set industry and government standards. For example, it is important to ensure that raw materials used for implementation can be recycled
and reused within the data center industry to have the lowest impact on the environment. Also, it is essential to focus on community sustainability by engaging in dialogue with initiatives, the community, and surrounding communities as early as the design stage of data center projects. By distributing waste heat, for example, local authorities will be able to reduce their dependence and consumption on the local grid.
This article was excerpted from the “Datacenter Outlook Germany 2022/23” published by GDA – German Datacenter Association in conjunction with the first German Datacenter Conference (September 2022).