Owing to the increasing importance of data and data storage for business continuity, the demand for reliable and cost-effective data centres is growing. The choice and requirements for a data centre are complex: the ICT developments are so rapid and unpredictable while a data centre has a service life many times longer than the ICT. Deerns helps clients to find the right balance between the different requirements and choices. Our project approach ensures data centres that generate maximum value for client organisations and specific questions.
Data centres require careful assessment
More and more companies are dependent on ICT for their continuity. One chooses to build a proprietary data centre depending on the scale, the aim of the ICT and IT processes and the criticality hereof. Four factors play a role when choosing a data centre. Reliability is essential. Due to the fact that ICT developments go fast and a data centre has an average life of 15 years, a second essential factor is flexibility. The ability to adapt a data centre to future developments. In conjunction with the above two criteria, you need to strike a balance between cost and added value to the organisation, in which it’s not just the question of whether an investment should be done, but also when. The fourth factor that plays a role is: how do we minimise the impact on the environment? Firms are looking for partners who can help them make the right decisions for their particular situation.
By valuing interests, we arrive at the ideal design
We know the primary processes of clients through and through. And we are used to working in critical environments such as clean technology, airports, control towers for aviation and operating theatres. In order to make the right decision for your specific requirements, we first identify and list what your requirements are. For a commercial data centre, the emphasis is often on cost effectiveness throughout its entire lifecycle.
In the financial sector, the reliability of a data centre is often the most important factor given the significant consequences of downtime. Based on this, we make a choice together with our clients, for a solution that best fits the specific situation and questions. In the course of which we also recommend which investments you should make now and which later. This way we provide an optimisation of costs on day 1, in the future, and thus throughout the entire life cycle.
In addition to new data centres, we also advise and assist clients with existing data centres. We look at how we can improve the operability and bring down operating costs. We also support clients in improving operational processes. We don’t only do this on the basis of audits but also, for example, on the basis of a substantiated payback time analysis.
Innovations
Deerns has been on the forefront of data centre developments in the past decades and has over time developed many innovations for its clients that are today considered as proven cooling solutions in many data centre projects. Already in 2004 Deerns executed upgrades at several facilities implementing adiabatic cooling techniques that enlarged the free cooling or ‘chiller free’ operation of these data centres. In 2006 Deerns developed the innovative cooling solution implemented for the Rabobank data centre (15 MW IT power) delivering an annual average PUE of 1.26.
Later in 2006 Deerns started with the development of KyotoCooling together with KPN. This delivered the first cooling technology that could be implemented for most data centre users with an annual average PUE as low as 1.15. In 2007 Deerns enhanced this technology through the replacement of the heat wheel by static plate heat exchangers (GC-DC©) which resulted in a lower peak PUE, lower investment costs and lower risks.
Furthermore, we successfully apply the knowledge and experience we have gained in recent decades, to other markets for the development of data centres, once the reliability has been proven. For example, since 2012 we have been cooling data centres using sea water, a technology that we already successfully applied in residential projects back in 2002.
Besides the above mentioned innovations, Deerns developed new management and control concepts, such as Cloud Control© and Guiding the Cloud©, for data centres with virtualized or cloud computing systems. These management and control concepts enable data centre owners to really harvest the potential savings in operational costs of the ‘cloud data centre’ infrastructure, and achieve this whilst improving the reliability of the data centre.
Deerns Expertise
Deerns has extensive experience in data centres, specializing in data centre facilities of large financial institutions, large internet service providers and telecommunication companies. Deerns has worked with over 50 different data centre clients located in over 10 different countries and several continents, designing over 350,000 m2 of white space, housing more than 1000 MW of IT power of which more than 350 MW has a PUE below 1.2. We have developed data centres with a white space area varying from a 100m2 up to the mega sized internet service provider data centres.
Our data centre group consists of more than 80 full time dedicated and highly qualified specialists, with a combined data centre engineering experience of over 500 man-years. These consultants and engineers can handle the specific, innovative and critical nature of data centre projects, and are aware of the most recent business and technological developments in the market.
Our Data Centre Services
We have all the expertise needed in-house, from the strategy phase through to decommissioning: whether it's about energy, security, reliability analyses, automation or preparation of the operational processes and maintenance strategy. All these factors make Deerns a leading global player in the market of high-quality data centres.
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