Schneider Electric and Elite Partner Advanced Power Technology (APT) deliver data centre digital transformation project for Newcastle City Council. Introduction Schneider Electric worked in collaboration with its Elite Partner, Advanced Power Technology (APT) to deliver a data centre digital transformation project for Newcastle City Council and drive digital service continuity members of its constituency. The initiative included consolidation of existing data centre capacity, upgrades to the physical infrastructure and the deployment of next generation data centre infrastructure (DCIM) management software, which would improve reliability, increase energy efficiency and lower operating expenses (OpEx). Driving force and business/technology challenges, breaking conventional ideas The goal of the digital transformation project was to increase resilience and improve the ability of Newcastle City Council to deliver e-government services to the 300,000 citizens and businesses within its constituency. Applications hosted within the facility include council tax collection, social and library services, education and road traffic management in addition to support for other essential public service bodies such as the local National Health Service (NHS) and the Police. The new data centre greatly improves Newcastle City Council’s ability to ensure service continuity and drives efficiency for a lower total cost of ownership (TCO). “Previously, we were able to withstand a loss of power for about 20 minutes,” said James Dickman, Senior ICT Solutions Analyst, Newcastle City Council. “Now we can operate for three hours on UPS if required and can use our backup generator to provide alternative power in the event of a loss to our mains supply. It’s also reassuring to know that the data centre infrastructure is being constantly monitored, with alerts routed directly to mobile devices if events occur out of hours.” “With IT, connectivity and digital demands growing exponentially, the data centre plays a crucial role in e-government service delivery,” said Marc Garner, VP, Secure Power Division, Schneider Electric UK&I. “APT’s expertise in data centre design, build and installation have been pivotal in the success of this digital transformation project for Newcastle City Council, offering them greater resiliency and efficiency.” “As a public body we are always looking for ways to improve cost and energy efficiencies,” continued James Dickman. “Schneider Electric and APT were able to design and deliver a data centre solution that meets our needs and our expectations. The new facility enables us to meet our service commitments to all stakeholders while minimising the carbon impact of delivering IT services.” Solutions and customer benefits – going beyond marginal improvements The new and consolidated data centre replaced three legacy server rooms, each containing a number of disparate UPS and cooling systems, which were old and in need of maintenance. The Council chose Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure™ for Data Centres, an IOT-enabled, open and interoperable system architecture for its new integrated data centre. The system, designed and built by APT, consolidates the council’s entire mission-critical IT infrastructure in a single data hall, incorporating APC Netshelter™ Racks and data centre containment, Galaxy UPS and Power Distribution (PDU). To guarantee uptime in the event of a power outage, the Council also installed Schneider Electric’s modular and scalable Galaxy UPS’s in an N+1 redundant configuration, with extended runtime and a standby power generator. A key benefit of EcoStruxure IT Expert software is the ability for operators to monitor power consumption within each of the IT racks. With the new data centre designed to house all of Newcastle City Council’s IT and network devices in contained aisles, visibility of energy consumption and environmental data, together with insights provided by the software, enabled the power and cooling systems to be operated with optimum energy efficiency. Additionally, the software enables the facility to deliver cost-effective hosting services to other local bodies and businesses. Around 10% of the data centre’s real estate is leased out to other public sector organisations including HM Courts and the arbitration service, ACAS. By carefully monitoring the power supply to each rack, the Council can accurately charge for hosting services, producing a revenue stream that helps to offset its operating costs. “The monitoring and management capabilities of EcoStruxure IT has resulted in greatly improved visibility of the data centre operations and consequently offers a greater ability to proactively mitigate emerging issues,” said John Thompson, MD of Advanced Power Technology. “With more detailed insight into operations, Newcastle City Council can increase the resiliency of the IT Service delivery to improve the customer experience.” To ensure mission-critical reliability and real time visibility, APT also deployed EcoStruxure™ IT Expert, Schneider Electric’s open, interoperable and vendor-agnositc next-generation DCIM software, which would help to efficiency and provide real time monitoring, improved maintenance schedules and proactive alerts to any unexpected issues such as potential equipment failures or downtime. With the consolidation of three server rooms into one and the standardisation on Schneider Electric UPS systems, PDUs and racks as well as the overall management capability provided by EcoStruxure IT Expert, Newcastle City Council benefits from: 1. Mission-critical reliability – The new data centre greatly improves Newcastle City Council’s ability to ensure e-government service continuity for its 300,000 citizens, businesses and public sector services such as the NHS and Police. 2. Greater efficiency and lower energy usage – All hardware, including power, IT and cooling is integrated within a holistic architecture and managed for greater efficiency, thereby reducing electricity costs for a lower total cost of ownership (TCO). 3. Increased resilience – Operators can enjoy 99% uptime with a modular scalable reliable UPS system and 24/7 remote monitoring. 4. Lower OpEx – Operational costs are offset by renting out spare data centre capacity at competitive rates thanks to accurate system monitoring.

Interact: low carbon, circular, energy efficient data centre IT hardware optimisation

Q. What exactly is the product / innovation? Interact’s first of its kind machine learning algorithm assesses the energy draw and performance of a data centre’s servers and helps to optimise energy usage, associated carbon, supply chain emissions and cost. Specifically, the tool carries out component and rack level analysis of data centre IT hardware, then calculates the optimum number and configuration of replacement servers, and generates a clear report on best solutions for cost and for energy efficiency over time. Interact is a start-up based in Harrogate, UK that launched at the end of 2020. Providing vendor neutral, evidence-based reports that demonstrate the benefits of refurbished and remanufactured servers hastens the arrival of the circular economy in enterprise data centres. It optimises energy, calculates Carbon Usage Effectiveness, and reduces supply chain emissions. Q. How does it break conventional ideas or processes in its field? Industry background: Sustainable IT solutions specialist, Techbuyer researched the materials content of servers using information from the JRC committee informing the EU Ecodesign directive and Dell carbon footprint information. These sources revealed that servers contain more than one metric ton of CO2e to manufacture and also use a significant number of the 30 Critical Raw Materials identified by the EU as in low or politically unstable supply. With recycling technologies unable to recover anything near 100% of these materials (and none of the supply chain carbon), product life extension in the form of remanufacturing, reuse and upgrades is the best solution. The market operated under the assumption that new machines were more sustainable by default because of the high rate of performance gains with each successive generation (known generally as Moore’s Law). However, with the slow-down in Moore’s Law, Techbuyer saw an opportunity to carry out scientific research to call this assumption into question. Contributing to new research: Techbuyer IT Director Rich Kenny and Sustainability Lead Astrid Wynne contacted leading academic research into energy usage in relation to compute power with Rabih Bashroush of the University of East London (UEL). Together they developed a 2-year Innovative UK Knowledge Transfer Project (KTP) to establish the performance and energy draw of different generations of server and upgrade configurations. Expert developer and researcher Nour Rteil joined the team to carry out thousands of hours of benchmarking and analysis on multiple generations, brands and configurations of servers. The results of the research (recently published in the IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Computing) proved that not only were refurbished machines equivalent to their new alternatives but also an immediate past generation could outperform the latest with the correct upgrades. This lead to cost analysis of refreshing machines over five years old with various later generations. Return on investment was much shorter even with electricity usage factored in with certain older generations. Interact’s response: This information led to the development of the Interact tool, which used 400 pre-configured servers and 1400 pre-configured server records to assess performance in comparison with energy draw in data centres. The tool identifies the worst performing slice of a server estate and then suggests the best hardware to replace this with optimum energy efficiency gains and cost reductions, using machine learning to improve analysis as it goes. Interact team members were all part of the original research project. This research has turned traditional ways of thinking on their head and made the case for increased circularity. Whereas in the past IT managers believed that refreshing the IT estate with new servers would be more efficient by default, these experiments proved that this is no longer the case. Interact provides unique server recommendations to capitalise on these findings. Q. How does the product go beyond marginal improvements of something that already exists? Interact rethinks the way that people manage their IT infrastructure. It is the first tool of its kind to balance carbon avoidance with the use of refurbished severs (therefore reducing the necessity for new manufacture) with carbon avoidance through energy efficiency measures. In short, it enables data centre managers to reuse hardware without losing out on the energy bill. As different regions have different proportions of green energy in the grid, the tool includes the facility to change the carbon output associated with energy usage, which in turn affects the proportion of embodied energy performance. The rational for this is that servers are in the main made and assembled in areas where the energy mix still includes a lot of fossil fuel generation. Interact is also non-intrusive. No complex infrastructure is necessary unlike others on the market – users simply tell us what they have. The tool then carries out component and rack level analysis of existing infrastructure and generates vendor-neutral solutions. Finally, users receive a report with cost analysis and energy usage projections. These accurate figures help professionals to make the best decisions for their business. Q. How do customers benefit from it? Interact generates clear sustainable and business benefits for businesses. From our case studies we have provided savings of up to 53% on energy use, 48% on C02 reduction (scope 2), 80% reduction in scope 3 C02, and operational savings in excess of £1.1million pounds or 42% of estate cost. Using Interact’s first software tool, Techbuyer reduced 6 of their newer servers down to just 3 refurbished machines from a different brand. This enabled 17,429 kWh savings in energy draw, 4,460 kg CO2e reduction on the energy spend, 2,735 kg CO2e in supply chain carbon and £9081 p.a. in cost savings. The company was able to share best practice in a case study for a local climate change commission. Within the larger Techbuyer group, Interact training has been given to members of Techbuyer’s sales teams in order to deliver the best energy efficient solutions on their refurbished server solutions. It enabled customers to make the right choices on price, energy efficiency and return on investment over time, generating a solid business case as well as a quantifiable sustainability benefits. In addition, the IEEE paper delivered point by point, academically verified answers on the benefits of refurbished hardware. Q. What tangible benefits has the organisation seen as a result of the project's implementation? Interact is currently delivered in the UK and in Germany by partners in the resale and environmental consultancy channels. These include Data Centres 4U in the UK and High Knowledge GMBH, both of which have dedicated service portals on their websites. The Interact team has created user training videos in both English and German as part of the onboarding process of these partner companies. It has also collaborated with the partners to create cross marketing collaterals with dual branding. The start-up has also recently become a sub-partner on an international research project, Circular Economy in the Data Centre Industry (CEDaCI). CEDaCI brings together academics, industry experts and non-profits to increase circularity in the data centre sector across the UK, France, Germany and the Netherlands. Thought leadership is a big part of the Interact identity, and all three members of the Interact leadership team regularly write for the industry press and appear on panels and keynote addresses at industry conferences. Most recent examples of this are a keynote address at Data Center Dynamic’s Towards Zero Carbon event, and a policy overview in DCD magazine. Upcoming events include a panel discussion on Circular Economy at Data Center World Frankfurt. Q. What major challenges were faced during the project and how were they overcome? The perception that refurbished does not perform as well as new is a widespread belief in the IT industry. Overcoming this took thousands of server experiments, two years of research and an IEEE validated paper. There is also a lack of understanding about the cost of server inefficiency, which we have been helping to raise awareness of through events like Global Reman Day as well as quality research. On the technical side, one challenge was that there are limitations on upgrades possible in servers, which took extensive research into what is and isn’t possible, experiments, and the expertise of the research partner, Techbuyer. Whilst developing the tool we also had to ensure there was no bias in the server recommendations towards certain vendors or models. For that purpose, we made sure to include as many pre-configured server models from several vendors, and different price ranges, in the database. Having a large dataset of preconfigured servers safeguards the neutrality of the recommendations, which differ based on the specified data centre parameters and workload. An additional foreseeable challenge is making sure that the pre-trained machine learning model produces accurate estimates for newly released servers that are not included in the training set. For that reason, we plan to continuously train and improve the model whenever a new server gets released and tested (SPECpower_ssj2008 benchmark). This will guarantee accurate results for previous and new server releases, factoring in potential CPU advancements that will affect the servers’ performance and energy consumption.

Power Control boosts energy efficiency of Tier III/ Tier IV Data Centre, Blue Chip As data centre operators endeavour to push the boundaries of energy efficiency levels to reduce their carbon footprint and achieve a PUE ratio as near to 1.0 as possible, focus has turned to upgrading their most power-hungry equipment in the facility. After cooling equipment, old UPS systems using outdated technology are major contributors to compromising the optimum levels of efficiency. It is important to note that the current industry average PUE is 1.6, and older facilities are finding it more challenging to achieve this than new ones. Despite these challenges, Bluechip, a well-established Tier III and Tier IV data centre formed in 1987, prides itself on its green credentials and PUE ratio. By using suppliers who value their carbon reduction goal for their data centre equipment, Bluechip has been able to build and operate one of the most efficient data centres in the UK. Power Control has played an instrumental part in helping Bluechip achieve significant energy efficiency gains by presenting a high efficiency, transformerless UPS (uninterruptible power supply) solution to replace its 10-year-old transformer-based UPS systems which required a major service and battery replacement. Transformer based UPS have their place, but due to their component structure are less efficient than transformer free and modular technologies, therefore, maximising their efficiency is more challenging. Transformer based UPS can also limit scalability and inherently lead to inefficiencies, in particular in 2N+1 configuration where the load is often not large enough. Loads within data centres fluctuate and this needs to be accounted for within any power protection strategy. With UPS systems being a major contributor to PUE ratings, upgrading to new, more efficient technologies must be considered. Advances in transformerless, monolithic UPS technology not only give data centre operators greater max KW output, thanks to their unity power factor, but they have also proven their resilience. Following a site survey and operational assessment, Power Control confidently presented the Borri Ingenio Max solution as a direct swap out for the legacy transformer based units. In total three 400kVA transformer based UPS systems in a 2N+1 configuration, which were providing a maximum 640kW load due to their 89% efficiency have been replaced with three high efficiency 400kVA Borri Ingenio Max units in a 2N+1 configuration (the same as the previous) which provides up to 800kW maximum load due to the UPS unity power factor. Not only does this mean they are more efficient, but it also ensures optimal sizing. Power Control also presented the Borri Ingenio Max UPS system as the best solution because of Borri’s Green Conversion technology, providing continuous savings, high efficiency and UPS component life extension for the customer. The direct swap out and upgrade has contributed to reducing the data centres PUE ratio to 1.1. Which is believed to be the lowest in the UK and contributes to their overall goals of running one of the most energy efficient data centres in the UK. Thanks to Power Control’s expertise, all preparation was done in the week leading up to the swap out. Meaning that each parallel set of UPS, commission and changeover, was completed in a single day. Minimising any disruption for the customer. The new UPS installation also means Bluechip benefit from an ROI of under 5 years and at current load levels, the efficiency savings for Bluechip is approximately £20,000 per annum. The maximum efficiency of the Borri Ingenio Max is 96% so as the data centre grows, and the load increases so will Bluechip’s annual savings. Bluechip has also benefited from the space saving and lightweight advantages presented by transformerless technology, meaning their critical infrastructure takes up a smaller footprint in the facility.

Teledata Design & Build
Teledata have experienced a reported growth of nearly 30% during the start of 2020. The demand for Colocation server space has grown and as a result, they saw their capacity nearing a critical point. Teledata were looking to invest £2million into a state of the art 7,000 square foot Data Centre with optimal advance technology to ensure maximum efficiency for their clients. Teledata engaged with Sudlows to Design and Build their new facility to accommodate the proposed IT equipment for their customers and aid their continued growth. Working collaboratively and closely with Teledata and the end user during the design stage, Sudlows’ Data Centre Design Team carried out meticulous space planning, taking into consideration the unique floor plate and structural obstructions that had to be overcome to accommodate the containment for the racks along with both the mechanical and electrical equipment required for the operation of the facility. A CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) model was created by our in-house CFD Team to ensure that the proposed cooling would provide adequate circulation throughout the space. Specifically, in the event of cooling system failure, to ensure the SLA environment conditions were maintained during operation. This particular project had its challenges during the design, and construction stages. Height restrictions within the Data Hall meant that careful consideration and planning were required to ensure there were no clashes between electrical and mechanical equipment, and that sufficient space was available for installation of data cabling between the proposed racks. Following the construction of the room build by Teledata, the space was handed over to the Sudlows Delivery Team to fit out the Data Hall, LV Switch Room and Circulation Space. All external first fix mechanical and electrical services were installed via access equipment located in an unconventional location required for the installation of the high level pipework and ventilation systems. The condensers were then installed to the external roof space whilst the internal fit out progressed. The building was constructed in the early 1970s, and typical of a building of this age, access to the whitespace was restricted. This brought its challenges with regards to the positioning of various M&E plant into the space. This was overcome by opening up a section of the buildings elevation to one of the wings to allow the plant to be lifted into the building using their own bespoke lifting platforms. Such a success was the lifting process that the End User requested us to repeat the exercise to position their racks into the new whitespace. Regular meetings took place with both the Teledata Team and the End Users to review design, H&S and programme and to ensure that their requirements were being delivered to the specification and standard expected. Testing and Commissioning of the various electrical and mechanical systems took place with SATs being undertaken, and then using Sudlows A-LIST load banks, tested to prove the M&E infrastructure. Various integrated systems testing was also carried out to check and prove the interactions of the various systems. The project was handed over on time and to budget to the customer with the end user accepting the facility from Teledata in readiness for them going live. It was a pleasure working with the various stakeholders from Teledata on this project who assisted in making quick decisions when required to, ensuring the project timescales were achieved. This demonstrates that when clients work closely with the Design and Build Specialist, it helps make the project a success.

Building a 2.5 MW Mountain Hall Data Centre in 9 months during the pandemic
The overall challenge of this project was to design, construct, and deliver to client a 2.5 MW mountain hall data centre in less than 9 months, during the Covid-19 pandemic. This data hall was built at our existing DC1-Stavanger campus. The starting point was essentially a hole in the mountain with no basic infrastructure. This mountain cave was to be transformed into a fully operational data centre space, complete with interiors, cooling, power, and security - all within the time span of 9 months. The contract was signed in November 2019 with an agreed RFS date of August 1st, 2020. The size of the completed mountain hall, including infrastructure in the tunnels, is about 1800 square metres. The power capacity is 2.5 MW but a doubling in both space size and power is possible if the client needs further expansions inside the same mountain hall. For cooling, down flow units were used instead of in-row cooling according to customer requirements. This was also a more cost-efficient solution. The cooling source is the adjacent fjord, where our award-winning cooling solution supplies 100 kW of cooling for every 1kW of power used to operate the system. The data center uses only 100% renewable power, which was a pre-requisite for the client. The client has an ambitious climate goal of becoming carbon-negative in the near future. In other words, the main challenges in this project related to: - Covid-19 situation - Building inside a mountain as opposed to an open-air construction site where you have more space flexibility. - A tight deadline - Strict security requirements from the client Building a data center inside a mountain is clearly more complicated than building in an open outdoor space. The project was on a tight deadline from the start and the Covid-19 pandemic added an extra layer of complexity. Therefore, the team immediately started to execute their project plans to secure progression and avoid delays. One key decision was to order equipment very early in the process, even before all the details were sorted. Especially concerning “long lead items”, the team made sure to book time in the production line of the suppliers. This way they secured a “buffer” in case of unforeseen events. This proved to be valuable when large parts of society shut down due to Covid-19. Because of the meticulous planning and cooperation with partners, the team benefitted from a head-start in the process. Furthermore, the team had a very progressive approach towards the suppliers, with close follow-ups to make sure our deliveries were prioritized. Not only did the lead project manager and procurement manager constantly address the suppliers, but cases were also escalated to top management to secure the necessary attention. Other important milestones were the completion of the data floor, medium voltage energization and “early access”. The data floor was an especially critical item in the timeline as a prerequisite for other tasks moving forward. Fortunately, it was completed in April, one week ahead of schedule. Consequently, the medium voltage energization was performed in May and early access was given 6 weeks prior to RFS. Having a data centre inside a mountain naturally implies that this is a high-security facility. The facility can withstand attacks and natural disaster (although very rare in Norway), but the client also had strict requirements of numerous high-security measures. Designing and implementing this security regime was a significant part of the project. No doubt, there were minor setbacks along the way in this unprecedented situation, but the project was ready for the CX Commissioning in June/July and the RFS was approved according to client demands on August 1st. Normally, a construction project like this would require at least 12 months. During the most hectic construction phase, 150 workers were on site, managing to perform their tasks within a strict Covid-19 control regime. A Covid-19 task force had daily meetings to monitor the situation and decided to implement personnel control at the gate. Each and every person had to answer specific questions and have their identity and access level verified upon every site entry. The result: no cases of infection on site or other HSEQ incidents during the project for that matter. The team also had to figure out how to conduct the CX commissioning and RFS without compromising Covid-19 infection control procedures. Representatives from the client and CX agents from BVPI* could not be physically present at the site. The solution was to perform the process remotely using virtual tools. During the test phase, the CX agents worked remotely through our on-site resources who were available by live video and Teams meetings to perform the tests. This was a new experience to all of us, but it proved to be more successful than anticipated and more efficient for all parties involved. Given the situation, we shortened this phase by several days. *(company responsible for testing) The combination of the Covid-19 situation and a strict deadline on top certainly made this a complex project. The client, an international cloud provider, has extensive experience in building their own data centers and they are also used to working with external operators around the world. At this time, the client had multiple active projects on a global basis, but during the pandemic period only one of these were delivered on time – the Green Mountain project. By being a smaller organization, with only a handful of key project members, Green Mountain was nimble and adaptable to changing circumstances. At the same time, our solid project methodology and 10 years of experience with demanding international clients make us competent to execute complex projects. No doubt, there were challenging times in this project, but every employee tried to live up to the company values of “Customer in focus, Reliability & Honesty, Knowledge and Enthusiasm.” These values make up the foundation of our work culture and make the team go an extra mile to satisfy the customer.

Global Switch PAR E project
Global Switch, one of the world’s leading carrier and cloud neutral data centres, is part way through a major redevelopment / power densification of its Paris East data centre which is part of the company’s 50,000 sq m campus located in Clichy-Levallois, a prime area centred between the city's financial district and one of the most important European business districts, Paris La Défense. The project, in three phases, will see the redevelopment of the facility with the main aim to increase power density and improve energy efficiency. The facility is set over six levels and encompasses the modification of the power and cooling infrastructure to create multiple high density technical suites. Phase 1 includes the construction of three suites offering a density of >2,500 W/m2. Huawei UPS and lithium-ion battery technology was selected by Global Switch as they offered the best ratio of space to power on the market and an optimized total cost of ownership (TCO). The Paris East development project addresses the challenge of increasing power density and energy efficiency and requiring more absolute power by harnessing the latest fit-for-purpose technology. Global Switch chose SmartLi which is an innovative energy storage solution based on lithium-ion technology and is designed to meet the back-up requirement of UPS in various scenarios. This approach features a number of stand-out innovations and benefits. High power density To achieve the maximum power density in the space – considering both power and cooling –Huawei SmartLi UPS technology was chosen by Global Switch due to its best-in-class spatial requirements, meaning that power densities >2,500w/m2 could be delivered, a saving of more than 60% compared to lead-acid batteries. High efficiency The UPS technology is one of the most efficient on the market, using hibernation technology to achieve light load efficiency and reach 97% efficiency in rectifier-inverter mode. The intelligent online mode delivers even more performance, reaching 99%, achieving full-load efficiency and ensuring an uninterrupted high-quality power supply. Flexible scalability The technology’s modular nature means it can be deployed in 100kW units to suit the growth of the customer load whilst offering a high level of resilience meaning that the failure of one module will not render the whole capacity of the UPS to be lost. This scaling on demand reduces investment risk and TCO. Safety and reliability The battery technology is based on Lithium Iron Phosphate (LFP) chemistry which one of the safest and most stable chemistries for stationary lithium-ion battery systems. It eliminates the need for routine inspections and, with no risk of a hydrogen leak compared to lead-acid battery, there is no need to factor in the cost of installing a hydrogen detection system. With no oxygen being generated, there is no risk of fire in the event of thermals runaway. Fault location is simplified due to real-time monitoring of parameters such as voltage, current and switch status, as well as node temperature. The three-layer Battery Management System also applies refined management to ensure reliability. Predictive maintenance With the ability to predict system performance and component lifespan, maintenance scheduling is transformed, enabling the operator to act before issues occur and service is interrupted. The Paris East project presented a range of challenges beyond the technological demands already referred to above. These included carrying out a major redevelopment project with an international delivery team during a global pandemic. Comprehensive safety measures were introduced and regularly adapted to fit with changing government regulations, ensuring the safety of the team, contractors and customers. The benefits extend from the logistical to the technical and all have the effect of reducing the TCO of the data centre, enabling Global Switch to optimize the way it delivers best-in-class technology and service. Space - A key benefit has been a 50% reduction in the footprint required for the Huawei Smart Li UPS technology compared to lead-acid batteries. Longevity - The technology has a lifespan of 15+ years, reducing the OPEX of the data centre Maintenance- The installed technology uses AI to gather insight that can be used for predictive rather than reactive maintenance. For example, it can predict capacitor and fan lifespan, key node temperatures and battery capacity. Flexibility - SmartLi technology uses current equalization technology to allow the hybrid use of old and new batteries. Working with Huawei modular UPS, it also enables capacity to be expanded on demand.

Schneider Electric and Elite Partner Advanced Power Technology (APT) deliver data centre digital transformation project for Newcastle City Council. Introduction Schneider Electric worked in collaboration with its Elite Partner, Advanced Power Technology (APT) to deliver a data centre digital transformation project for Newcastle City Council and drive digital service continuity members of its constituency. The initiative included consolidation of existing data centre capacity, upgrades to the physical infrastructure and the deployment of next generation data centre infrastructure (DCIM) management software, which would improve reliability, increase energy efficiency and lower operating expenses (OpEx). Driving force and business/technology challenges, breaking conventional ideas The goal of the digital transformation project was to increase resilience and improve the ability of Newcastle City Council to deliver e-government services to the 300,000 citizens and businesses within its constituency. Applications hosted within the facility include council tax collection, social and library services, education and road traffic management in addition to support for other essential public service bodies such as the local National Health Service (NHS) and the Police. The new data centre greatly improves Newcastle City Council’s ability to ensure service continuity and drives efficiency for a lower total cost of ownership (TCO). “Previously, we were able to withstand a loss of power for about 20 minutes,” said James Dickman, Senior ICT Solutions Analyst, Newcastle City Council. “Now we can operate for three hours on UPS if required and can use our backup generator to provide alternative power in the event of a loss to our mains supply. It’s also reassuring to know that the data centre infrastructure is being constantly monitored, with alerts routed directly to mobile devices if events occur out of hours.” “With IT, connectivity and digital demands growing exponentially, the data centre plays a crucial role in e-government service delivery,” said Marc Garner, VP, Secure Power Division, Schneider Electric UK&I. “APT’s expertise in data centre design, build and installation have been pivotal in the success of this digital transformation project for Newcastle City Council, offering them greater resiliency and efficiency.” “As a public body we are always looking for ways to improve cost and energy efficiencies,” continued James Dickman. “Schneider Electric and APT were able to design and deliver a data centre solution that meets our needs and our expectations. The new facility enables us to meet our service commitments to all stakeholders while minimising the carbon impact of delivering IT services.” Solutions and customer benefits – going beyond marginal improvements The new and consolidated data centre replaced three legacy server rooms, each containing a number of disparate UPS and cooling systems, which were old and in need of maintenance. The Council chose Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure™ for Data Centres, an IOT-enabled, open and interoperable system architecture for its new integrated data centre. The system, designed and built by APT, consolidates the council’s entire mission-critical IT infrastructure in a single data hall, incorporating APC Netshelter™ Racks and data centre containment, Galaxy UPS and Power Distribution (PDU). To guarantee uptime in the event of a power outage, the Council also installed Schneider Electric’s modular and scalable Galaxy UPS’s in an N+1 redundant configuration, with extended runtime and a standby power generator. A key benefit of EcoStruxure IT Expert software is the ability for operators to monitor power consumption within each of the IT racks. With the new data centre designed to house all of Newcastle City Council’s IT and network devices in contained aisles, visibility of energy consumption and environmental data, together with insights provided by the software, enabled the power and cooling systems to be operated with optimum energy efficiency. Additionally, the software enables the facility to deliver cost-effective hosting services to other local bodies and businesses. Around 10% of the data centre’s real estate is leased out to other public sector organisations including HM Courts and the arbitration service, ACAS. By carefully monitoring the power supply to each rack, the Council can accurately charge for hosting services, producing a revenue stream that helps to offset its operating costs. “The monitoring and management capabilities of EcoStruxure IT has resulted in greatly improved visibility of the data centre operations and consequently offers a greater ability to proactively mitigate emerging issues,” said John Thompson, MD of Advanced Power Technology. “With more detailed insight into operations, Newcastle City Council can increase the resiliency of the IT Service delivery to improve the customer experience.” To ensure mission-critical reliability and real time visibility, APT also deployed EcoStruxure™ IT Expert, Schneider Electric’s open, interoperable and vendor-agnositc next-generation DCIM software, which would help to efficiency and provide real time monitoring, improved maintenance schedules and proactive alerts to any unexpected issues such as potential equipment failures or downtime. With the consolidation of three server rooms into one and the standardisation on Schneider Electric UPS systems, PDUs and racks as well as the overall management capability provided by EcoStruxure IT Expert, Newcastle City Council benefits from: 1. Mission-critical reliability – The new data centre greatly improves Newcastle City Council’s ability to ensure e-government service continuity for its 300,000 citizens, businesses and public sector services such as the NHS and Police. 2. Greater efficiency and lower energy usage – All hardware, including power, IT and cooling is integrated within a holistic architecture and managed for greater efficiency, thereby reducing electricity costs for a lower total cost of ownership (TCO). 3. Increased resilience – Operators can enjoy 99% uptime with a modular scalable reliable UPS system and 24/7 remote monitoring. 4. Lower OpEx – Operational costs are offset by renting out spare data centre capacity at competitive rates thanks to accurate system monitoring. When was solution introduced to market? Project completed in 2020

Data Dynamics partners with Fortune 10 Oil & Gas Company to accelerate data center consolidation via intelligent and automated migration to the cloud.
The Challenge: One of the largest global enterprises built out a cloud strategy with a commitment to exit strategic data centers within a finite timeline. Delays to data center closures would result in substantial lease penalties and missing spend commitment targets with their cloud partner. The customer initially set an 18-month timeline to migrate 700+TB to the cloud from on-premises data centers. The initial approach would leverage manual data analysis and movement tools and scripts to move the data. Ten months into the endeavor, the customer realized that they could not meet the required timelines, resulting in millions in unbudgeted costs and overages. Key challenges to execute on the initiative were: Cloud strategy had been formulated but was focused on application and compute, not on data Lack of understanding of the data and its underlying storage infrastructure No knowledge of ownership, and in turn impact to transition to cloud Double digit growth in data footprint, causing further management complexities Data center lease expirations would result in penalties associated with not exiting in time Escalating maintenance costs of legacy equipment Assumption that additional manpower will address the issue The customer needed a solution that could help them efficiently and securely migrate data to the cloud and exit data centers across one of their largest global footprints. They required a unified platform that could accelerate the journey to the cloud at scale, mitigate risk via automation and provide intelligence via classification of the data for future use. The Solution: Data Dynamics’ Unified Unstructured Data Management Platform was selected based on the automation and intelligence it could provide, its proven track record with other Fortune 100 companies, and its ability to execute flawlessly. The Unified Platform was deployed in a hybrid environment, providing an architecture that optimized both cloud and on-prem resources. Training and support were delivered by Data Dynamics ‘Customer First’ support team, and the product was configured to maximize analysis and migration speeds to meet exit timelines. Leveraging both the Platform interface and its robust RESTful APIs, the customer was able to build out a workflow that automated the process and required minimal interaction from their internal teams. The Benefits: The customer was able to complete the analysis and migration in under 4 months and accelerate its timelines to the cloud. Migrations were completed seamlessly and without error, mitigating risk of business disruption and maximizing uptime. Implementation of the Platform from Data Dynamics resulted in a savings of over $1.4 million in storage costs and avoidance of millions in lease penalties, deriving in year ROI on the investment made into the Platform.

Benenden Health implements Node4 hybrid cloud Introduction Benenden Health offers high quality, private healthcare at the same affordable cost for everyone. This includes round the clock care such as 24/7 GP and mental health helplines, plus speedy access to services such as physiotherapy and medical treatment. As a not-for-profit organisation, Benenden Health’s focus is to offer support to its 800,000+ members at the same affordable cost per person per month. Benenden Health enlisted Node4’s cloud services to help it deliver 24/7 GP support throughout the pandemic, embark on an ambitious digital transformation project and redesign its IT infrastructure to enable it to scale rapidly. What was the driving force behind the project – what business or technology challenge needed to be addressed? As a market-leading private healthcare provider, IT applications underpin Benenden Health’s business. The core applications and the data that sits behind them are a vital aspect of the day to day running of the business - data informs everything from caseload management, capacity planning and decision-planning. Benenden Health is a growing organisation and its IT infrastructure platform was no longer able to keep pace with this growth. Additionally, there were long lead times involved in provisioning new capabilities. With this in mind, Benenden Health decided to take a step back, embarking on a complete digital transformation, redesigning the IT infrastructure into a rapidly scalable and highly available solution to support Benenden Health’s growth for the future. However, due to different licensing models that were already in place, moving the IT infrastructure to a hybrid cloud was the only option. Benenden Health reviewed 10 different suppliers before finding Node4, checking its data centres as well as meeting the vendors’ IT teams. How did the solution address the challenges and were there any particularly innovative aspects that made it stand out? Node4 is an industry-leading cloud infrastructure provider with a CMSP (Cisco Master Services Provider) accreditation and one of only nine UK organisations to be awarded Microsoft Azure Expert MSP status. Node4’s cloud virtualisation, storage and backup platform have been purpose-built in-house to deliver enterprise-grade resiliency. Node4’s hybrid cloud offerings provide a cost-effective model that balances ongoing usage and peaks in project demand while helping organisations reduce capital expenditure. Benenden Health selected Node4’s hybrid cloud and disaster recovery (DR) solution to form the basis of an upgraded cloud-first, DR supported architecture, which has enabled Benenden Health to keep sensitive member data secure and allow for rapid scalability and flexibility. This followed the adoption of cloud-based technologies such as migrating to Microsoft Azure and Office 365. By working with Node4, Benenden Health now has a resilient cloud environment, 24/7 tailored support and a scalable roadmap that will grow with its digital needs. An important aspect of its switch to Node4 was to ensure its critical infrastructure was DR capable. Handling sensitive patient data means that working with a highly accredited and fully secure provider such as Node4 was imperative. “The first stage in our journey was to take a step back and look at exactly what was available to us. Node4 gave us a stable platform, which helped us to focus on other areas of the business first. After solidifying where we were internally, we were then able to look at the long-term strategy for providing key services to our members,” commented Chris Mullins, Head of IT at Benenden Health. “It was important to us that we gain a partner that works as an extension of our core IT team, and that is what we have found in Node4. As we move into a cloud-driven approach, it is reassuring to know that we have a fully scalable platform that will support our digital transformation initiatives, ensuring that our members are provided with a modernised and always-on experience.” What major challenges were faced during the project and how were they overcome? Transitioning from old IT infrastructure to new is often challenging. However, during the main transition weekend, Node4 excelled in its customer service, and its engineers showed high levels of communication, reacting quickly to ensure Benenden Health’s process ran smoothly. Then, the Covid-19 pandemic hit. As a healthcare organisation this put significant pressure on Benenden Health and meant it was absolutely critical that the services it could continue running were uninterrupted, all while deploying remote working. The pandemic impacted some of the services Benenden Health provides to its members, with private hospitals delaying treatment to help the NHS with the pandemic. This meant that access to treatment was delayed for Benenden Health members, so it was really important that other available services, such as its 24/7 GP and mental health helplines, were able to support members to get help quickly if they needed it. Node4 was able to scale Benenden Health’s solutions to support its move to remote working. Its website relies on Node4 hosted applications. Having the continued backend applications supported by Node4 meant that Benenden Health did not have to deploy IT staff into the office, removing the risk of being unable to get suppliers to attend the site in the face of an issue occurring. Node4’s MPLS was also able to ensure continued connectivity between Benenden Hospital and Society. What tangible benefits has the organisation seen as a result of the project's implementation? As a result of choosing Node4’s solutions, Benenden Health has embarked on the beginning of its digital transformation journey. Before, the company operated on-premises solutions and was inwardly focused. Now, Benenden Health is cloud-first, meaning it can adopt the latest technologies as and when required. When Benenden Health first started looking into its cloud-first journey, it realised it would need a large CapEx to support the uptime, capability and capacity its business requires. Now, Node4 has taken away Benenden Health’s CapEx worries by delivering all cloud services. The initial DR failover tests conducted by Benenden Health and Node4 have offered a major step-change in capability compared to its previous provider. It has shown the failover can take less than five minutes to the Northampton DR site, with Node4 looking to reduce this further as the solution is refined. Supporting statements “Thanks to Node4, we are now on the ‘front foot’, rather than being reactive. When the business wants us to move in a different direction, we are able to do it without a challenge. The risks involved were definitely worth taking,” said Chris Mullins, Head of IT at Benenden Health. “We no longer have to worry about trivial things such as whether there is enough RAM. It’s all taken out of our hands - Node4 looks after it all. The biggest benefit though, is that our users haven’t noticed a difference. The migration took place over a weekend and when everyone came back in on Monday, everything was normal and worked as normal. No one was aware anything had even happened,” explained Chris.

Tessitura Network Taps Rackspace Technology to Accelerate Business Growth & Develop New Features for the Arts and Culture Community
Rackspace Technology™, a leading end-to-end multicloud technology solutions company, have announced the successful completion of work with Tessitura Network, an enterprise CRM for performing arts organizations, museums, and other cultural, educational and media entities. Through the partnership, Rackspace Technology helped Tessitura transition its software hosting from a legacy collocated hosting center to a managed hosting environment on AWS, ultimately allowing Tessitura’s team of creative-minded engineers to develop new features for users. Tessitura is a non-profit, member-based organization serving hundreds of arts and cultural organizations around the globe through a unified digital platform. The technology helps organizations build and maintain connections with prospects, donors, members, single-ticket buyers, subscribers and more. However, the company has been hosting its software in a collocated hosting center since the mid-2000s and managing its own hardware became a distraction from its core business: serving arts and culture organizations. Tessitura quickly realized its need for modern technology and a trusted managed service provider to maintain its competitive edge. The company turned to Rackspace Technology to help make the transition to managed hosting with AWS. The Rackspace Technology team leveraged an architecture-based managed services and security-focused services approach to the project. To experience the full benefit of AWS’s cloud solutions, the Rackspace Technology team implemented Public Cloud Service Blocks, a flexible solution that will allow Tessitura to use the appropriate managed services based on the company’s current needs and add or remove additional services as the needs change. “The Rackspace Technology team served as a true trusted partner throughout this project,” said Ron Wilson, CTO at Tessitura. “Partnering with Rackspace Technology has made us far more advanced, in ways we couldn’t have been great by ourselves.” With the Rackspace Technology solution, Tessitura has the scalability, monitoring and security that it was looking for. With the increased scalability, the company can now focus on their app and adding features which enable their cultural and arts customers to create more meaningful connections with their audience. The Rackspace Technology team set Tessitura up for future growth and scalability by helping us harness the vast amount of computing resources AWS Service Blocks has to offer. The solution has also allowed the team to focus on delivering the world-class features that help its members get their jobs done. “Choosing Rackspace Service Blocks™ from AWS provided the Tessitura team with the scalability, monitoring and security needed to support the company’s future growth,” said Jeff DeVerter, CTO Solutions at Rackspace Technology. “The Tessitura team can now focus all of their attention on continuing to innovate and serve the needs of the arts and culture community.”

HPE Turns to DigiPlex for Hosting High-Performance Computing Infrastructure DigiPlex, the Nordic leader for sustainable, innovative, and secure data centres, has signed an agreement with Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) to host AI and High-Performance Computing (HPC) technology in its Stockholm data center. The DigiPlex Stockholm campus is located close to Arlanda, the capital airport of Sweden, the perfect geographical location for business needs. The multi award-winning campus runs on electricity from 100% renewable energy and offers 26,000 m² with up to 40 MW capacity which makes it attractive to businesses from a sustainability perspective. The campus offers high levels of 24/7 manned physical security including high-grade dual perimeter fencing, man-trap intruder protection and advanced surveillance cameras. Commenting on the deal, DigiPlex CEO, Wiljar Nesse, said; “Situating these advanced technical solutions and services in strategically located facilities that not only conform to stringent data protection rules, but also are powered by abundant low-cost, 100% sustainable energy helps HPE deliver on commitments to its clients as well as its sustainability agenda. I am pleased that DigiPlex is able to offer HPE this powerful combination.” Anna Granö, Managing Director, HPE Sweden, added; “DigiPlex provides an excellent home for AI and HPC data needs, being scalable, of high standard, and well connected to an ecosystem of potential partners. Partnering with DigiPlex gives us the confidence that we have the right high-quality, truly sustainable and secure data center to support our HPC and AI solutions for our clients.”

ORIIUM enhances data governance and security with Commvault Commvault, a recognised global enterprise software leader in the management of data across cloud and on-premises environments, has announced that ORIIUM, one of the UK’s leading providers of data and application management solutions, has integrated Commvault HyperScale™ Appliance with its Azure and AWS environments, as well as its own cloud infrastructure. The integration will empower ORIIUM’s customers to manage and control their data and applications independently. ORIIUM also deployed Commvault Activate™ to leverage its file storage optimisation and data governance features, thereby reducing data sprawl and minimising the potential for data loss. ORIIUM, a Commvault Service Advantage+ partner and the UK & Ireland’s only Commvault Advanced CASP partner, helps customers manage risk by delivering fully managed application control, data protection, governance and rapid recovery solutions. The company supports some of the largest multinational and public sector organisations — including the NHS — with round-the-clock protection and control of data and applications. With growth projected to continue, ORIIUM needed a simplified and cost-effective solution to back up a wide range of systems, such as Salesforce, Microsoft 365, Oracle, and various proprietary cloud services. ORIIUM’s management team also wanted to move away from its collection of legacy tools, which utilised different interfaces and caused issues around reliability and scalability. The combination of Commvault HyperScale X Appliance and Commvault Activate made these objectives possible by delivering a single scalable, cost-effective, and secure solution for file storage optimisation, data governance, eDiscovery and compliance. Using Commvault’s live sync and rapid recovery features, ORIIUM has enabled customers to cut data management costs by up to 30% while drastically reducing Recovery Time Objective (RTO). Deploying Commvault’s solution has also made it easier to search for sensitive data and respond faster to compliance requests. In addition, Commvault’s data insight capabilities have enabled ORIIUM’s customers to make informed decisions about where data should reside and what security measures need to be considered. Chris Kiaie, Managing Director at ORIIUM, comments:“We rely on Commvault’s continuing innovation to take our products and services to market. It has the breadth of capability and the support for technology such as public cloud, software as a service, and hyperconverged, and also capabilities supporting information governance such as Activate and rapid ransomware recovery such as live sync. We use all of these Commvault products both internally and for our customers to ensure that they get the best experience and a market-leading capability when it comes to data control, management, protection, and recovery.” Commvault Activate enables ORIIUM’s customers to take a more proactive, responsive approach to data management, reduce the risk of data theft or breach, and make more data-driven decisions. This integrated approach combines Commvault Data Governance, Commvault File Storage Optimisation, and Commvault eDiscovery & Compliance. It ensures ORIIUM has a single access point to a family of data solutions that are optimised for ease-of-use and able to deliver tangible customer benefits. Kiaie explains: “Data governance is not a nice to have, it’s a necessity. Commvault Activate enables us to govern customer data universally and reduce risk. The beauty of Commvault Activate is that it helps us govern data no matter where it resides and reduces data sprawl.” Jonathan Bowl, AVP UK&I and Nordics at Commvault, concludes: “We’re thrilled to support ORIIUM, one of the UK’s most innovative managed service providers and the country’s only Advanced Commvault Authorised Support Partner. This installation, together with ORIIUM’s dedicated customer commitment and tireless innovation, means ORIIUM customers can be confident that their data is secure and available regardless of platforms or cloud service providers. It also ensures ORIIUM customers have the tools they need to respond faster to compliance requests and can mitigate against potential data-associated risks.”

Greater Anglia Embarks on Cloud Journey with iland and Veeam
iland, a leading VMware-based provider for application hosting, data protection and disaster recovery services delivered on the iland Secure Cloud Platform, today announced that Greater Anglia has chosen iland Secure Cloud Backup for Veeam Cloud Connect and iland Secure Cloud Backup for Microsoft 365 to protect its recent infrastructure investments and as an initial step in its long-term cloud strategy. Greater Anglia is a major train operating company (TOC) in the UK, offering commuter and intercity services at 133 stations across the region. Greater Anglia’s rail network ranges from its Central London terminus, Liverpool Street station, to Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, parts of Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire and throughout the East of England. In 2021, the company was named “Train Operator of the Year” at the Rail Business Awards for the second consecutive time due, in part, to record levels of improvement in train punctuality, a new fleet that greatly benefited the customer experience, station upgrades and ticketing initiatives. It has also been awarded a Gold Accreditation through the IdeasUK Innovation Assessment. Greater Anglia’s cloud journey, according to Himesh Patel, head of IT service delivery, began with two massive investments. First, the company decided to replace its entire fleet. The new, state-of-the-art trains are due for completion at the end of 2021 — an unprecedented feat in terms of scale. Second, it decided to upgrade its wide area network, which was low-bandwidth and couldn’t allow for cross file sharing. Both were vast undertakings, which required a lot of IT strategy and preparation. During that process of evaluation and innovation, Himesh saw an opportunity to transition to the cloud and seized it. “Our new trains are deploying more modern technology and infrastructure, which meant we had a lot of legacy applications that were defunct when the new applications came in. From there, we began looking to push a lot of applications either to the cloud or to suppliers in their own cloud environments,” said Himesh. The company’s first steps to the cloud began with a mandate to secure its investment in Microsoft 365, including OneDrive, Teams and SharePoint — an upgrade that coincided with the new network. Himesh and his team knew full well that Microsoft offered little in terms of backup protection and to make matters worse, malicious attacks, like malware, ransomware and phishing, were on the rise. Himesh selected iland Secure Cloud Backup for Microsoft 365 and iland Secure Cloud Backup for Veeam Cloud Connect to address those concerns. With iland and Veeam, an industry leader in backup solutions, Greater Anglia could protect its critical data from internal and external cybersecurity threats and reduce the total cost of data protection and retention, while also moving its overall backup strategy toward the cloud and away from outdated technologies like physical tape. “iland Secure Cloud Backup is an elegant solution, particularly because of its integration with Veeam. The overall solutions architecture is what we were looking for — something we can certainly build on in the future,” said Himesh. Himesh continued: "All the conversations we've had with the iland team have been very transparent, very up front. There's been nothing hidden in the whole process. Our requirements were listened to and were factored in. The most important thing for us is building a partnership with a reliable provider. We're not in it for the short term, it's a long-term partnership.” “At iland, we strive to form long-lasting customer partnerships with the goal of crafting cloud strategies that address their immediate needs, while also planning for the future. We’re proud to consider Great Anglia such a partner as well as one of the more innovative and forward-thinking companies we’ve had the pleasure of working with,” said Johnny Carpenter, vice president sales for EMEA. “With iland Secure Cloud Backup for Veeam and Secure Cloud Backup for Microsoft 365, Greater Anglia has been able to seamlessly transition away from legacy hardware, ensure the protection of its network investments and implement the resources and proven technology necessary to succeed on its transition to the cloud.” Before partnering with iland, Greater Anglia had been backing up its mission-critical applications on premises via backup-to-tape, a technology that would not provide the flexibility and scalability the company needed as its business grew. Between the time, energy and resources spent on non-innovative maintenance, like replacing and storing old tapes, Himesh and his lean, 10-person IT team also had less time to further business objectives. With the move to the iland’s cloud backup, however, valuable IT resources could be freed up to help the business complete more profitable business objectives, like rolling out the new trains, IT infrastructure and associated applications, wide area network, and new customer information screens at each station. “From a strategy point of view, I think cloud backup is excellent,” said Himesh. “It just moves everything up and out, removing our responsibility onsite. It will allow us to remove a lot of legacy hardware eventually.” According to Himesh, the company’s latest innovations, especially its move to the cloud with iland Secure Cloud Backup, are just the beginning. Though they started off small, he said they’ve already started internal discussions about migrating everything to the cloud with Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) on iland Secure Cloud. He’s looking forward to being able to utilise modern platforms to leverage economies of scale and drive cost efficiencies. “We’re committed to going through that cloud journey. Right now, we’re trying to tick the right boxes in terms of the sort of people we want to do business with and have long term business relationships with,” said Himesh. “iland fits that bill."

Becoming the client’s extended team during the Covid-19 pandemic.
One of Green Mountain’s company values is to put “the customer in focus”. The team who delivers on this value every single day is the Operations Team. They take care of the daily requests, maintain the client relationships, and support our clients in their small or big projects. The current Covid-19 pandemic and its restrictions on international travel and deliveries have resulted in an increased amount of a different type of assignments from our clients. Many tasks and projects that clients or suppliers usually have performed themselves, with their own crew or subcontractors, was now trusted to the Green Mountain Operations team. These types of projects cover everything from installation of physical hardware (racks and IT equipment), structured cabling projects, to quality assurance of installations. In addition, we had to document the work meticulously, using alternative means such as video and photos. In this entry we would like to emphasize one of these projects as an example of how we have shifted the focus to handle more complex projects from both clients and suppliers, in a difficult situation caused by Covid-19. Example Project: Installation of HPC clusters and Quality Assurance A dedicated Green Mountain team was trusted the task of installing new HPC clusters for an international automotive company at DC2-Telemark. The supplier, NEC Deutschland GmbH, was unable to send their full team due to Covid-19, and Green Mountain therefore served as their extended team on site. The team proved their capabilities and delivered the project on time and to the client’s and NEC’s satisfaction. In addition, the client trusted us the task of Quality Assurance of the work performed. The team was established in the beginning of June. The clusters were to be delivered and installed by NEC, but due to the pandemic situation they could not send sufficient personnel to Norway to perform the task. Green Mountain was asked to contribute, and we gathered a team of 6 experienced technicians, to work on the project. The objective of the project was to receive, unpack and install four server clusters in the client’s data hall. The task was to be started in August and completed in late September. Smooth execution It might not seem like a large project, but it required close dialogue and planning to execute the task. The main milestones were as following: - Delivery of all the servers in three separate shipments. - Unpacking and checking of all equipment. - Installing the 4 HPC clusters in 24 racks according to detailed drawings. - Complete cabling work according to specifications. - Labelling of all equipment. - Performance stress test (with NEC and client participating remotely). During the whole progress of the project, NEC contributed remote technical support and expertise by highly experienced system analysts, working closely together with the onsite team members. The project progressed smoothly, and the supplier, NEC, and the client received regular updates from the team. In September, the work was completed, and we could perform a stress test on the equipment. NEC and the client participated in the testing via digital tools and were satisfied with the results. “We are very happy with the support we received from Green Mountain in this challenging Covid-19 situation.” Says Martijn Brizee, Project Manager, from NEC. Quality Assurance In addition, the automotive client also asked Green Mountain to perform a Quality Assurance test of the completed work. Green Mountain accepted the task and naturally assigned it to an operations engineer from another DC site. It was important that this person had not been involved in the work itself, in order to give an objective assessment of the performed tasks. “We perform quality assurances quite frequently for clients when they have had other suppliers to install for them. This time it was different as we had to verify work performed by Green Mountain. I am pleased that they trust our professional integrity in managing these two separate roles.” says Service Management Team Lead, Runar Espeland. A strong team The biggest challenge of this project was to establish a team of the right resources in a time with limited capacity. The team was led by operation technician Abhishek Jagga, an experienced professional with many years’ experience with these types of projects. His team members were gathered from all Green Mountain’s three DC sites, in addition to two persons from an external partner. The team leader is an expert IT professional with extensive knowledge and experience with this type of HPC equipment. The other team members have their professional background as electricians and automaticians. All of them have of course experience as data center technicians. This combination of skill sets was valuable in the project. Jagga served as the main contact point for NEC and the client and was responsible for coordinating and training of the staff. Setting up these clusters required a focus on the details as the set-up and cabling had to be precisely as described. Health & Safety first Apart from convening the right resources for the team, we also had to adapt the work to the current Covid-19 situation. Green Mountain implemented a strict control regime to avoid any cases of infection on the site. The team members adhered to the rigorous procedures and did an extra effort to avoid social contact also in their spare time. It was essential that everyone remained healthy in order to avoid project delays. Although time-consuming, health and safety were the highest priorities during the project. So far in the pandemic, no Green Mountain employee has been infected with the virus. Positive feedback The most satisfying achievement was the good feedback received from both the supplier, NEC, and the client. The team was described as efficient and competent. “The quality of the work held a very high standard.” Martijn Brizee from NEC confirms. “In these uncertain times where our employees have an increased workload, it is very satisfying that we still deliver projects of high complexity without compromising on quality.” says Runar Espeland. Green Mountain has an operations team you can trust, also with more complex projects, and even in challenging times. When Covid-19 restrictions threatens to delay our clients’ projects we can be the extended team that can complete the job. The successful deliveries of several projects similar to the example above have proven our capabilities. The results of our recent customer satisfaction survey and feedback in client meetings show the same.

Unlocking Renewable Energy During Lockdown
The Opportunity A UK-based Quant hedge fund found itself poised for significant growth in 2020, fueled by artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and smart innovation in automated trading. The amount of data generated and consumed by massive quantitative analysis, based around high performance applications and high density computing, meant they needed to expand beyond their two connected data centers in London. They came into the market looking for more data center space to house their high performance computing (HPC) research cluster but with a keen desire to focus on sustainability and also drive a lower total cost than traditional colocation. During this time, COVID-19 made the customary travel, meetings and site visits impossible to do in person. After initial face-to-face meetings in London, the rest of the negotiations and planning had to be done remotely. All of the requisite details would be managed without the usual assurance that comes with being there. Framing the challenge, a company representative told us, “when we set out to look for additional data center space to build our new HPC research cluster, we set ourselves two goals. Sustainability is really important to us and so first and foremost we needed to find a renewable source of energy. Secondly, we had to ensure that the solution was cost effective, especially given the scale.” The Solution AI is driving unprecedented IT workloads for financial organizations. This customer builds fully-automated technology to predict and trade electronic financial markets. They have a goal over the next few years to trade all liquid electronically tradable products. Their new HPC cluster would triple the compute capacity of the combined existing data centers in London. It needed an AI server architecture on the high end of current average power usage of 30+ kW per rack and would need cooling strategies that only the latest data center designs can provide. Add to the equation their high expectations for reducing their carbon impact and this firm was facing significant challenges to balance performance, sustainability and cost. Typically, this type of project would involve a number of in-person meetings, facility visits and a tremendous amount of interaction among team members. With the pandemic in full swing around the globe, the usual engagements needed to be reimagined. Bulk and our partners in Norway arranged virtual meetings and a local team presence to ensure all of the details were managed successfully. As part of the site familiarization and evaluation process, Bulk created a virtual tour of the facility combining drone footage of the campus, vehicle and site entry procedures. We worked to replicate the complete personnel access experience, including the journey from the parking lot into the data center building and hallways. We used handheld steady-cam footage of all key steps in the process as well as a comprehensive tour of all mechanical and electrical infrastructure elements of the facility. This allowed the customer to gain an appreciation of all relevant aspects for both their deployment as well as the ongoing set up on site. Nearly 12 months on from the go live date the customer has still not had cause to visit the site. To move forward, the team consulted with trusted hardware solutions provider Business Systems International (BSI), who was already assisting with hardware and equipment selection in the design process. Working with BSI, Bulk deployed a 1 MW machine learning environment featuring 1,500 NVIDIA GPUs, 10,000 processor cores, a 300 Terabyte RAM lake, 6 Petabytes of tiered, shared storage, 20 kM of cabling and 3,500 network ports. Bulk is becoming a leading provider of HPC and AI colocation services in the Nordics and across Europe. Partnering with NVIDIA through their DGX-Ready Colocation Data Centers program makes AI deployments even faster and easier. Rigorous certification reinforces confidence that Bulk can meet stringent demands for high-specification hosting of advanced AI workloads, network fabric and facilities engineering requirements. NVIDIA DGX™ systems deliver the world’s leading solutions for enterprise AI infrastructure at scale. With massive growth in AI, HPC and the use of data, scaling data center infrastructure to meet this challenge in a flexible but sustainable way is essential. Driving down the long-term Carbon and Cost impact of Data processing is more important than ever before. Bulk Infrastructure’s tailored solutions help meet these challenges using the Nordics highly resilient grid and renewable energy to power ultra-scalable, green data center solutions. The Challenges Initially, Norway was not even on the company’s radar. For Bulk, part of the challenge was demonstrating Norway’s advantages in the face of evolving offers in Iceland and Finland. The customer’s consultants had prior experience working in these alternative markets, so the Bulk team set about making the case. The company was trying to reduce the complexity of setting up a business in the Nordics and needed guidance on navigating Norwegian compliance and tax regulations. Bulk was able to mobilize a network of internal and partner expertise to create a comprehensive approach and solution that would take best advantage of unfamiliar conditions in a new market, saving the company time and money. The ultimate solution went far beyond the more routine offerings of colocation, dedicated white space, build-to-suit, or powered land. Bulk tapped their network of established partners to reduce complexity and to help plan and execute this project to meet an aggressive timeline. They helped the customer with power procurement analysis and counsel on attractive options using ADAPT. They also provided advice on import tax rules, where Bulk obtained a binding ruling to further simplify the process and help to limit cost. Bulk were able to support the logistics in receiving and managing the equipment and by acting as an importer of record, reducing the cost significantly. The Benefits The project would go into Bulk’s Norway Data Center Campus (N01), a 300ha site with up to 1GW of renewable power and 100 percent availability. Located in the lowest cost energy region of Norway and next door to Europe's largest renewable substation, N01 delivers the lowest cost energy and with the highest levels of resilience. Direct connection to the substation reduces electrical losses and grid costs and is supported by over 12 independent feeds. “Our new HPC research cluster at N01 will triple the size of our existing compute capacity, while the high-density design requires only twice the number of physical servers to accomplish this.” There was no question of whether the solution would be ‘green’ with the site being directly connected to many of the regions massive Hydro power plants. This 100 percent carbon-free energy was a huge tick in the box when achieving targets for sustainability. However, Bulk was able to go even further by investing in the planting of 1,000 trees by Climate Justice Ambassadors from Plant for the Planet, a global organization engaging children and youth from 74 countries. Bulk teamed with partner BSI to finalize equipment selection and help with shipping and logistics. The client originally intended to use a UK based contractor for the stock management and full implementation of the rack, containment and structured cabling solution. However, with the logistical challenges presented by the pandemic, Bulk proposed one of our local partners to assist. With an established presence in both Oslo and Kristiansand in southern Norway, local partner Netsecurity was able to meet all the necessary onsite services for the full implementation. Customer input into the design and sign off of the installation was done using remote and virtual meetings. All was accomplished within the desired project timeline and to the customers specification and satisfaction. This saved complexity and time as well as reduced exposure risk for all personnel involved. Bulk and their partners provided a fully integrated and comprehensive solution against a hard deadline and in the face of unprecedented challenges. The contracts were signed in June and the customer had a need to be operational by1st November to meet the capacity requirements of the business. Along the way, Bulk had to demonstrate a clear plan on how to achieve the required colocation solution for high density and high availability as well as an implementation program to enable the customer to meet this tight deadline.

Huawei PowerPod Solution
Huawei PowerPod Solution integrates full-power links from the medium-voltage transformer to the load feeder, to provide MW-level integrated power supply, distribution, and backup solutions for large data centers. The PowerPod Solution features integration, reliability, energy saving, time-saving, labor-saving for installation, architecture compatibility, fast and flexible deployment, and integrated centralized monitoring. The PowerPod solution has a built-in modular UPS. Prefabricated copper bars are used to shorten power supply links, improving the power supply efficiency of the original data center power supply and distribution system from 94.5% to 97.5%, significantly reducing energy consumption. The system consists of the transformer, low-voltage power distribution cabinet, reactive power compensation, UPS, feeder cabinet, inter-cabinet copper bar, and monitoring system. The system is prefabricated in the factory and can be tested in advance to ensure product quality. In addition, the whole system is delivered to the site, which greatly shortens the delivery time. Compared with the traditional power supply and distribution system (maximum system efficiency: 94.5%), the link efficiency of Huawei PowerPod solution can be improved to 95.5%. If 1000 cabinets are used, IT capacity is 8 Mbit/s, and the load rate is 80%, the air conditioner COP is 3.0, and the traditional power supply efficiency is up to 94.5%. The power supply efficiency 2 of Huawei PowerPod solution can be up to 95.5%. (The Beijing 2019 discount coefficient is 2.6932 tons of standard coal/10,000 kwh.) In terms of electricity saving and sustainable development, compared with the traditional power supply and distribution system, Huawei PowerPod solution can save 830,000 kwh of electricity per year, which is equivalent to 223.5 tons of standard coal and 374.5 tons of carbon dioxide emissions. The major differentiators between our product/solution and those of our primary competitors are: • Simple: With modular, hot swappable components all prefabricated in the factory, Time To Market (TTM) is slashed by 75%, while maintenance is simplified. • Green: Featuring full-link convergence to reduce the physical footprint by more than 30%. Power link efficiency also reaches up to 95.5%, supplying power in an environmentally-friendly way. • Smart and Reliable: Operations and Maintenance (O&M) is made easy thanks to a visualized system, Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered fault prediction and proactive maintenance, life prediction of core components, on-line switch settings, and sound and image recognition. Dongguan cloud data center project No.1 pilot lab building is a five-storey prefabricated modular data center infrastructure, using Huawei PowerPod solution. It consists of 189 prefabricated containers, six chillers, and nine diesel generators. 10 sets of power modules (each 1.6 MW), 14 NetCol8000-C130U in-room precision air conditioners, 276 NetCol5000C in-row precision air conditioners, and 1000 IT cabinets. Compared with the traditional power supply and distribution system (maximum system efficiency: 94.5%), the link efficiency of Huawei PowerPod solution can be improved to 95.5%. In the project of Dongguan Cloud data center, 1000 cabinets are used, IT capacity is 8 Mbit/s, and the load rate is 80%, the air conditioner COP is 3.0, and the traditional power supply efficiency is up to 94.5%. The power supply efficiency 2 of Huawei PowerPod solution can be up to 95.5%. (The Beijing 2019 discount coefficient is 2.6932 tons of standard coal/10,000 kwh.)

Schneider Electric’s Easy UPS range provides uptime, resilience and peace of mind for small to medium businesses, data centres and mission-critical applications.
Introduction Today, data centres operate around the clock to provide mission-critical digital services, many of which are essential to today’s way of life. From finance and banking to healthcare, education and medical research, data centres are built into the very fabric of our digital lives and have been pivotal during the last twelve months. As such, they must be built for efficiency, reliability and resilience, especially to protect end-user applications against power outages and disruptions. UPS systems, therefore provide critical battery backup necessary to maintain operational continuity, especially in the face of a power failure. Products, solutions and USPs Essential requirements for UPS systems include reliability, ease of installation and operation, trouble-free maintenance, management and serviceability, transparent monitoring features and of course efficiency of operation. Total cost of ownership, the combination of acquisition cost, system longevity and ease of operation, is another critical factor. Schneider Electric’s range of Easy UPS uninterruptible power supplies (UPS), comprises a broad range of single and three-phase models, with power ratings ranging from 750VA up to 600kVA. They provide critical power power protection for a broad range of small to medium businesses, data centres and mission critical IT environments. Easy UPS systems are designed to be compact, robust, easy to install and service, making them suitable for space constrained applications, such as are frequently found in edge data centre deployments. Among the recent introductions to the Easy UPS range, which are evidenced in the supporting documents, are: • Easy UPS 3S: a three-phase online double-conversion UPS capable of 96% efficiency in double-conversion mode and 99% efficiency when operating in ECO mode. • The 3S range is particularly suitable for ruggedised applications in Edge environments such as industrial processing or urban traffic management, as it comes with conformal-coated printed circuit boards and replaceable dust filters to guard against malfunctions caused by contaminated air. • Easy UPS 3L: a three-phase family that has models in the power range 250kVA up to 600kVA with external batteries. Tangible impact on the market/customers, breaking conventional ideas and differentiators All Easy UPS offer high-levels of efficiency, up to 96% in double-conversion mode and as much as 99% efficiency in ECO mode, meeting demands for both sustainability and resilience. They can accept a wide input voltage range, thereby offering continuous, or normal operation, if the mains power fluctuates unexpectedly. They also operate over a wide temperature range, making them suitable for use in harsh, industrial or uncontrolled ambient environments. Another advantage is that they offer ultra-fast battery recharging, where a UPS can be charged to 90% capacity in only four hours. Another important advantage and key differentiator of the Easy UPS range is the ease with which they can be managed remotely, which is crucial from an uptime and visibility perspective. Easy UPS are built with IoT sensors, enabling users to monitor key performance functions such as voltage and temperature, and are designed to work with remote monitoring software such as Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure Asset Advisor. With optional SNMP cards that enable status information to be transmitted over a network, Easy UPS deployed across distributed sites can also be monitored and managed from a centralised software platform, offering the user real time data into the health and status of their UPS. This alerts management to any problems or malfunctions that occur as they happen, helping to protect against downtime and quickly rectify any issues. Further, it also allows organisations to adopt proactive maintenance schedules and reduce operating costs. According to the Uptime Institute global annual data centre survey, 75% of respondents cited that downtime could have been preventable with better management, processes or configuration. All of these factors are essential in keeping downtime to a minimum. As well as the management features made possible by the combination of IoT technologies, network cards and the EcoStruxure monitoring software, the Easy UPS is simple and easy to install thanks to its compact size and streamlined design. For greater power protection, its versatile architecture allows several UPS systems to be connected in parallel for increased capacity or improved redundancy. Five models, for example, can be connected together in parallel to provide additional power capacity, or six connected in parallel in a 5 + 1 configuration to provide greater redundancy, so that if a power block becomes inoperable, the load will continue to be supported by the remaining power blocks. Value demonstrated to customers and partners, beyond marginal improvements The Schneider Electric Easy UPS range provides a cost-effective, simple to install, operate and maintain backup power protection system to drive business continuity for small to medium businesses, data centres and mission critical applications in industrial environments. Benefits include: • High-levels of efficiency – up to 96% efficiency in double-conversion mode and 99% efficiency when operating in ECO mode. • Increased reliability - The 3S range is suitable for harsh or remote applications such as industrial processing or urban traffic management environments. The ruggedised system includes conformal coated printed circuit boards, replaceable dust filters to guard against malfunctions caused by contaminated air, operating temperatures of up to 40°C, and strong overload protection. • Easy remote monitoring and management - with 24/7, real-time insights delivered anywhere, on any device via EcoStruxure IT’s cloud-based software suite.

Huawei Indirect Evaporative Cooling Solution
Huawei indirect evaporative cooling technology uses external natural cooling sources to perform indirect heat exchange through air-to-air heat exchangers and water spray evaporative cooling. The AI integrated energy efficiency optimization technology effectively extends the natural cooling service time and reduces the energy consumption of the cooling system in the data center. Huawei indirect evaporative cooling solution adopt an integrated design. The unit integrates core components such as the fan system, heat exchanger core, spray system, and controller. Air ducts, water pipes, and power distribution can be installed on site, shortening the construction period by 50%. The unit has three operating modes: dry mode: only the fan operates, and completely adopts natural cooling; Wet mode: the fan and the spray pump operate, heat is exchanged by the air cooled by the spray; Mixed mode: the fan, spray water pump and compressor run simultaneously. Take Linyi big data center as an example, it is located in Shandong province, ten sets of Huawei FusionCol8000-E220s, which feature indirect evaporative cooling technology are configured. The calculation is based on 24 hours x 365 days per year. (According to the emission of 0.4512 kg CO2 per kWh, the consumption of 2.6932 tons of standard coal per 10,000 kWh) , compared with the traditional chilled water solution: 1) When the load is 100%, the CLF is 0.147 VS 0.317, and the annual power saving is 2260080 kWh, which is equivalent to about 1019748 kg CO2 emission reduction, which is equivalent to 608.68 tons of standard coal consumption reduction. 2) When the load is 50%, the CLF is 0.075 VS 0.205, and the electricity is saved by 1708200 kWh a year, which is equivalent to about 770739.8 kg CO2 emission reduction, which is equivalent to 460.05 tons of standard coal consumption reduction; 3) When the load is 25%, the CLF is 0.078 VS 0.225, respectively, and the annual power saving is 1931580 kWh, which is equivalent to 871528.9 kg CO2 emission reduction, which is equivalent to 520.21 tons of standard coal consumption reduction. Huawei indirect evaporative cooling solution use the following technologies to achieve high efficiency and energy saving: 1. Adopting polymer heat exchanger core, unique sheet design and material formula, the performance can reach the same level as the metal heat exchanger core. Meanwhile, the heat exchanger core does not resist corrosion, reducing the front-end water quality requirement from RO water to softened water, greatly reducing the water treatment cost and wastewater rate. 2. The high-efficiency EC stepless speed regulating fan adopts a split design. The drive is externally installed, and the silicon steel sheet and coil of the motor are arranged in a larger space. In addition, the high-efficiency wind model line is developed. The impeller is made of aviation aluminum, which improves the fan efficiency from 60% to 68% and significantly reduces the fan power consumption. 3. The high-efficiency spraying technology is adopted. The unit adopts upstream downwind spraying to ensure that the spray water is in close contact with the heat exchange core without dead angle in all directions. The spraying efficiency is over 85%, reducing the air temperature to the maximum, and improving the efficiency by over 15% compared with the conventional spraying scheme. 4. Full frequency conversion technology: The indoor fan, outdoor fan, sprinkler pump and compressor all adopt frequency conversion technology, which can automatically adjust to the optimal frequency according to actual requirements to maximize energy saving. 5. Huawei "iCooling" AI energy-saving technology can control the unit running to the optimal efficiency point based on IT loads and indoor and outdoor ambient temperature and humidity. In addition, the output of each unit in the group can be adjusted in real time based on the temperature distribution in the equipment room to solve local hot spots. Ensure that the temperature and humidity meet the SLA requirements of the equipment room. 6. Intelligent O&M technology: Deploys intelligent sensors, unique fault self-diagnosis algorithms, and unique intelligent inspection and refrigerant leakage detection functions to quickly locate faults within 1 minute, instructs maintenance personnel to quickly respond, removes irrelevant root causes, and generates health reports based on the running status. Linyi Big Data Center is located in Yimeng Cloud Valley at the intersection of Volvo Road and Hefei Road in Linyi City, Shandong Province. It is a cloud computing big data center that radiates southern Shandong and northern Jiangsu economic circle. The total investment of the project is RMB 1.5 billion, covering an area of 95 mu, with a total floor area of 13,315 square meters. Six standardized modular equipment rooms are equipped to house 1000 server cabinets and more than 10,000 servers. 380 cabinets are deployed in phase I, meeting the international T3+ data center standard. In the first phase of the project, 380 cabinets were deployed, including 4 kW/cabinet in the low-density area and 8 kW/cabinet in the high-density area. Ten sets of Huawei FusionCol8000-E220 indirect evaporative cooling products were used. All components were installed within three months, shortening the TTM by 50%. The annual average PUE is reduced to 1.25, and the annual electricity fee of the data center is reduced by 11.3%.

Ku:l Data Centre
A quietly efficient and highly scalable liquid-cooled solution for accommodating variable-scale AI/HPC workloads in Colocation The Ku:l Data Centre solution will inspire, motivate and challenge in equal measures. Highly configurable and scalable, this GPU-rich solution enables variable-scale AI/HPC workloads to be deployed in colocation whilst offering improved energy efficiency and high-grade heat recovery which can be reused. Capturing close to 100% of the heat generated from every part of the system, the Ku:l Data Centre solution offers extreme cooling performance using Iceotope’s precision immersion liquid cooling to deliver dielectric coolant directly to the hotspots. This maximises the cooling at chassis-level and means there is no front-to-back air cooling, no bottom-to-top immersion constraints and no physical space wasted. Encapsulating Lenovo ThinkSystem SR670 server each liquid-cooled chassis is 100% sealed completely isolating the critical IT and rendering the system impervious to dust, gases, and humidity. Each chassis is a sensor-rich environment monitoring everything from fluid level, fluid temperatures and pressure. The Advanced Management Out of Band Add In Card offers complete control of server component sensors, remotely. Designed as a retrofittable liquid cooling solution, the Ku:l Data Centre is highly scalable and comes in multiple deployment configurations, from a 92kW two rack retrofit with up to 32x servers on closed loop local heat rejection, to a multiple rack enterprise-grade centralised data centre with heat rejected on an isolated water loop to facility systems. Removing the need for fans and air-cooling infrastructure enables this solution to operate in near silence — bringing game-changing reductions in energy, water and space consumption, and significant cost reductions in the design, build and operation of data centres.

XpedITe
Colocation Operators Using DCIM to Improve SERVICE MANAGEMENT With XpedITe, RiT Tech is becoming to the data centre sector what Tesla is to motoring – a champion of innovation and the driving force behind greater autonomy and doing everything we can to achieve that goal. However, DCIM has never been popular with colocation operators as they have either not seen the need to manage their customer spaces to this degree of detail or they have not found solutions suitable to their needs so instead have attempted to build their own expensive tools to perform this function. The maturity and the functionality of the XpedITe platform is such that it is already capable of revolutionising data centre management within colocation environments, bringing new approaches and novel capabilities that offer significant advantages, particularly in the area for Service Management. Intelligent automation and management innovation is at the core of the XpedITe solution to offer a successful Infrastructure and Operations management system. XpedITe is a toolkit which serves to simplify the burden on operators and act as a federated management platform that intelligently links previously disparate systems. Ultimately it works with legacy systems to automate workflows, improve operational efficiencies and reduce total cost of ownership. Its smart automation, integration and customisation tools translate to more rapid and more informed communication between sales and engineering staff and customers, a faster, more accurate service and – in turn – greater customer engagement and satisfaction. In a world where colocation offerings are becoming increasingly commoditised operators are seeking to differentiate themselves. Improving Service Management is a critical component of this differentiation. It is not enough to simply offer Space, Power, Cooling and Security, increasingly there is the need to offer a more comprehensive service wrapped around these core requirements and a greater attention to customer service management in order to compete with an increase in customer choices. XpedITe OVERVIEW RiT Tech’s XpedITe is a comprehensive data centre infrastructure management solution for data centres and workspace facilities. It helps to optimise business operations, resource management, asset utilisation as well as infrastructure planning and operations. The platform consists of the following main modules: Asset Management, Asset Discovery, Connectivity Management, Dashboards and Analytics, Power and Thermal Telemetries, Provisioning and Automation. The solution federates management of the cornerstones of data centres – including facility, cooling, power, hardware and connectivity – to create a single version of truth across data centre layers, departments and processes. The benefits of the XpedITe platform, however go far further than providing efficiencies through an encyclopaedic insight of the make-up of every rack, cabinet, cable and port. The system’s advanced algorithms problem-solve and plan, generating automated work orders with sufficient detail that they can be used remotely by 3rd party installers. These ensure that any moves, adds, changes, maintenance tasks or major network changes are forensically managed and executed without errors and the additional overhead of wasted time. XpedITe in COLOCATION DATA CENTRES Having referenced the growing recognition of the benefits of improved customer service management by colocation operators, how does XpedITe deliver this? RiT Tech’s XpedITe was designed to help address these challenges and the modular platform takes colocation data centre management to a new level. Not only does it interconnect the mix of devices and software systems through one federated management platform, but it allows colocation customers to monitor and manage their assets through an innovative Customer Portal. Furthermore, the platform automates workflows, improves operational efficiencies and maximises the use of available resources to ultimately reduce total cost of ownership. Whether connecting to switches, servers and chillers or building management systems, configuration management databases and customer relationship management (CRM) software, XpedITe actively streamlines the sharing of information and processes. The platform seamlessly shares information across the whole business, giving those who require a window into operations an up-to-the-minute picture to consult. For example, XpedITe’s integration with Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems empowers sales teams to communicate with confidence and track the progress of customer usage, installation and deployment orders and customer requests in real-time. Daniel Simis, Head of Strategic Projects at Bezeq International (international colocation services provider)offered the following statement following his experiences of deploying and using XpedITe: “XpedITe’s application programming interface talks to our CRM, which means every action related to payment is tracked,” he said. “We know how space is used by customers and can bill them accurately today rather than having to chase money for any unseen and unexpected charges months down the line.” From a customer perspective there is the ability to see the disposition of their assets in far greater detail and accuracy and far better understand the utilisation of the expensive resources they are paying for without the need to have staff based at the colocation site or visiting regularly. This is perfect not only for large scale colocation deployments but also for ‘Edge’ and remote dark sites that may be more difficult or expensive to get to. The Customer Portal also allows customers to generate automated work orders based on their own specific set of bespoke rules accommodating both the specifics of the colocation site being used and their own organisation’s standards. These work orders can be generated automatically with sufficient detail to be used by third party installers and installation progress subsequently tracked through the portal. XpedITe in Colocation – The CUSTOMER PORTAL XpedITe is much more than just a means to make the daily operations of a data centre and the utilisation of the available resources far more efficient. Using the XpedITe Customer Portal, colocation environments can leverage value added services for their customers. Fully customisable to meet tailored user experiences, this portal provides a panoramic porthole through which customers can observe and interact with their deployed digital real estate. It can also be used by customers to flag faults and request any system changes or uplift in services. Firewall changes and back-up and restore services are easily administered through XpedITe and physical access, site visits, can be pre-approved and deconflicted through the portal. In addition to negating the need to contact, query and wait for a response from facility or IT teams before placing or fulfilling an order, the XpedITe Customer Portal truly expedites communications with new and existing clients as well as improving the overall customer experience. From an initial order through to the configuration, allocation and assignment of resources, automated updates and the management of moves, adds and changes, XpedITe ensures that staff are armed with all the data they need to relay accurate information to clients and to provide an unprecedented level of customer service. XpedITe BENEFITS FOR COLOCATION OPERATORS In the setting of a colocation data centre, XpedITe is a disruptive technology – an innovation that challenges conventional means of operating data centres and sets a new benchmark for best practice. It is an intelligent solution to an extremely complex problem and has been designed to surpass expectations, providing an answer of greater value than alternative systems. Indeed, when it comes to calculating potential return on investment, XpedITe represents a rare case, where one plus one really does make three. Such a sum may seem impossible but the addition of RiT Tech’s hi-tech toolkit to a colocation operation equates to three very distinct benefits. 1. Federating previously disparate legacy systems and environments to provide an accurate, real-time picture of operations which, when coupled with automated planning and provisioning tools, ensures that any unexpected issues are diminished and the performance of all assets is optimised, based on federated data sets and highly accurate real time information. 2. Seamlessly sharing this information across the whole business and all stakeholders, courtesy of unprecedented levels of integration and interoperability with software systems that extend to Customer Relationship Management tools, bolstered by a fully customisable Customer Portal, adds another telling tick to the tally. 3. Add to this the synching of systems and staff to provide a faster and more accurate service, – supported by improved communications and visibility of clients’ digital real estates, – completes the equation, with enhanced customer satisfaction being a proven formula for future sales and business growth. XpedITe COLOCATION EXAMPLE Bezeq International is the leading internet provider in Israel and is the only telecom player with direct ownership of a submarine cable connecting Israel to Europe, enabling the company to serve its customers via virtually unlimited international bandwidth. Their estate consists of seven data centres across five sites in Israel which is continuously expanding. What were their Challenges? The lack of a fully operational and bespoke infrastructure management system was inhibiting improvements in operational delivery, customer service management and resource optimisation. What was needed was a truly integrated solution that could offer genuine management capabilities and effect operational efficiencies. Not one of the old style legacy DCIM tools, which were seen as very poor value, but rather one that is progressive and could integrate with all physical infrastructure across the estate, IT network and commercial systems like CRM. As a visionary business, Bezeq International cannot afford to let customers down but more than this feel they need to take a stand and provide a proactive approach to helping customers manage their own data centre assets. They see this as a key differentiator in the colocation sector. Done manually, this is often done at the cost of profit margins – going that extra mile for customers can result in lost revenue through a lack of accurate visibility of data centre activities and asset leading to unnecessary resource overhead. At the same time, Bezeq had a number of specific challenges that ranged from legacy cabling systems – the usual spaghetti cabling scenario to over provisioned assets and legacy business management tools. This led to a requirement for one single collaborative system to integrate them all and provide access to the vital management information that is needed to operate effectively. Bezeq International had tried a number of vendors and even employed their own developers to try to create an in-house system that would satisfy these requirements. However, the skills and experience needed to achieve this were not available and became a limiting factor they decided instead to invest in the innovative XpedITe solution from RiT Tech, which has been specified and now customised to match their precise needs. No other DCIM vendor can provide the fully integrated and customised solution that XpedITe has delivered to Bezeq. The brief was to design and implement a state-of-the-art DCIM system which managed not only the electro-mechanical systems but also integrated the IT infrastructure components and all of the associated business operation systems including BMS, CMDB and CRM - after all this is where data centres have to go in order to provide effective Service Management. No other provider has this complete solution – going beyond the traditional colocation operators’ offerings of Space, Power, Cooling and Security to introduce an enhanced service model above and beyond that of most traditional colocation operators. Added to this the customer portal enables Bezeq’s customers to have remote visibility of their own installations, including installed assets and connections as well as the ability to automatically generate and manage work orders. Integration with Legacy Systems Provides an Essential Single Source of Truth. No single data centre discipline has one system giving access to federated information which allows improvements in performance, functionality, quality and cost across the entire data centre ecosystem. But our next-generation DCIM tool has been integrated with existing operating tools including a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform, enabling those selling data centre capacity to do so with a comprehensive and up-to-the-minute picture of available space and the power available to it. - In addition to negating the need for sales staff to contact, query and wait for a response from a data centre manager before fulfilling an order, the software has expedited communications and improved the ability to accurately identify any additional space for new and existing clients. - While the constantly refreshed record of remaining stock it affords is an obvious advantage of this software provider, Bezeq International is also benefiting from the tool’s detailed auditing of the stock being consumed. This knowledge ensures co-locations do not pass up on previously unclaimed revenue. - An increase in productivity is another major boom for both supplier and consumer. Within a co-lo, XpedITe’s advanced algorithms problem-solve and plan, generating automated work orders that mean that technicians are deployed in a far more efficient manner. - The new self-service portal gives customers an advanced means to directly communicate with data centre staff and the ability to quickly action everything from standard trouble tickets to requests relating to remote “hand and eye”, firewall changes, back-up and restore and physical access. - As well as providing a panoramic porthole which clients can tailor with their own branding, the portal helps to manage assets in the racks and monitor the health of their digital real estate. This remote access offers a greater degree of control and connection to customers than was previously possible. - A ticketing system diarises all approved visitors, preventing the disruption posed to co-lo staff of having to host multiple guests at any one time. External engineers, for example, are only granted access to the site following approval of their identification on the portal by a customer manager. - Similarly, any changes in configuration – such as the addition or removal of servers – are automatically captured and reflected in the system. - Another key feature is improved communication with clients. It is possible to send planned maintenance work notifications, server failure reports and trouble ticket updates directly from the system via SMS and e-mail. - Weight management is an inevitable key issue in legacy facilities. Without an accurate inventory of assets and their weight, a problem may only come to light when the floor starts to move. An automated system that alerts operators when the weight goes above the tolerance threshold allows for space to be better managed and this risk avoided. The Innovation Offered by XpedITe has Resulted in Improvements in Performance, Service Quality, Cost Structure and Customer Satisfaction for Bezeq. No other data centre infrastructure management software offers the same level of integration capability. XpedITe integrates with multiple specialised legacy and business critical systems. The most important requirement for many data centre operators including Bezeq is to deliver one single central source of reliable and accurate data created using a federated DCIM system that maps all infrastructure components and seamlessly integrates with existing tools. XpedITe also introduces a customer portal for Bezeq's customers which allows them to manage their own data centre space and critical resources. But rather than attempting to represent the entire ecosystem, the key is the ability to supplement existing specialist capabilities – not replace them. XpedITe is modular by design – a hi-tech toolset from which data centre operators can select the services they require and use to integrate existing solutions. To this end, the platform’s ever-expanding range of integration adaptions allow it to interact with commonly used devices, monitoring systems and management applications, reducing deployment time, disruption, risks and costs. KPIs and metrics defined and used by Bezeq: - Lost revenue recovered (Currently circa 2m, US Dollars) - Clients’ reduction in work order costs (Currently 30%) - Clients’ reduction in work order creation (Currently 70%) - Number of customers supported (Currently 100+) - Discovery of ‘new’ servers previously not recorded - Discovery of un- recorded IT equipment space - Discovery of racks previously not recorded KPIs and metrics are important to all data centre operators in order to properly measure operational improvements and ultimately to better serve all customers but the main benefit to date has been the ability to maximise and achieve increased revenues through accurate information and insight. Repeat business, increased orders for space or any of the many little things that may be routinely missed in a rapidly moving operational environment. This directly results in lost revenue and in this respect XpedITe clearly offers a demonstrable Return on Investment. This is in addition to creating a differentiated service offering to for customers and setting Bezeq apart from traditional colocation operators. The pressures involved in running data centres are significant, but for Bezeq International and its colocation customers much of the analytical and administrative burden is now being lifted by XpedITe. As a solution that evolves to keep stride with the evolution of the sector it serves, XpedITe is evidently delivering a tangible return on investment through visible efficiency in resource utilisation.

Critical Facility Management and Operations Software (CFM)
Data Center Operators aim to maintain high business continuity goals at the planned capacity throughout the facility life cycle. "Critical Facility Management and Operations Software (CFM)" is a groundbreaking software technology that helps them do exactly that; it renders the operation of Critical Physical Infrastructure less reliant on human input and hence, less prone to human error. With CFM, we have succeeded at subsuming and orchestrating all the relevant processes that are conventionally found in fourteen different management solutions in a single software. CFM enables Data Center Managers to define and track processes based on roles, responsibilities, and qualification of employees. In parallel, it monitors real-time status of physical infrastructure (Electrical, Mechanical and Environment), considers topological dependencies of electromechanical systems, and uses the collected information to track and coordinate human activities involved in the operational procedures. Digitalizing and corelating policies and standards shape human activities and generate an organizational culture which is crucial for the continuous improvement and the sustainability of the Data Center operation. It is well known that majority of outages at Data Center stem from an individual operational error. CFM also succeeds at preventing a possible chain of deviations from normal operating conditions; therefore, it safeguards sustainability by ensuring effective governance of incident, problem, and maintenance management in the facility. CFM follows ITIL v4 principles, topological dependencies with reference to Uptime Institute Tier Standards and Uptime Institute Sustainable Operations recommendations. While CFM integrates the conventional Building Management Systems, SCADA systems and OT Protocols, it is also compatible with IT protocols and IoT Platforms, allowing it to serve as SaaS platform at the next frontier, Edge Data Centers fueled by 5G, IoT and AI technologies. Overall, CFM, interrelates real-time data from physical infrastructure, digitalize and correlates operational procedures and topological dependencies to provide a human-independent business culture with risk analyzes and decision-support mechanism.

Clean Connectivity with Corning® CleanAdvantage™ Technology
Many industry professionals will be familiar with the excruciating, painstaking experience of installing, cleaning and connecting countless fibres – only to have connections fail to meet link-loss standards due to microscopic dirt and debris. End-face contamination in a fibre optic connector is the most common cause of network failures and data packet corruption. According to Cisco, “Any contamination in the fibre connection can cause failure of the component or failure of the whole system.” To mitigate this risk, operators field-clean connectors prior to installing them. This process, however, is resource-intensive in both labour and cleaning supplies. In addition, current testing standards around the end-face quality of connectors only cover specified “check areas.” Particles outside of those areas can migrate, degrading signal quality without operators being aware. Data centres with fibre optic-infrastructure have always faced this challenge, with no clear solution beyond the resource-intensive cleaning process - which still lacks 100% effectiveness. How then can operators reclaim time lost to cleaning, while ensuring reliable connector matings and optimal transmission performance? What are your product's/solution's key distinguishing features and/or USP? To meet this challenge, Corning convened a cross-functional team of engineers, technicians, and scientists, with input from major data centre customers. The result was Corning® CleanAdvantage™ technology, introduced globally in February 2020. Its key capabilities and features include: Increased network reliability: The technology utilises proprietary cleaning technology for the entire connector ferrule not only the connector end-face, and an optimised dust cap design, to ensure a factory-clean connector remains clean and ready for installation when it arrives on site. The technology is included, at no extra cost, on all MTP® and LC Uniboot connectors within the EDGE™ and EDGE8® structured cabling solutions to ensure that every first-time installation is free of contaminants, increasing network reliability. Reduced installation time and consumable costs: CleanAdvantage eliminates the need to clean and scope MTP and LC Uniboot connectors prior to the first mating connection. As a result, installation time for customers can be reduced by up to 17 percent and the cost of cleaning consumables (no cleaning pens, cassettes, and wipes are necessary) is cut by up to 95 percent. In doing so, CleanAdvantage enables operators to reclaim time and money, placing them on a faster path to revenue generation. Easy to handle: Connectors with CleanAdvantage technology are easy to handle, with installation as simple as removing the dust cap and inserting the connector. No specialised training is required, and operators can have confidence in their networks connections regardless of who installed them. What tangible impact has your product/solution had on the market and your customers? When it comes to data centre projects, time is money – and operators know they can ill-afford to allow delays in network installation to stand in the way of meeting ever-increasing demands for bandwidth. Any contamination in a fibre connection can cause failure of a fibre optic component or even the whole system. According to Cisco research , even a 9-micrometre speck (undetectable without a microscope) can completely block the fibre core. There was a critical need from Corning’s customer-base, and the wider industry, for high-quality cleaning solutions that could save time and money and that’s where CleanAdvantage comes in. CleanAdvantage technology was developed in collaboration with major data centre operators, to enable higher speeds of deployment and greater levels of reliability in their networks. Corning scientists and engineers worked in conjunction with the field technicians who install connectors, ensuring the technology was easily deployed and operated. Instead of wasting time and materials on cleaning connectors prior to their first installation, operators can quickly deploy new capacity, with the knowledge that their network’s link-loss will avoid errors produced by manual field cleaning. By integrating a new proprietary cleaning technology into the manufacturing process, Corning CleanAdvantage removes complexity and risk from the field, and delivers an easier experience for those involved with data centre installations. For contractors, CleanAdvantage removes tedious initial cleaning and scoping steps from the installation process, enabling them to complete projects up to 17% quicker and cut cleaning consumables by 95%, unlocking additional revenue opportunities. For end-users, CleanAdvantage™ enables faster completion of critical infrastructure projects and minimised risk of downtime for network users. By reducing cleaning waste, CleanAdvantage also makes data centre operations more sustainable, while eliminating particles which might migrate over a connection’s lifetime. What are the major differentiators between your product/solution and those of your primary competitors? Traditional in-the-field cleaning methods include dry cleaning, which typically involves the use of a reel-based cleaner to wipe the connector end-face against a dry-cleaning cloth in one direction to remove airborne contamination. Wet/wet-to-dry cleaning, another popular method to remove airborne contamination and oil residue, sees the connector end-face being wiped against a wet area and then onto a dry area. While both methods are superior to not cleaning at all they don’t reach the full ferrule of a fibre connector. This is problematic given that, each time the connectors are mated, particles around the core of the fibre stub can be displaced. This can cause them to migrate and spread across the surface of the connector end-face, leading to performance issues. While there are some other solutions that have sought to solve these problems, they focus on the connector end-face, whereas Corning’s proprietary technology enables a focused and directed cleaning of the entire ferrule. A critical differentiator is also CleanAdvantage’s optimised dust cap which is engineered to maintain a clean end-face until its first mating connection. This means no need for cleaning or visual inspection before the first install – just uncapping and connecting. Corning offers CleanAdvantage as a standard across its EDGE and EDGE8 data centre solutions portfolio. Please supply any supportive quotes and/or case study materials to demonstrate the value of this product/solution to your customers/partners. Anonymous (Corning certified installer that used CleanAdvantage for a recent data centre project for one of the largest German health insurance companies) “As an installer, it’s our responsibility to ensure that the quality of the installation and the overall optical performance of the network meets the required standards from our end-user. We take a lot of pride in our work and of course from a commercial perspective, we’re held responsible if it isn’t up to standard. “Using CleanAdvantage for the first time on a recent data centre installation (for one of our biggest clients) really gave us peace of mind. Beyond the ease of use and speed, using CleanAdvantage gave us complete confidence in meeting the SLAs for the installation and assurance that there wouldn’t be any reworks needed after the installation and acceptance test – return loss and link loss value criteria are met right away with CleanAdvantage. “We’d recommend CleanAdvantage to anyone and think it played an important part in the success of this project.”

ZetaFrame™ Cabinet Solution With the growing market demand for rapid deployment and reliable support, Chatsworth Products (CPI) combined its expertise in information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure into a single cabinet platform that simplifies selection and ordering while providing innovative features and capabilities that set a new benchmark in the industry. The result is ZetaFrame™ Cabinet, a highly engineered data centre cabinet solution that delivers fast built-to-order configurability, and industry-leading strength and scalability, regardless of the application. ZetaFrame is a total, turnkey cabinet solution that integrates power, cable and thermal management accessories to support next-generation compute. Product Application Today’s mission critical industries demand a mix of enterprise-owned, cloud-based and edge services. The most efficient approach to simplifying these hybrid operations is to rely on a single cabinet design that integrates cable management, airflow management, intelligent power distribution, environmental monitoring, physical security and system optimisation. ZetaFrame was developed to be a universal solution that works in any application. With ZetaFrame, systems integrators and hyperscale customers benefit from the cabinet’s industry-leading rolling load rating and shock pallet option, while rack-and-stack deployments can depend on the cabinet’s high-quality construction and durability. Customers benefit from ZetaFrame’s complete ecosystem solution, which offers preintegrated power, security, airflow containment, serviceability, monitoring and availability of equipment and data. Research & Design ZetaFrame Cabinet is the culmination of CPI’s 30 years of design and custom engineering expertise. Through CPI’s custom engineering department, it was possible to identify common customer requests reflective of the state of the industry. For example, with the emergence of more hybrid data centres, rapid deployment and configurability were becoming important requirements. As a result, CPI designed ZetaFrame Cabinet on a platform that allows for an unprecedented level of configurability. The cabinet can be configured on demand, as a customer-specified, factory-assembled solution. Likewise simple product selection, easy ordering and streamlined logistics all add up to quick deployment for customers. Additionally, increasing cabinet densities have changed the way the rack space is utilised. In keeping up with how the networking and server equipment industry is also evolving, it was important to consider a strong and reliable cabinet frame. Newer compute hardware include additional processors and memory components as part of their configuration, which not only increase power demand, but increase the weight of the computer and the amount of heat that must be dissipated from the computer. So, besides reliable power distribution, to support and protect advanced equipment, a data centre rack must feature much higher load ratings to hold additional weight, improved airflow management features so more cool air is through the rack and enhanced cable management to allow for more intuitive and flexible moves, adds and changes. Another important fact is the need for high static load ratings and rolling loads since more data centres have been utilising third-party integrators. Often referred to as “rack and roll,” these integrators populate cabinets with compute, power, and cabling, then transport fully loaded cabinets to the data centre space where they are rolled into position and quickly brought online. ZetaFrame was engineered to allow for exceptional 5,000 lb (2268 kg) static load (on leveling feet) and 4,000 lb (1814 kg) dynamic load (on casters), which will support new equipment for years to come. Many unique design elements were also included in ZetaFrame to promote a more intuitive user experience and easier management of the cabinet components to simplify the daily tasks of data center and network managers. Does It All, Does It Better ZetaFrame Cabinet addresses the industry’s “need for speed” with rails and accessories that are quick and easy to adjust, cable management that accommodates a variety of applications, a frame architecture that can ably support heavier equipment and overhead cabling structures and, lastly, thermal efficiency through several value-added accessories. Features and benefits of ZetaFrame Cabinet include: Fast Selection and Customization – Wide range of standard configurations and complimentary consultation services allow customers to create a tailored solution that meets their exact requirements Future-Proof Capacity – Roll-formed, tubular and fully welded steel frame architecture supports market-leading 5,000 lb (2268 kg) static and 4,000 lb (1814 kg) dynamic loads Integrated Power and Airflow Management – Seamless integration with optional power and airflow management accessories under a single part number ensures quick deployment Integrated Bonding – Doors and panels bond to the frame through hinges and contact points, eliminating the need for attaching separate grounding straps to cabinet components Enhanced Cable Management – ZetaFrame's simple and versatile cable management accessories can be used independently or in combination to accommodate a wide variety of applications Changing the Mission Critical Industry As the mission-critical industry evolves and hybrid networks take on different forms, it is important for cloud, data centre and colocation facilities to simplify and standardise their infrastructure. Because CPI understands every application is unique, we’ve been able to hone our processes to enable effective customisation capabilities. This has placed CPI in an advantageous position to provide customers with a cabinet solution that fits their exact needs, in a timely, responsive manner, ensuring a foundation that will support equipment for years to come.

Large data-driven organisations demand exceptional performance, availability, and resilience: OVHcloud expands its Bare Metal server range
OVHcloud is expanding its suite of Bare Metal servers with two new ranges that provide high performance, very high capacity bandwidth and high availability. These new machines address the needs of organisations running critical workloads. These servers will be available in OVHcloud data centres across Europe, the US and Canada. The new range of servers is aimed at large corporations, for example those in the banking, healthcare, higher education and research sectors. These organisations typically need a strong price-performance ratio, the ability to anticipate technical risks and deliver business growth. To meet these requirements, they also need to be supported by a resilient, very high-bandwidth network, available across the globe – all of which the new Bare Metal ranges provide. OVHcloud expertise for a wide range of professional use cases The two new ranges: Scale and High-Grade offer servers optimised for complex, resource-intensive tasks. They are particularly suited to the following use cases: • Managing Hyper Converged Infrastructure (HCI), particularly for companies that want to consolidate their data centres. • Software Defined Storage (SDS), that can handle increased volumes of data, while controlling costs. • Virtualisation, containerisation, and orchestration, for project deployment or application modernisation while optimising hardware and software investments. • Big Data and analytics, to optimise data usage. • Archiving and backup, as storage solutions must meet very specific needs, such as agile information flow management, fault prevention, ensuring optimal archiving of critical data, and compliance with applicable laws. • Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), for large-scale management of remote and virtualised work environments. Two innovative ranges to meet the highest requirements The Scale and High-Grade ranges include all the OVHcloud commitments: the latest and most powerful computing components, the best price-performance ratio with transparent and predictable pricing, OVHcloud Link Aggregation (OLA) technology, which allows users to aggregate each server’s network interfaces to boost its availability while isolating it from the public network and any potential threats, and 99.99% SLA Anti-DDoS protection. Finally, unlimited traffic is also included. Complementing the Hosted Private Cloud catalogue, which was recognised as a leader in the Hosted Private Cloud market in The Forrester Wave™: Hosted Private Cloud Services in Europe, Q2, 2020 report [EMEA], both ranges are operated according to the most demanding security standards in compliance with ISO/IEC 27001. • Scale offers a range of 6 servers with AMD EPYC™ and Intel® Xeon® Gold CPUs. It is aimed at companies with high performance requirements. Scale provides the resilience and speed to enable these large companies to grow their business by improving their IT performance. The range offers a guaranteed bandwidth of up to 25 Gbps, and a service level agreement (SLA) of 99.99%, ensuring the best guarantees for hosting the customer’s infrastructure (on private or hybrid cloud). • High-Grade, consisting of a selection of 10 servers based on AMD EPYC™ and Intel® Xeon® Gold CPUs, is designed for businesses with critical availability and performance needs. The range offers guaranteed bandwidth of up to 50 Gbps and combines computing power, a very high-bandwidth network, and a large storage capacity. It is particularly well suited to use cases involving HCI, SDS or storage, and will grow into a machine dedicated to artificial intelligence. “These new OVHcloud ranges address the challenges faced by large companies and organisations with critical needs, offering a high-speed, high-availability solution optimised for a wide range of use cases. With the Bare Metal Scale and High-Grade ranges, we want to provide a turnkey, high-performance and versatile solution that allows companies to focus on their core day-to-day operations and on growth,” comments Sylvain Rouri, Chief Sales Officer at OVHcloud. Some of the Scale and High-Grade servers will also form the technical backbone of the next Nutanix and NetApp package offers, which will soon be offered by OVHcloud.

iomart supports technology transformation for The National Lottery Community Fund
iomart helps enable staff to deliver vital financial support during pandemic A technology transformation for The National Lottery Community Fund carried out in partnership with managed cloud services provider iomart meant staff were ready to distribute millions of pounds of vital funding during the Covid pandemic. The Fund is one of the non-departmental public bodies responsible for distributing National Lottery funding to good causes and is the largest funder of communities in the UK. iomart’s consultancy team has spent the past three years working with The Fund’s Director of Technology and Data, Matthew Green, on a project to redefine its technology and infrastructure. The aim was to digitally enable everyone in the organisation to deliver funding where it was most needed as quickly as possible. Matthew Green, Director of Technology and Data at the Fund, led the project. “The Fund has distributed over £500 million of National Lottery and funding from Government since lockdown began in March 2020, which would have been incredibly challenging to do with our old systems,” he explained. “Thanks to the partnership with iomart, we have enabled our colleagues to get vital funds to the communities that need them.” There were a number of different aspects to the transformation project. A Microsoft Surface Pro device was given to every member of staff as part of a Windows 10 refresh. Email was moved to Exchange Online and a number of other Microsoft 365 technologies were adopted. Multiple on-premise infrastructures were consolidated into a single hyperconverged stack using Nutanix HCI and connectivity was improved with the introduction of a Software Defined Network from Silver Peak and physical firewalls from Barracuda. The value of the transformation became acutely apparent as the Covid-19 crisis began. By the time the Government announced the first nationwide lockdown, the Fund’s 850 employees were already working from home, ensuring funding reached charities and community organisations fast. Staff were able to collaborate online, sending and receiving over 4 million emails and holding almost 1000 calls and meetings using Microsoft Teams every day Nick Martin, director of consulting for iomart, explains, “Our expertise in optimising the user experience as well as introducing new technologies enables us to help organisations like The National Lottery Community Fund to improve their effectiveness.” Matthew Green agrees. ““We’re no longer hampered by our technology, we’re enabled by it. I’m incredibly proud of the members of the Technology and Data team at The National Lottery Community Fund, who are no longer simply the fixers of broken things; they are the strategic technology architects for the organisation.”

KU:L MICRO DATA CENTRE
A physically secure and quietly efficient Micro Data Centre solution for distributing AI/HPC workloads to any Edge location The Ku:l Micro Data Centre solution will inspire, motivate and challenge in equal measures. Highly configurable and scalable, this GPU-rich solution enables accelerated AI/HPC workloads to be deployed to any Edge location. With reliable and efficient heat recovery the Ku:l Micro Data Centre solution is able to maintain data centre density whilst offering improved energy efficiency right where you need it, regardless of how harsh the location. Capturing close to 100% of the heat generated from every part of the system, the Ku:l Micro Data Centre solution offers extreme cooling performance and high-grade heat recovery. Using Iceotope’s precision immersion liquid cooling to deliver dielectric coolant directly to the hotspots maximises the cooling at chassis-level. This means there is no front-to-back air cooling, no bottom-to-top immersion constraints and no physical space wasted. Encapsulating Lenovo ThinkSystem SR670 server each liquid-cooled chassis is 100% sealed completely isolating the critical IT and rendering the system impervious to dust, gases, and humidity. Each chassis is a sensor-rich environment monitoring everything from fluid level, fluid temperatures and pressure. The Advanced Management Out of Band Add In Card offers complete control of server component sensors remotely. The Ku:l Micro Data Centre solution is highly scalable and comes in two deployment configurations. From a 5kW fully integrated, plug-and-play half rack with up to 4x servers and rack mounted liquid to air HRU, to multiple 46kW/rack deployments with up to 16x servers per rack and a highly efficient dedicated outdoor HRU.

Sunlight Innovates Virtualization to Make it Easy to Deliver Edge Applications "as-a-Service"
Advances in technology are changing all aspects of the way we live and where we create data. Applications such as data analytics, IoT, AI, machine learning and smart cities are changing how data is created—whether in retail, with self-service store check-outs, or monitoring remote oil rigs, or running robotic automation on factory floors. This data creation is only accelerating, and we generate more data and in more places than ever before. All this data needs to be managed and processed, and increasingly, this needs to happen in near-real-time. We’ve seen an explosion in use cases requiring data processing close to the source generating the data, often in harsh or hazardous environments — in other words, at the Edge. Gartner states that “around 10% of enterprise-generated data is created and processed outside a traditional centralized data center or cloud. By 2022, Gartner predicts this figure will reach 75%.” Traditional software-defined infrastructure is slow, heavy, and difficult to automate. It’s too heavy for Edge infrastructure, too inefficient for hardware-accelerated core infrastructure, too slow for modern applications, and too rooted in the core data center for hybrid automation agility. It’s practically impossible to run a full Hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) stack on a typical Edge cluster with room for workloads. Far Edge devices need a new approach for software infrastructure. They require compute that has small clusters, has low latency, is ruggedized, is highly efficient, is secure and resilient, and has great manageability and integration. Designed to perform anywhere, Sunlight’s NexVisor HCI makes deploying and managing applications at the Edge simple. Sunlight is hybrid Software Defined Infrastructure that gets out of the way. It’s light – with a tiny footprint perfect for constrained Edge hardware; efficient – enabling 100% utilization of hardware-accelerated core infrastructure; fast – offers 10x+ storage and network performance; and it’s easy – centralized hybrid management and automation. A MariaDB and docker application running on Sunlight delivers 3x the application performance on exactly the same hardware on data center HCI. By using Sunlight’s complete software-defined Edge computing stack, Enterprises and MSPs can save 80% of the cost of trying to deploy the leading data center hyperconverged solution at the Edge. Sunlight’s NexVisor HCI makes applications like AI, big data, analytics and video rendering run 3x faster compared to legacy virtualization. Even more significant, the NexVisor HCI pairs with the Sunlight Infrastructure Manager (SIM) and Marketplace to make it simple to deploy and manage infrastructure and applications in highly distributed Edge environments as well as in the Cloud, enabling true Edge “Software as a Service” models. This is truly a break from conventional Edge offerings, the first true “Edge-as-a-Service” solution.

Power Control boosts energy efficiency of Tier III/ Tier IV Data Centre, Blue Chip
As data centre operators endeavour to push the boundaries of energy efficiency levels to reduce their carbon footprint and achieve a PUE ratio as near to 1.0 as possible, focus has turned to upgrading their most power-hungry equipment in the facility. After cooling equipment, old UPS systems using outdated technology are major contributors to compromising the optimum levels of efficiency. It is important to note that the current industry average PUE is 1.6, and older facilities are finding it more challenging to achieve this than new ones. Despite these challenges, Bluechip, a well-established Tier III and Tier IV data centre formed in 1987, prides itself on its green credentials and PUE ratio. By using suppliers who value their carbon reduction goal for their data centre equipment, Bluechip has been able to build and operate one of the most efficient data centres in the UK. Power Control has played an instrumental part in helping Bluechip achieve significant energy efficiency gains by presenting a high efficiency, transformerless UPS (uninterruptible power supply) solution to replace its 10-year-old transformer-based UPS systems which required a major service and battery replacement. Transformer based UPS have their place, but due to their component structure are less efficient than transformer free and modular technologies, therefore, maximising their efficiency is more challenging. Transformer based UPS can also limit scalability and inherently lead to inefficiencies, in particular in 2N+1 configuration where the load is often not large enough. Loads within data centres fluctuate and this needs to be accounted for within any power protection strategy. With UPS systems being a major contributor to PUE ratings, upgrading to new, more efficient technologies must be considered. Advances in transformerless, monolithic UPS technology not only give data centre operators greater max KW output, thanks to their unity power factor, but they have also proven their resilience. Following a site survey and operational assessment, Power Control confidently presented the Borri Ingenio Max solution as a direct swap out for the legacy transformer based units. In total three 400kVA transformer based UPS systems in a 2N+1 configuration, which were providing a maximum 640kW load due to their 89% efficiency have been replaced with three high efficiency 400kVA Borri Ingenio Max units in a 2N+1 configuration (the same as the previous) which provides up to 800kW maximum load due to the UPS unity power factor. Not only does this mean they are more efficient, but it also ensures optimal sizing. Power Control also presented the Borri Ingenio Max UPS system as the best solution because of Borri’s Green Conversion technology, providing continuous savings, high efficiency and UPS component life extension for the customer. The direct swap out and upgrade has contributed to reducing the data centres PUE ratio to 1.1. Which is believed to be the lowest in the UK and contributes to their overall goals of running one of the most energy efficient data centres in the UK. Thanks to Power Control’s expertise, all preparation was done in the week leading up to the swap out. Meaning that each parallel set of UPS, commission and changeover, was completed in a single day. Minimising any disruption for the customer. The new UPS installation also means Bluechip benefit from an ROI of under 5 years and at current load levels, the efficiency savings for Bluechip is approximately £20,000 per annum. The maximum efficiency of the Borri Ingenio Max is 96% so as the data centre grows, and the load increases so will Bluechip’s annual savings. Bluechip has also benefited from the space saving and lightweight advantages presented by transformerless technology, meaning their critical infrastructure takes up a smaller footprint in the facility.

2bm help their client to repatriate 20 existing comms rooms, into a single, dedicated data centre that would be housed at their UK headquarters
As well as meeting our client’s key objectives for a resilient, reliable and high-quality facility for critical equipment, 2bm also considered ways in which to contribute to the sustainable development of the local environment, economy and community in which a facility is located. This included addressing any environmental and energy concerns as part of our decisionmaking process, designing and building a data centre that was both future-proofed and sustainable. In addition, 2bm acted in a socially responsible manner when it came to our supply chain and the management of our internal operations and logistics. 2bm is ISO 14001 approved and accredited with the Green iiE award, the highest accolade for business effi ciency. We are also CEEDA certifi ed designers, members of the Green Grid, the Data Centre Alliance and endorsers of the EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres – which means each and every one of our designs will be beyond compliant when it comes to the latest data centre standards and practices. Due to confi dentiality agreements, we are not at liberty to name the client or the location of the data centre. However we have included a testimonial from the client about their experience in working with 2bm in past projects and can provide physical and material evidence to support our award entry, should the judges deem necessary.

Johnson Controls Introduces Lithium-Ion Risk Prevention Solution for Protection of Energy Storage Systems
Johnson Controls, the global leader for smart, healthy and sustainable buildings, announces the launch of its Lithium-Ion Risk Prevention System. The system is engineered to provide early-warning detection of battery failure in Lithium-Ion Energy Storage Systems (ESS) and other applications using Lithium-Ion batteries such as UPS systems in data centers and manufacturing facilities. By monitoring and mitigating battery failure before it presents a fire threat, this technology provides immense safety value for the Energy Storage industry, which is rapidly growing due to global emission reduction targets in renewable power generation – particularly solar and wind. The risk behind Lithium-Ion batteries Lithium-Ion batteries provide a cost-effective energy storage solution for wind farms, solar farms and data centers. They can also pose severe risk if battery abuse occurs due to mechanical damage, charging failures, manufacturing defects or external heat. Battery abuse can result in thermal runaway – a dangerous chemical reaction within a battery cell that quickly spreads to adjacent cells. As it spreads, these cells collectively generate heat and smoke, which can potentially cause a fire event. To help prevent catastrophic loss of assets, it is of paramount importance that battery cell malfunction is detected and mitigated prior to events that could lead to thermal runaway. This is best achieved by actively monitoring for Lithium-Ion off-gases, which are produced shortly after cell malfunction occurs. Fully integrated early warning solution The Johnson Controls Lithium-Ion Risk Prevention System features monitoring and reference sensors that continuously check battery racks for the presence of Lithium-Ion off-gases. The reference sensors provide surrounding ambient air data to the controller, while the monitoring sensors within the battery racks capture data relating to the air directly adjacent to the Lithium-Ion batteries. The sensors detect Lithium-Ion off-gases in a concentration as small as one part per million (ppm) and are compatible with all Lithium-Ion chemistries. When the sensors detect off-gas, they immediately and automatically communicate with the battery management system to shut down the affected battery stacks to help prevent thermal runaway. In applications where the off-gases can build and cannot be vented externally, an inerting system may be employed to help prevent the off-gases from igniting. Early intervention helps protect valuable assets – extending the lifetime value of energy storage systems while keeping surrounding assets intact. “The unique, three-step risk prevention system integrates off-gas monitoring and early intervention with traditional fire detection and suppression methods,” said Derek Sandahl, senior product manager, Johnson Controls. “The single system with monitoring can feed into a building management system, so all battery health information is provided quickly, and the system can respond appropriately.” The Johnson Controls Lithium-Ion Risk Prevention System can be readily integrated into existing power storage systems since it does not require any electrical or mechanical contact with battery cells. For integration with fire detection and suppression systems, it is used with AUTOPULSE, ZETTLER or FIRECLASS Detection and INERGEN® or SAPPHIRE® Inerting or Fire Suppression Systems.

ZealiD, a Leader in Secure Digital Identity, Selects DigiPlex to Host Critical Infrastructure DigiPlex, the Nordic leader for sustainable, scalable, and secure data centers, has been selected by ZealiD as its partner in the rapidly growing market for secure digital identities. The company chose DigiPlex for its exceptionally high standards of physical security at its data centers. ZealiD provides organisations and individuals with a qualified eSignature that can be used to prove identity across the EU and beyond. ZealiD’s can be used to sign legal and court documents, register to vote, apply and prove identity to financial institutions and many other instances where verifying who you are in the digital world is essential. It is accepted by all public authorities across the EU and is the first organisation in the world to offer these services as a mobile app that currently works in 26 countries and 21 languages. ZealiD conforms to the eIDAS regulation, set by the EU as the leading global standard for electronic trust and identification services. It also meets applicable ETSI security standards which prohibit storing data in the cloud. Certificates which prove the identity of users, and which are used for authentication and esignatures, are stored on secure servers in a data center. It is therefore essential that ZealiD’s co-location partner can demonstrate the same commitment to security and protecting these servers. Before selecting DigiPlex, ZealiD used independent security certification company Tuvit to audit its facilities. It confirmed the very high level of physical security DigiPlex offers to its customers. “As a hyper-growth company in the fast-moving digital identity market that demands exceptionally secure and complex solutions, it was imperative that we found a partner which could not only support our ambitious plans, but could match our commitment to security,” commented Philip Hallenborg, founder and CEO of ZealiD. “With DigiPlex we are assured of the physical security protecting our servers and have a clear path to expand as our business grows.” “Security is of paramount importance to all of our customers ranging from hyperscale cloud service providers to innovative, fast-moving entrepreneurs like ZealiD,” said Fredrik Jansson, CCO at DigiPlex. “DigiPlex has, over the last 20 years, earned a strong reputation for our physical security alongside high levels of customer service. We are very pleased that ZealiD recognizes this heritage and has chosen to put its trust in us.” All DigiPlex facilities benefit from multi layered integrated security systems that features overt and covert measures covering physical, technical and human defence. Exact specifications are confidential but will include combinations of high-grade dual perimeter security fencing, 24/7/365 site security and manned guarding, a sophisticated Access Control System with multi factor authentication featuring biometric ‘Man-Trap’ access portals and an advanced Closed Circuit TV surveillance system. DigiPlex also creates unique arrangements for individual customers down to specific suites, cage and rack-level security systems.

What are your company's key distinguishing features and/or USP? Telehouse is a world-leading secure, resilient and carrier-neutral data centre operator and co-location provider with over 40 sites in 18 countries around the world, each strategically placed to offer customers maximum data centre connectivity potential. Telehouse boasts one of the world’s most highly connected networks of carriers, ISPs, internet exchanges, cloud service and data centre providers. The operator has over 3,000 customers worldwide to which it upholds a 99.999% uptime service level agreement. One of Telehouse’s key USPs is its unrivalled experience and expertise having first established itself in the industry since 1988. The organisation has been providing connectivity to businesses across the UK and Europe for over 30 years. It is trusted by industry leaders worldwide including leading carriers, enterprises, and service providers. As the first home of the London Internet Exchange (LINX), Telehouse is where the world’s data centre traffic meets. The company’s London Docklands campus is Europe's most connected data centre facility, operating four data centres and is the continent’s first carrier-neutral colocation facility. Ciaran Power, senior datacentre engineer & technical sales of UK Dedicated Servers commented: “The primary reason for being in Telehouse is connectivity. A large portion of the UK’s internet traffic passes through that site so it was a logical move to have a presence. The connectivity options are second to none.” Telehouse South, a substantial Telehouse investment, is currently being extensively refurbished close to the Docklands campus to support the growing demand for secure, resilient, colocation services as well as access to leading cloud players and managed services. The new facility will provide over 31,000 square metres of colocation space over six floors with the first floor opening to customers in early 2022. What tangible impact has your company had on the market and your customers? When other operators had to scale back their operations through the pandemic, Telehouse kept its operations running, maintaining business as usual operations for its customers. The organisation has also maintained its normal staffing levels throughout the pandemic to support its customers while many other operators have scaled back their services and operated with skeleton staff. Telehouse’s value to its customers has been clearly demonstrated throughout the pandemic, delivering a record number of services including unlimited round-the-clock remote hands technical support, engineering projects and operational services. To support customers whose workforces had to adapt to homeworking, Telehouse also increased bandwidths to facilitate efficiency and productivity. Service delivery data shows that Telehouse delivered a record number of interconnections between April 2020 and April 2021. The volume of interconnects spiked significantly from a typical rate of 600 to over 1700 in July and 2700 in October 2020. These are unprecedented levels that have maintained Telehouse’s customers’ ability to provide the high level of service expected by their users. The data also reveals that there was no drop off in Telehouse’s capability to deliver on its customers’ requirements throughout the pandemic. Service request volumes reached 30% higher than usual as the year progressed before a natural drop off ahead of Christmas. What levels of customer service differentiate you from your competitors? Telehouse places customer experience at the heart of everything it does. To support the claim, last year the company created the position of Senior Customer Experience Director and promoted former Sales Director, Mark Pestridge, to the role. Mark’s focus is managing relationships with Telehouse’s clients and the creation of not only his position but creating a full team to support him has enabled the business to excel in this department over a potentially challenging period such as 2020. Telehouse partner IX Reach are a beneficiary of Telehouse’s exceptional customer service standards. CEO Stephen Wilcox commented: “I value the relationships I have developed with some of the people who make the company so special. It is always a pleasure to deal with the Telehouse team who are all highly professional while also being easy to deal with.” The pandemic highlighted to Telehouse the importance of constantly looking for ways to improve the customer experience and providing seamless end-to-end journeys and collaboration opportunities that help customers achieve their goals faster and more easily. Mark and his team are dedicated to fostering a deep understanding of Telehouse’s customers’ ambitions and do this to ensure they are able to work together to achieve the long-term objectives of the business. Tim Anker, formerly colocation director at Amito, a Telehouse customer, recently commented: “We know the individuals at Telehouse very well and one of the most important aspects in selecting the company is its stability – the stability of the team and of the Telehouse model.” What are the major differentiators between your company and your primary competitors? In 1990 Telehouse opened Telehouse North, its first London data centre and became Europe’s first colocation provider. The organisation continues to be a pioneer and innovator, helping to shape the growth, future and sustainability of the sector. Its London Docklands campus is Europe’s most connected data centre facility and the organisation has over 40 data centres worldwide currently serving over 3,000 customers. The location of Telehouse’s facilities is not to be underestimated and is a key differentiator for its customers and partners. IX Reach’s Wilcox said: “One of the best things about working with Telehouse is that they have the right locations”. Anker commented further: “There is so much evidence to support the leading proposition offered by Telehouse. For example, the high proportion of LINX ports in the Telehouse London Docklands campus. Telehouse’s ongoing investment and expansion is very important for Amito.” Telehouse’s data centres are also powered by 100% renewable energy and have been doing so for almost a decade, being recognised with a DCS award in 2017 for Data Centre Energy Efficiency Project of the Year. Carolina Uribe is Telehouse’s Energy and Environmental manager, whose unique role is dedicated to working with government bodies and regulatory agencies, ensuring the company is continually innovating its green initiatives. Its data centres also offer low-latency connections to a range of partners including leading internet exchanges and cloud service providers and direct, resilient links to Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute and Amazon Web Services Direct Connect. Telehouse is the host of the LINX and became the first global colocation provider to host the Olympics Broadcasting Service Platform. The London Docklands campus is a Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute location.

Overview: Opened for business in 2010, CWL1 is a continuously evolving hyperscale data centre hosting and colocation campus operated by Vantage Data Centers which acquired the 50 acres site from Next Generation Data (NGD) in July 2020. Vantage’s mission is to provide a world class data centre campus that provides scalable, secure, resilient, energy efficient colocation and hosting solutions. In addition to serving hyperscaler cloud provider organisations, the existing data centre facility offers densities varying from 2kW to 125KW+ per rack for wholesale customers and UK enterprise clients requiring cloud hosting, private data halls, and colocation solutions. With 72MW connected and 200MW in reserve, built to tier III standards, the resilient facility is Europe’s largest data centre comprising 750,000sqft (GIA) over three floors. The building has been sustainably repurposed and transformed over the past decade, having originally been built as a semiconductor production plant for LG but never used. The company has developed the ability to respond rapidly in delivering the private and shared campus space required to fulfil the exacting needs of its world-class customers. A 16-week build programme allows it to meet demand and deliver quality quickly. The semi-rural location surrounding the facility is currently being developed to accommodate three further data centres, the first two of which will be completed within the next two years, each offering 300,000sqft and 40MW capacity. • Sustainable redevelopment of an existing site and building structure • Large size of building for scalability / economies of scale • Abundant, reliable, lower-cost power • Enhanced natural security by being in rural location, away from flight paths and flood plains • Convenience - proximity to M4 hi-tech corridor to be within reach of customers throughout West England/South Wales and London/M25 area • Creating employment and attracting new business into the region What are your company’s solution's key distinguishing features and/or USP? Ultra-secure and resilient by design: The highest levels of resilience are underpinned by an unprecedented 270MVA power supply from an adjacent on-site sub-station supplying a direct connection to the SuperGrid. This ensures smooth delivery and control of power into the building, minimising risk of surges or spikes - there has not been a single outage since the facility was opened in 2009. Further, the current facility is bomb and earthquake proof, and benefits from prison grade perimeter fencing. Power to rack: up to 125kW per rack is currently available for the most demanding high performance computing requirements. Solution Architects favour our ‘blank canvas’ approach where they can decide the best technical solution for their users’ needs rather than be blocked by poor data centre designs and minimal rack power densities. Energy Optimisation: CWL1 campus offers PUE of 1.2 and was the first data centre campus (since 2010) in the UK to be powered by 100 per cent renewably sourced energy. This is complemented by a custom Energy Management System designed by Schneider Electric enabling real-time monitoring, measuring and reporting on energy and environmental performance. Further, lower ambient temperature in the Wales region aids cooling efficiency with the use of outdoor air for free-cooling in cooler months when the outside ambient air temperature is below 20°C Diverse Connectivity: Central to its delivery of services, Vantage’s Cardiff campus also serves as a regional Internet hub and major communications node for Wales and the West of England. In total 15 telecommunications providers offer regional, national and international connectivity services from the data centre for providing diverse, high-speed fibre solutions. These include BT, Level 3 Vodafone, Surf, Verizon, Zayo, Expo-e, Virgin and SSE Telecom. The site has multiple MMR’s with multiple routes radiating in different directions to facilitate diversity and dark fibre routes are also available. This enables thousands of low latency options. As a point of presence for the London Internet Exchange’s LINX Wales Peering Exchange, it means lower latency and an overall improved end-user experience for LINX members and their customers. Further connectivity credentials include direct gateway connections into the network infrastructures of major public cloud providers, bypassing the public internet to ensure the delivery of extremely responsive, secure and reliable cloud-enabled services. Price Performance: Vantage Cardiff campus’ huge size and low out of town cost base combine to offer world-class co-location at half the price of comparable facilities in the London area. What tangible impact has your product/solution had on the market and your customers? With pricing half that of London/M25, CWL1 Campus has evolved into a world-class and highly affordable regional alternative to large metropolitan areas. Vantage’s Cardiff campus is now ‘home from home’ to the IT Systems of an impressive and growing list of blue-chip organisations. From UK government departments and major banks to BT, CGI, IBM, WiPro and other global giants, including some of the world’s largest software and cloud companies. Its huge scalability and power source has and is enabling large organisations and IT, service providers, to consolidate power strapped and/or multiple smaller estates; while also allowing growing businesses the flexibility to scale up as they expand. With 270MW of power available, the site offers more than enough forward power and power to rack densities for meeting the most demanding Cloud Hyperscalers, as well as Hybrid Cloud and HPC (High Performance Computing) requirements including specialist semi-conductor, engineering, and life sciences organisations - of which there are many in the Wales region. Moreover, having Vantage Data Centers practically on their doorsteps is proving attractive to local enterprises looking for secure and cost-effective space to house perhaps an initial one or two server racks. A 100 per cent commitment to renewably sourced energy and certified commitment to the government CCA initiative, affords customers Zero Carbon Tax and enhanced Green credentials. The semi-rural location also offers customers a more naturally secure environment than a metro one. As a supporter and key proponent of Digital Strategy for Wales, the continued success of the campus in attracting major businesses to the Cardiff Capital Region brings significant ongoing investment into the local economy. Vantage has also evolved into a growing UK employer, intentionally focusing on diversity and inclusivity, as well as generating regular on-site construction engineering work for hundreds of local subcontractors. Looking forward, Vantage’s 1,450,000sqft/50 acres campus offers considerable scope for growth with enough space to keep pace with continuing strong demand for high-quality data capacity. With this, the company is moving ahead with the construction of two further data centres. At 300,00sqft and 40MW apiece, these are due for completion within the next two years, bringing even further capability to the region. What levels of customer service differentiate you from your competitors? • At the heart of CWL1’s success is its ability to consistently leverage the vast space available and low-cost base location to maximise economies of scale for the benefit of existing and future customers: A key factor has been the company’s rapid build programme which ensures the cost-effective delivery of individual data halls within an industry-leading time of up to 16 weeks. This is down to the expertise and prowess of Vantage’s on-site construction and engineering team and principal contractors, the hundreds of construction workers permanently on-site, and the flexibility of trusted suppliers. • Engineering support: Onsite 24/7/365 assistance on all aspects of installation and capacity planning; remote hands service and hands and eyes support for performing tasks such as power cycling, visual inspections and cable replacements; advice on regulatory matters, IT issues and products. • Specialist server migration and de-installation/installation services get customer racks transported, up and running in hours – not days. • Extensive range of on-site private meeting suites and conference facilities available to clients • Event catering service (Room booking and catering, Meet & Greet, Badging and registrations, site tours and presentations) • Competent Persons Course (CPC): ensures that all attendees working on-site have been inducted for site health & safety. Completion enables the attendees to have un-escorted access to Data Halls and racks Commitment to quality: certified to ISO 9001, ISO 14001, ISO 27001, BSI10012 and ISO 45001. (Also ISAE 3402 SOC 2 and PCI DSS Compliant) What are the major differentiators between your product/solution and those of your primary competitors? • Meets Global, National and Regional demand for colocation and hosting – all from a highly scalable single-site campus at pricing half that of London • Design and construction of bespoke data halls within industry-leading timescales - up to 16 weeks • A world class regional colocation and telecommunications hub for Wales and West England • Future-proofed – 420,000sqft net technical capacity under one roof with room for further expansion on the campus with three further data centre buildings planned – two at 300,000sqft/40MW apiece already agreed for delivery within the next two years • Stable, forward power – up to 270MW available; connected to national SuperGrid via private sub-station • Power to rack –125MW scalable power - to support the highest density requirements • Diverse carrier/ISP connectivity with latency as low as 1.2ms between Cardiff and central London; a Point of Presence for LINX Wales Peering Exchange; direct gateway connections to hyperscale public cloud provider network infrastructure; direct Layer 2 connections into London Telehouse for added customer convenience Please supply any supportive quotes and/or case study materials to demonstrate the value of this product/solution to your customers/partners. - Wipro Technologies EMEA (customer since May 2013) “You’ve really got to question paying premium rates for data centre real estate and power in large city areas like London. There aren’t too many data centres on the planet that can tick the unlimited power box.“ - Tom Freeman, Head of Global Mission Critical Solutions Jones Lang LaSalle “One of the only next generation data facilities of its type outside of the United States that meets the suitability standards required by major corporations.” - UK Data Centre Business Area Manager, IBM Consummate professionals providing world-class facilities and a first-class delivery, they have met considerable challenges to implement a bespoke solution for an IBM High-Performance Computing managed service solution and remain a valued partner of an extending IBM team.“ - Rob Corrigill, CTO, TeleWare Group PLC: “The exceptional security, resilience and high-speed connectivity on offer at the data centre, combined with a lower cost proposition compared to London data centre options, made using their high calibre facility for our Cloud Call platform a no brainer. We have total peace of mind that the data centre is the right fit for our current requirements and has the scale to support our future needs.”

Navisite Launches ‘Next Steminist’ Scholarship Program to Encourage Young Women to Pursue Careers in STEM
$10,000 awards designed to help female undergraduates get started in STEM and pave the way for the next generation of technology leaders and innovators. Navisite has announced Navisite’s Next Steminist, a scholarship program designed to help close the gender gap in tech and encourage young women to go after their dreams in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math). The program kicks off with three $10,000 awards that will be granted to eligible female candidates who are currently pursuing or plan to pursue a degree in STEM. Applications are being accepted now through May 17, 2021. “It’s crucial that today’s leaders and companies help pave the way for future female leaders and innovators in technology,” said Gina Murphy, president and COO of Navisite. “Too often, pursuing a degree in STEM is not even on the radar as a viable career path for young women. It’s important we reach out early when young women are making decisions about their education. We’re proud to be able to offer support through our ‘Next Steminist’ scholarship program to help alleviate the financial burden and empower aspiring young steminists to pursue their goals.” According to the U.S. Census Bureau, women represent nearly half the U.S. workforce, yet only 27 percent are represented in STEM. Navisite’s Next Steminist scholarship was created to help turn the tide on female underrepresentation by encouraging more young women as they transition to college and beyond to explore their interests in STEM. The program is available to anyone 25 years old or younger who identifies as female and is a high school graduate or current undergraduate student enrolled or planning to enroll full-time at an accredited four-year college or university. “Time and again, the research shows that greater gender equality and workplace diversity leads to more productive, successful companies,” said Mark Clayman, CEO of Navisite. “It’s incumbent upon tech companies like ours to do their part to help promote female STEM talent—their perspective is needed to drive innovation and help fill the widening IT skills gap.” The Navisite Next Steminist program is administered by Scholarship America®, the nation’s largest designer and manager of scholarship, tuition assistance and other education support programs for corporations, foundations, associations and individuals.

Zerto Cloud Data Management and Protection
What are your company's key distinguishing features and/or USP? Zerto delivers disaster recovery, backup, and cloud mobility through a single cloud data management and protection platform. Zerto’s distinguishing features come in three categories: performance and scale, data mobility and migrations, and a converged experience. Zerto brings the following key differentiators for performance and scale: • Always-on replication delivering RPOs of seconds; • Journaling technology that gives users the ability to recover entire data centres, applications, VMs, folders and files in just a few clicks; • Software-only, scale-out architecture that allows you protect thousands of VMs without sacrificing performance or simplicity; • The Zerto platform has built in orchestration to automate the protection and management of any disruption (both planned and unplanned), removing manual processes saving time and resources; • Use a disruption-free on-demand sandbox to perform tests, scan for vulnerabilities, and patch management when needed. Data mobility and migrations: • Easily use the public cloud or managed service providers for disaster recovery and backup operations; • Migrate workloads to, from, and between clouds without impact to production or data loss; • Zerto is vendor and cloud agnostic, pick the infrastructure and platform that works for any customer; and • When migrating or replicating to the cloud, workloads are converted to run on different environments natively, automated configuration and re-IP as needed as well as using native services like scale sets, queues and cloud storage services that have been expressly designed to maximize availability and minimize data loss. One single, converged experience allows organisations to: • Protect, recover, and move applications within a couple of clicks, from the same UI. • Protect and recover virtualized, SaaS, and containerized (Kubernetes) applications with ease using one platform; • Utilize Analytics - included in the Zerto platform – which provides one single, comprehensive view of a customer’s entire multi-site, multi-cloud environment, assisting organisations in making better informed decisions and proactive planning, to achieve an efficient, IT resilient mode of operation; and • Gain multiple options to recover from ransomware, from hot to cold storage. What tangible impact has your company had on the market and your customers? Traditional backup and disaster recovery systems are based on snapshots and saving data to tapes. This kind of outdated technology creates gaps in an organisation’s data: if its last backup took place days or even hours before a ransomware attack occurs, all the data that was created between the backup and the attack will be lost forever. With Zerto, organisations will see minimal data loss and downtime by allowing users to rewind and recover data with granularity from any point in time—and do so within seconds of a disruptive event. A great example of this is Tencate, a multinational textile company who experienced two ransomware attacks – Their experience using backups the first time led to a 12-hour data loss and a two-week recovery. After implementing Zerto, they were unfortunate to be attacked a second time, but the data loss was a mere 10 seconds and recovery was under 10 minutes. The recent announcement of Zerto 9, adds many Ransomware Resilience features such as immutability; safeguarding data in the cloud to prevent malicious deletion or modification of data, including ransomware; as well as Instant Restore, Automated VM Protection and cloud Tiering all to aid in the combat against Ransomware. For customers, CDP provides an always-on customer experience while simplifying workload mobility to protect, recover, and move applications freely across existing systems, hybrid, and multi-clouds. Zerto’s CDP enables every write made to any protected VM’s disks to be copied to the recovery site with no impact on storage latency or production performance. Additionally, Zerto is constantly innovating its platform to include support for additional cloud platforms and cloud tiering to deliver secure and cost-effective archive storage and simplified management for end users and MSPs. Zerto’s platform is ideal for any organisation that wants to ensure that its customers will never experience a site outage or online disruption again. Many customers also rely on Zerto to move IT workloads to, from, and between cloud platforms without risking anything happening to their data. Zerto provides customers with multi-cloud agility, meaning that they can work with multiple cloud platforms at once, such as Azure, AWS and IBM cloud, to further accelerate their business. Alan Barrett, Head of IT at TWM Solicitors commented: “Prior to having Zerto, I would’ve had to literally run a backup, restore, backup, restore. It probably would’ve taken me two to three days restoring and configuring. Prior to that, I probably would’ve had to spend up to a week to be fully operational again.” Talking about the Zerto platform, Alan continued, “We set up the platform and did the failover and it literally took a couple hours and I was so impressed. It just wired, and it was easy to do...It’s just so easy. And that, for me, is the brilliance”. What levels of customer service differentiate you from your competitors. Zerto Technical Support and customer success live together. While Zerto makes “Customer First” resonate throughout the customer journey, Zerto pays special attention to it within Technical Support. The IT Central Station customer satisfaction rating (4.6/5) underlines how well Zerto supports their customers, with one review on IT Central Station stating that: “Support is VERY important, and Zerto knocks it out of the park!” – Zerto customer, Financial Services (read full review here). From Gartner Peer Insights: As a Senior Infrastructure Engineer explained on Gartner Peer Insights, “Their staff is super talented, and most issues are solved first call.” – Zerto Customer, Sr. Infrastructure Engineer, Service Industry (read full review). With a dedicated staff of Technical Support Engineers to cover Zerto’s customers’ backup and data protection needs 24/7/365, we confidently assure customers that we’ll be there to provide timely resolution to any issues they experience. This has led us to have a customer satisfaction rating of 4.5 out of 5. What are the major differentiators between your company and your primary competitors? Zerto has industry-leading RTOs and RPOs (of seconds) and its single software only cloud data management and protection platform that converges continuous backup, disaster recovery, and data mobility, across hybrid and multi-cloud environments, mitigating the risks of downtime and data loss, while eliminating the risks and complexities of modernisation and the need for multiple tools to achieve faster cloud adoption. Zerto has transformed the global data protection market by opening the benefits of its unique and differentiated CDP technology through a single software-only platform for all application tiers. With this advancement, enterprises using the Zerto platform have gained the ability to tailor data protection strategies and cost optimisation models to their specific needs. This also sets Zerto apart from its competitors as the only platform to provide cloud data management and protection using CDP to enable enterprises to mobilise, protect, manage, and recover applications across public and hybrid clouds without downtime or data loss. Zerto leverages its CDP with its continuous journaling and replication to eliminate the need for snapshot-based backup solutions. For decades, organisations have relied on backup technology to help solve every day, routine disruptions that require the quick restore of recent files, folders, or VMs, as well as using backup to store data for compliance requirements. Organisations can now use Zerto to replace legacy backup for al use cases with its market-leading CDP technology, delivering unmatched granularity, RPOs, and speed-of-recovery. Zerto is changing the status quo for data protection, and this year we were proud to be recognized in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Backup and Recovery* for the first time, validating Zerto as a new player in this space and one that is changing the game. As part of it, Zerto’s strengths included: - Converged backup and DR solution — Zerto provides a single platform that combines backup and DR functionality, thus simplifying data protection architectures. Its CDP-based architecture allows for very low RPOs. - Operational simplicity — Gartner Peer Insights customer reviews and Gartner client inquiries indicate that Zerto offers an intuitive UI that facilitates ease of use. - Cross-platform recovery — The Zerto platform supports recovery of VMware or Hyper-V VMs on AWS or Microsoft Azure, thus providing multiple options for recovery. Additional key differentiators include: • The Zerto platform delivers 50% TCO savings over traditional, non-continuous data protection and disaster recovery solutions. We deliver these savings by reducing data loss to seconds, downtime to mere minutes, and significantly simplifying ongoing management and administration. And we do this with fundamental architectural, technical choices that together stack up to be dramatically less than everything that's required for traditional backup and replication solutions. • Zerto for Kubernetes is the only solution to provide CDP-based backup and disaster recovery to integrate into the application deployment lifecycle for containerised applications to enable data protection as code. Z4K supports Microsoft Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service, and Red Hat OpenShift. *Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Backup and Recovery Software Solutions, 19 July 2021, Santhosh Rao | Nik Simpson | Michael Hoeck | Jerry Rozeman

Huawei Data Center Facility
Founded in 1987, Huawei is a leading global provider of information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure and smart devices. We have nearly 194,000 employees, and we operate in more than 170 countries and regions, serving more than three billion people around the world. Huawei Digital Power is one of Huawei's fastest-growing product lines, and it covers six business domains: smart PV, data center facility, site power, mPower, and embedded power, and integrated smart energy. With approximately 6000 employees, 60% of whom are focused on R&D, Huawei Digital Power serves one third of the world's population across more than 170 countries and regions. And its product concepts and quality have been recognized by the industry. In the domain of data center facility, Huawei integrates advanced power electronics technology, thermal management technology and AI technology to reduce data center PUE, reduce carbon emissions through innovation and practice, and provide customers with simple, green, smart and reliable data center solutions. Specific products and solutions include outdoor prefabricated modular data centers, indoor modular data centers, UPS, air conditioning and management systems. Thanks to continuous investment and technology accumulation in the field of data center facility, Huawei’s data center facility performance has grown steadily. According to third-party authority Omdia and frost & sullivan report, outdoor prefabricated modular data centers ranked No. 1 in global market share(No. 1 for Six consecutive years). The indoor modular data center ranked No. 1 in global market share, and the modular UPS ranked No. 1 in global market share(No. 1 for five consecutive years). At present, Huawei ’s data center facility solutions cover Carriers, ISP, governments, transportation, finance, manufacturing, energy, etc. Multiple industries. There are some cooperative customers who have not been authorized publicly. Listed below are just some of the customers that have been served Carrier：British Telecom，Vodafone，Orange，China Unicom，China Mobile，China Telecom etc. ISP：Global Switch，Colt，Noris Network etc. Transportation：London Underground，Dubai International Airport，Mexico City Airport，Singapore CAAS etc. Manufacture：BMW，Mercedes-Benz，Heineken，Coca cola etc. Financial：Turkey Halkbank，Central Bank of Oman Data Center，Ethiopia Commercial Bank，China Construction Bank etc. Energy：Saudi Electricity Company，Mexico Pemex，Russian Grids，Electricity Generation Company Turkey etc. From the perspective of data center infrastructure, our major difference is “modular + intelligent” design approach and reshaping the architecture, cooling, O&M, and power supply. Reshaping architecture Compared with the traditional data center construction mode, the smart modular DC adopts the full-modular architecture. The standard interfaces of all components are prefabricated, pre-tested, and Lego-like assembled onsite. A modular and prefabricated approach enables simplified delivery. All core subsystem modules are prefabricated, cutting construction time from 20 months to 6 months and ensuring rapid service launch. In addition, the assembly rate of prefabricated modular data centers reaches 97%, reducing construction water and construction waste by 80%, and the recovery rate exceeds 80%, reducing construction carbon emissions by 90%, and achieving green construction throughout the life cycle. Reshaping cooling Huawei digital iCooling technology and indirect evaporative cooling solution, which maximizes the use of natural cooling, reduce the power usage effectiveness (PUE) of data centers by 8% ~ 15%, and save power consumption by over 20%, save water by 40%. Reshaping O&M Digital and intelligent technologies enable fully automated O&M of data centers, cutting O&M costs by around 35%. In addition, refined and intelligent asset capacity management improves resource utilization by about 20%. Reshaping power The full-chain converged PowerPOD and SmartLi UPS provide the industry's highest efficiency and power density. Compared with the traditional solution the distributed components and converged power supply reduce the area of the power supply and distribution area by 30%, achieving efficient power supply across the entire load range. In addition, End-to-end power supply and distribution systems are now visualized and manageable. Digital technologies enable predictive maintenance, transforming passive maintenance to proactive prevention and ensuring reliable data center operations.

What are your company's key distinguishing features and/or USP? CBRE Data Center Solutions (DCS) delivers total life-cycle facility, maintenance, technology and real estate services for data center owners and occupiers, including enterprise, hyperscale, and colocation clients. Our team of over 2,000 dedicated data center technicians manage 75+ million square feet of raised floor space across 800+ sites in over 45 countries. We support 40% of the Fortune 100’s data centers and manage some of the most business-critical data centers for 5 of the 6 largest technology companies globally. DCS enables exceptional outcomes for our clients through a relentless focus on reliability, efficiency, quality and innovation across all facets of service delivery. By way of demonstrating our innovative services and industry-leading practices, in 2020 we: • Launched DCS Shield. This proprietary Risk & Reliability Program is aimed to have the highest impact on reducing risk and unplanned outages in a data center through a suite of unique processes, technology, assessments, and training. It’s a proven game-changer, creating a robust, shared risk awareness culture at all levels of the organisation. The results speak for themselves: 99.99968% Uptime achieved from over 4 million hours of data center operation in 2019, resulting in just 12.5 hours of downtime, and less than 15 minutes being due to human error. Only 16% of the unplanned downtime was related to human error versus an industry average of 70%. • Launched Converged Data Center Operations In 2019 CBRE expanded its Data Centre Solutions (DCS) offering to include an additional range of technology services. CBRE now has the capability to manage and maintain both data center technology physical infrastructure—hardware and software (e.g., servers, storage, racks)—and data center facilities (e.g., UPS and HVAC). In addition, the Converged Data Centre model encompasses services across the full real estate and IT lifecycle, including those in the Advisory and Project Management disciplines, such as: consulting, capital financing, site selection, development and project management, technology workload migration, and disposition of facilities. The integrated offering of technology and facilities management as well as advisory services is called the “Converged Data Centre” model. CBRE’s clients, particularly those with responsibility for real estate, finance and information functions, will realise significant benefits from the Converged Data Centre approach. These include: reduced costs, improved operational efficiency, visibility of end-to-end operations and associated costs, better informed organisational and investment decision-making, and the ability to move assets off the balance sheet to more closely resemble a cloud financial model. The technology scope of services within CBRE’s DCS group spans vendor-agnostic strategic consulting, such as cloud migration strategy and planning, data center planning and fit out, technical implementation and support (Smart Hands / Remote Hands), hardware maintenance, data destruction and asset recycling. Analytics, predictive maintenance, fault avoidance and speed to resolution—for both infrastructure equipment (e.g., UPS systems) and IT equipment (e.g., services)—will be provided through DCS’s new analytics group, CBRE | Romonet.   Measurable results: Fortune 500 U.S. Retail Bank Migration, Trusted Advisor & Transactions Global Colo Company Fit Out, IT Design & Installation Global Technology Company Smart Hands & Hardware Maintenance •Negotiated and secured 300 kw of co-location space under market pricing •Migrated 3,000 virtual and physical servers supporting 1,000 applications •35% savings in OPEX and CAPEX and reduced timeline by 8 months •Over 126,000 connections, 950 km of cable and 200 cabinets •12 week delivery •Delivered design, IT procurement, installation, and testing •60% savings in vendor maintenance YoY •80% of all maintenance is self-performed via Converged Ops model •100% uptime delivered • Partnered with IBM to offer Smart Maintenance Services. In 2020 CBRE launched a partnership with long term client IBM to provide technology support services for CBRE's clients at select data center facilities it manages. The new CBRE offering called Smart Maintenance leverages IBM's AI, augmented reality technologies and deep analytics to provide vendor-agnostic, predictive and reactive hardware maintenance for CBRE's data center clients' technology assets. As part of the agreement, IBM works with CBRE technicians as an on-site extension of IBM's Remote Technical Support. CBRE technicians can now diagnose and maintain IT hardware from a wide range of manufacturers, leveraging IBM's augmented reality and Watson enabled AI technologies while being supported by IBM's global platform, which includes 57 call centers worldwide, tens of thousands IT support specialists and 585 parts centers carrying 1.3 million parts. Now, when a service call is placed, IBM AI technology will ask a series of questions to identify the problem and help find the quickest solution. If physical repair is required, CBRE site technicians can perform this repair under guidance from IBM's central pool of expertise. Additionally, IBM analytics can provide lifecycle review for data center equipment and provide a predictive maintenance service plan. In today's hybrid, multi-cloud environments, many enterprises rely on a heterogeneous mixture of manufacturers and third-party vendors to provide maintenance and support for their IT systems. The solution is designed to reduce complexity and create a path to implement and maintain the next generation of hybrid workloads which can help reduce costs for CBRE's clients, which include leading corporations across sectors including financial services, technology, media, healthcare, energy and utilities, life sciences, retail and real estate investment trusts. "This opportunity was made possible by the history of success between CBRE and IBM," said Jim Harding, President of Data Center Solutions for CBRE. "We've been exploring areas that make sense for innovative collaboration, and we're very pleased to be backed by IBM Services and its leadership in AI and multi-vendor technology support." Additionally, a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic, cloud adoption and software has become an essential business service for many organizations and has highlighted the complexities of managing cost and usage. It has also created the need for IT decision makers to look for ways to help reduce the costs and complexity associated with maintaining equipment from a variety of technology vendors. "We're pleased to provide multi-vendor services for CBRE with IBM's diverse set of technology capabilities, software knowledge and predictive operational management," said Mike Perera, General Manager, Technology Support Services, IBM. "IBM Services is committed to innovations in analytics, AI, AR and other technologies to enable organizations to manage the toughest of circumstances, minimize outages and secure their data." With this service, CBRE's clients may be able to reduce maintenance and support spending. IBM's advanced IT support management technologies can infuse automation into the support process, including predictive maintenance, cognitive capabilities, proactive monitoring, and asset and life-cycle management. Prior to this, without the advantage of Smart Maintenance's analytics and predictive maintenance driving reduced downtime, CBRE's data center clients would have used Original Equipment Manufacturers and other third-party vendors to help manage their equipment. In addition, CBRE's clients may benefit from reduced time spent on hardware support tasks. IBM's proprietary asset management and support portal, which provides a real-time view of assets and support actions, will automate CBRE's IT support processes, helping employees to further improve their productivity. Furthermore, by consolidating IT support with CBRE, clients can minimize management overhead by no longer maintaining multiple support relationships, allowing them to shift their focus to more value-add tasks. What tangible impact has your company had on the market and your customers? The biggest impact CBRE has made in the market and for our customers is our proprietary processes and procedures for managing risk and reliability – namely DCS Shield. The data center industry is constantly evolving, so it’s crucial to have streamlined processes in place to enable seamless decision making, mitigate risk and provide a solid foundation for progress. CBRE’s proprietary Risk & Reliability Program is aimed to have the highest impact on reducing risk and unplanned outages in a data center through a suite of unique processes, technology, assessments, and training. We refer to our suite of risk mitigation tools collectively as DCS Shield™. It is a proven game-changer, creating a robust, shared risk awareness culture at all levels of the organization. In summary, key elements of our program include: DCS Select: Our recruiting assessment tool that determines if candidates have the right behaviors and aptitudes to be successful in a data center environment. DCS Select is focused on technical, non-managerial staff and provides a report on strengths and weaknesses against seven key behaviors and two key aptitudes. It’s just one key feature of our Risk & Reliability Program, aimed at having the highest impact on reducing risk and unplanned outages in a data center. Key benefits of DCS Select include: • Higher levels of job satisfaction • Better performance • Increased cost savings CNet CCAM® Assessment: Assesses a technician’s knowledge of data center operations and builds a training plan for any gaps. CNet CDCTP®: A training certification for highly competent technicians who demonstrate unrivalled technical knowledge and skills. Human Factors Training: Research demonstrates that no matter how resilient the Engineering Infrastructure appears, nearly 80% of preventable failures relate to human error or process failure. CBRE has invested a significant amount of time and resources to combat human factor related errors by engaging renowned psychologist Dr. Tim Marsh PhD, MSc, CFIOSH, CPsychol, SFIIRSM MD to develop the CBRE Data center Solutions Human Factors Training program. Dr. Tim Marsh is considered a world authority about behavioural safety, safety leadership, and organizational culture. The resulting program covers wellbeing and other factors which can affect a technician’s ability to perform well and how to act in stressful situations. The is achieved through classroom training, facilitation, group discussions and practical exercises, and aims to increase safety, quality, and efficiency in critical maintenance operations by reducing human error and its impact on maintenance activities. Critical Environment Risk Management (CERM™): CERM is CBRE’s proprietary data center risk management program aimed at diminishing human factor related risk. CERM™ offers a standardized suite of tools, procedures and technology applications based on steps identified as having the highest impact on reducing risk and increasing uptime. It features a series of 70 standardized operational processes and procedures for Critical Environments, including M&E, IT and Energy services. Derived from our experience as the world’s leading provider of integrated data center operations and the best practices from nuclear, petrochemical and aviation maintenance, our tried and tested philosophy is based on the foundation of having the right culture and behaviours and our consistent approach to people, processes and technology. We partner with each of our clients to individually craft the CERM™ program to align their business strategy, compliance requirements and risk needs. A first of its kind in the industry, CERM™ covers the three main areas of data center operations: IT, Critical Environment (CE) and Energy Services. CERM™ Quantum: The technology interface and technical application that supports the CERM™ program. Quantum tracks facility and asset information, CERM™ compliance, risk modules, and team training. Quantum is a Critical Risk Management reporting platform that has been developed to allow total visibility for our staff and our customers, on the management and operations of the critical IT and M&E systems supporting their business operations. This system has been developed by CBRE and is utilized for supporting mission critical facilities. What levels of customer service differentiate you from your competitors. DCS ensures client satisfaction through a number of vehicles, including: • Annual Client Satisfaction Survey: This survey is conducted by a neutral third party consultant, Kingsley Associates. They evaluate satisfaction levels, areas for development, and the outcomes specified in our service contract. The satisfaction scores for these surveys are below: • A highlight of these results include: 69% of respondent’s EB4 are in the promoter category • Quarterly Business Review Meetings: We meet with clients on a regular basis to review, validate, and improve performance. Moreover, we believe the most powerful measurement of customer satisfaction is demonstrated by our tenured relationships and expansion of services. We are increasingly entrusted with growing responsibility and we deliver time and time again. Our business has grown from $162M in 2016 to $907M in 2020, and we have maintained a 98% renewal rate while managing this rapid growth. What are the major differentiators between your company and your primary competitors? The main differentiator CBRE Data Centre Solutions has over the competition is that we are the only full-service global data real estate provider, offering consulting, advisory and transaction, project management, and integrated data centre operations services across the full life cycle of a data centre. We maintain mission critical and technical infrastructure facilities that are essential for business continuity for data centre owners, operators, and investors. As a single source solution, the CBRE DCS team can provide clients with the flexibility and bandwidth to focus on the strategic direction of your business.

Symmetry Access Control System
In 2006, Digital Realty started its journey with AMAG Technology when it searched for an integrated solution to install throughout the global business. The components needed to include best-in-breed solutions from each area: access control, alarm monitoring, digital video, building management system, a monitoring system and computerised maintenance and monitoring. Digital Realty selected AMAG’s Symmetry Access Control software to provide the backbone of their system and recently migrated to Symmetry CompleteView video management. Symmetry provides the integration platform for all Digital Realty systems to work in a converged environment. Symmetry is currently installed in 160+ sites. Each site operates independently, controls its own Symmetry server and can easily authorise, assign and change who has access to their facility. Some sites have several buildings that are linked and report back into the main site. According to Digital Realty, Senior Technical Director-Portfolio Security, Jack Jones, five critical elements make up a data centre: space, electricity, cooling, connectivity and security. Digital Realty’s distributed security model ensures all systems are monitored 100% of the time. “We have a distributed security model in how we use Symmetry,” said Jones. “The system needed to work on the local area network because there is redundancy to the building management system (BMS).” Digital Realty deploys the concentric ring security model using four to five layers, which includes physical barriers, systems, processes and people. Symmetry controls access to each ring and monitors all systems. A customer or visitor must swipe a card to enter the main building. They then need to show their badge to the security team, where it is determined whether the person needs to be escorted to their server room. All employees have access and all visitors and contractors require an escort. They must request to enter via ServiceNow, a cloud-based digital workflow platform and be approved before being allowed into the building. If escorted, they wait at the security station for a Digital Realty employee who must stay with them the entire time. Some customers do not need an escort and can proceed directly to their server room. They currently use Suprema fingerprint readers at all server room doors which integrate with Symmetry Access Control. In the past, Digital Realty was concerned about the high number of false alarms it received and because the industry doesn’t have a standard on how to manage, they weren’t sure if they were experiencing an acceptable amount of alarms or not. They decided to measure the percentage of alarm activity to total events (card access, door held open, etc.) Using Symmetry data to analyse where the problems occurred and the response to those problems, Digital Realty reduced their false alarms to 12%. They discovered repair work that needed to be made to doors and changed several design philosophies to eliminate some of the problems. “Over the past several years, we’ve used Symmetry’s transaction records to create a dashboard that tells us where the problems are,” said Jones. “It’s helped us improve our security program globally.” Through data mining and analysing trends using the visitor registration model database, Digital Realty studied visitor activity. Visitors start coming at 7am, peak at 11am and reduce from there. At 3am one site received 0.3 visitors an hour. “Using this good data, we were able to reduce the number of guards at night and shave almost US$5 million from our company-wide guarding budget,” said Jones. “Our understanding of Symmetry and its reporting capability helped us save money yet provide tight security at peak times.” Symmetry Access Control keeps all history and alarm logs. Digital Realty must keep transaction logs for two years to meet compliance requirements. “We have a total of 24,109 cameras and readers. Symmetry easily handles all of them,” said Jones. Symmetry CONNECT identity management is currently being implemented to manage access rights and their customer portals. CONNECT operates with Symmetry’s central card holder, AMAG’s Physical-Logical Access Interoperability (PLAI) agent, allowing Digital Realty to bridge the Symmetry Access Control system with a secondary access control system they use at a few sites they acquired. CONNECT manages all cardholders, regardless of the system and saves Digital Realty the expense of tearing out the second system and replacing it. Digital Realty recently acquired another European data centre company and will be migrating thousands of readers and cameras onto the Symmetry system. Jones has come to rely on AMAG Technology and their reseller partners to support him and his team throughout their expansion of physical offices and use of Symmetry. Symmetry can keep up with their exponential growth, changing security demands and compliance requirements. “AMAG is evolving its delivery and I think it’s a good thing,” said Jones. “If I have a problem, I make one call and I get the support I need. It’s an important relationship that I highly value.”

Digital Space strengthens UC&C offering with new strategic partnership
We are delighted to announce our new strategic partnership with 8×8, enabling us to strengthen our Unified Communications and Collaboration (UC&C) technology offering. Our partnership with 8×8, a global provider of cloud communication solutions, will further complement our existing portfolio, which comprises best of breed technology solutions across multiple industry-leading partners. Our customers will be able to benefit from enhanced UC&C opportunities as well as additional resource and expertise. Most notably, our customers will now be able to leverage 8×8 Experience Communications as a Service (XCaaS), which includes fully integrated, cloud-native contact centre, voice, team chat, and meetings capabilities, helping to positively transform how and where they communicate. Our CEO, Neil Muller, said: “As a result of our close working partnerships with industry-leading vendors, we are able to provide our customers with world-class IT solutions across our connected and productive spaces and I am proud to announce that our best of breed portfolio will now be further complemented by 8×8’s solutions. “8×8’s capability provides true global reach for delivering UCaaS and CCaaS solutions, which will integrate with and work alongside our customers’ existing digital portfolios to successfully enable change and drive business growth. I am excited to see how our customers will benefit from the new partnership.” Keith Jackson, Senior Director, EMEA Channel at 8×8, Inc, also added: “Our partners have built strong, trusted customer relationships that are instrumental to the success of our channel-first strategy. “As the channel helps guide organisations to move from legacy, on-premises communications and customer engagement systems to the cloud, we look forward to partnering with Digital Space. The 8×8 XCaaS integrated cloud communications, collaboration and contact centre platform presents our partner community with a major growth opportunity to take advantage of this transformational shift to support new hybrid work requirements.”

Excellence in Services: Park Place Technologies
Stemming from its ParkView monitoring platform, Park Place created a new technology service category – Discover, Monitor, Support, Optimize (DMSO) – a fully integrated approach to managing critical infrastructure. Our industry-leading and award-winning services include ParkView™ Managed Services, Entuity software, and our Enterprise Operations Center. • Improve infrastructure control and visibility in a single pane of glass • Simplify and automate the process of ensuring Uptime • Cost management • Optimize capacity and performance • Increase agility What We Do and How We Do It Park Place Technologies provides exceptional, global, single-partner service and support for data center storage, server, and network hardware for all tier one OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) equipment including but not limited to Dell, EMC, IBM, HPE, Cisco, NetApp, Oracle/SUN, Fujitsu, Hitachi, Brocade, Quantum. Park Place supports 110,000+ data centers in 150+ countries for more than 24,000 clients. Our worldwide network of 1.1 million parts stored regionally, locally, and on-site allows for fast parts distribution and service to help drive Uptime. As an organization we simplify the management of complex and hybrid technology environments, improving return on IT infrastructure investments. The scope of our business is to provide our customers with industry leading services that allow them to continue leveraging the investments made in technologies by extending the life of their assets. Park Place is able and ready to provide unique and superior value to the original equipment manufacturers and other third-party service providers, as we have demonstrated for 30 years. The provision of break-fix maintenance services remains Park Place’s core business unit, however, over the past few years we have developed other strategic business lines to complement our core offering of IT Infrastructure support and maintenance. Cost savings to the client average 40 percent off OEM prices for TPM support. Historically, Park Place operated within its core focus of break-fix maintenance services for server, storage, and networking. This takes an innovative approach to managing an organization’s critical infrastructure. DMSO maximizes uptime, improves operational speed, and eliminates IT chaos, all of which accelerate digital and business transformation. With a wide array of industry-leading and award-winning services such as ParkView™ hosted services, Entuity Network Analytics, and its Enterprise Operations Center, Park Place simplifies management of digital infrastructure environments for better business outcomes. How Our Customers Benefit When evaluating third party or OEM support with Park Place, our customers rely heavily on a risk vs reward analysis, Park Place propose the following common value proposition/’rewards’ within our proposed support solution:  Gartner recognized as ‘global leading third-party hardware maintainer’ -specializing in storage, server, and networking hardware  Cost-effective service delivery model  In-house Support- We do not use subcontractors within our core support service offerings; all expertise and resources are internal and hired direct from the respective manufacturers. As a result, this philosophy allows Park Place to provide a transparent costing structure and can guarantee the service in which we are accountable, end to end.  24x7 Global Coverage  Increased Uptime & parts availability  Flexibility – add/drop systems without penalty with credits available, short term coverage, support of legacy systems and tailored solutions  Unparalleled Service - ‘service first’ philosophy, with a 94% satisfaction rate  Comprehensive team of field service and Level III engineers that have, on average, 15+ years of direct OEM experience. These W2-badged engineers provide best-in-class support wherever your hardware equipment is located.  Client Services Team to provide MS with a named resource to own the service delivery experience, manage all service reporting, and the rare service escalation. Park Place has differentiated its service through such customer experience tools as the Central Park customer portal, which allows asset sorting, real-time ticket monitoring and the ability to add and delete contracted items; the PPTech Mobile app, which allows access to Central Park portal through any mobile device; a tracker that offers real-time tracking of engineers and parts; a First-Time Fix Guarantee, and a new podcast, “The Blue Couch Tech Sessions,” which brings industry analysts and experts to a monthly discussion on innovation. The First-Time Fix Guarantee is a Park Place Technologies industry exclusive. Under the program, if a return trip is needed to correct the same issue on the same device serial number within five days, clients will be credited for one month of maintenance and ParkView monitoring on that device. The First-Time Fix Guarantee is free as part of a Park Place maintenance contract when devices are supported by the company’s ParkView Hardware Monitoring.

Teledata, Manchester. Bringing people and technology together, to power businesses forward.
Founded in 2005, Teledata is Manchester’s largest independent data centre. The company is ISO27001 certified, as audited by the British Standards Institute, and offers colocation, cloud hosting, workplace recovery and data centre services to businesses across the UK. Teledata invested over £1M into an on-site ARC (alarm receiving centre), and this makes Teledata the only independent colocation data centre in the UK to boast an NSI Gold Approved BS5979 Security and Operations Centre (SOC) on-site. This facility gives Teledata direct links to police control rooms and protects security teams for fast and effective response to any potential emergency situations. Further security measures include site wide audio-challenge; thermal imaging devices to minimise false alarms and improve the accuracy of detection; Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) to enable visitors to securely register cars to enter the site compound without leaving their vehicles; a security entrance portal with multi-factor authentication and anti-tailgating technology; and highly secure perimeter speed gates. All of these systems are permanently monitored by the onsite police-linked security centre. Teledata also stands out from its competitors through its investment into energy efficiencies. The firm has worked closely with the Business Growth Hub and its consultants to intelligently reduce carbon emissions in all areas, including cooling consumption. Teledata invested £1.5 Million into a battery storage system to enhance energy efficiencies at its facility via a solution which enables the firm to store electricity from the national grid at times of low demand and discharge it during the most beneficial periods, acting as a reserve during peak tariff times. The system also offers integrated variable voltage optimisation to deliver a stabilised voltage, thus boosting the resilience of the facility by improving the shelf life of equipment, while reducing unnecessary energy waste and optimising the incoming power supply. A video about this project can be found here - https://youtu.be/7iMr7RjZMS8. Teledata is the only colocation provider in the UK to have implemented these technologies, making this an industry first. This project attracted some interest from big industry players, including a well known Silicon Valley based social media giant who has since become a customer after Teledata carried out a private build for the company, which had a large requirement with demanding specifications. Teledata has also implemented highly intelligent control systems; cold aisle containment; under-floor cold air channelling to minimise wastage; variable fans within condenser units; free air cooling systems; office space air conditioning controls to minimise wastage out of hours; highly efficient cooling pumps; cold aisle blanking throughout and a number of other measures including the controlled raising of temperatures in the cold and warm aisles. Teledata also has power metered at every board and office in the building. Overall, these measures have reduced the firm's annual electricity consumption by 19%, saving more than 700 tonnes of CO2 per year and generating annual financial savings of £150,000. In terms of support, Teledata treats its relationships with its clients as a partnership. The company’s dedicated on-site support team is available to clients 24x7. The technical team providing the customer support are the same team that built and manage the data centres, with no outsourcing or off-site help desks in place. Support is included in the price, there are no additional or hidden costs for support, and the company prides itself on transparency, keeping all cross connect pricing to install only, rather than implementing recurring charges. No automated bills are sent out for over usage of network or power, instead Teledata prefers to treat all its customers fairly with a high quality of account management. The firm also provides up to 2(N+N) UPS power protection to customer colocation racks, and Teledata’s cloud offering - CloudActiv - is active-active as standard for all cloud customers, for resilience and peace of mind. The measures put in place by Teledata to ensure high levels of resilience through power, security and network performance have resulted in a 100% uptime record for the firm, giving clients tangible benefits of not only a high performance premium network, but also zero downtime and reduced network latency. Teledata is a carrier neutral data centre, and a LINX (London Internet Exchange) Manchester PoP. Due to the nature of confidentiality and security within the industry, some of our better known clients have asked to remain anonymous, but below are some testimonials from those who have agreed to be referenced; "We initially chose Teledata as one of our data centre partners due to their impressive facilities, but it's the flexibility and the helpful team that have really stood out over the last few years." Jeremy Jarvis, co-founder, Brightbox "Teledata has been our primary data centre facility for over 5 years and we have been a customer for approaching 10. The partnership and longevity of our business together has been a direct result of the relationship with both the technical and the sales teams. Having experience of many data centres throughout the country, in my view Teledata has a unique facility which strikes exactly the right balance between security, responsiveness and being able to operate and manage our services effectively." Andy Pilkington, CTO, Keytech "Partnering with Teledata has given us access to an evolving product set that truly supports our client’s needs. Scalable, resilient hosting gives us the flexibility to deliver a reliable service in a fast moving industry, while increasing bottom line and passing on cost efficiencies to the customer. All the staff I have met have been super helpful and a joy to work with." Mark Stringer, MD, Ahoy "I have had servers with other companies before, but they tend to offer ticketing systems or there is a serious lack of support. With Teledata, they respond straight away and I can actually ring up and speak to support which is a huge deal to me. You know when you are talking to the team you are dealing with experts." Craig Duerden, Director, Leadspark “The fact that senior management took the time to personally take us round their operation in real detail gave us genuine confidence that there was a solid, physical and support infrastructure in place to take care of our business. Once we were up and running in the new data centre, any issues we had were resolved quickly, and we knew we could rely on their remote-hands service if we needed any quick jobs taking care of. Individual touches such as lending us hardware when we had a failure only added to the feeling we were in the right place.” Daniel Meggitt, Director at Abstract “I haven't met anyone better to deal with than Teledata. Flexible, reasonable, accommodating. Complex administrative documentation made easy.” Alistair Nicholls, Founder, Perry Nicholls “We have some demanding clients and strict SLAs to meet. Hosting at Teledata has helped us consistently meet these SLAs in a field where reputation is vitally important.” David James, CEO, mxData “We migrated seven racks to Teledata from another provider. Their comprehensive migration plan meant that a complex move ran seamlessly, with zero downtime and superb support from the Teledata team.” Steven Powell, Technical Director, Venom IT

With innovative commitments to sustainable practices across all areas of its business, Schneider Electric delivers an outstanding contribution to data centre sustainability and efficiency.
Introduction Sustainability and efficiency have long been hallmarks of Schneider Electric, helping customers to deploy technologies and embrace business strategies that minimise the impact of carbon emissions on the environment. Named as Corporate Knights’ ‘Most Sustainable Corporation in the World’ in 2021 and long-known as the world-leader leader in the digital transformation of energy management and automation, it has a history of driving digital transformation going back to the 1980s. In the 1990s, the data centres became essential for businesses, and Schneider Electric introduced a new architecture to design and build mission-critical physical infrastructure. Today it works to build sustainable hyperscale facilities, colocation and on-premise data centres, and edge computing environments that truly underpin the digital economy. Data centres have long been built into the fabric of our digital lives, and are essential to everything we do. As they grow in number and our appetite for connectivity and data increases, Schneider Electric is leading the industry; creating the hardware, software and the holistic strategies helping drive sustainable data centre operations. Key distinguishing features and USPs With the impacts of climate change becoming more prominent each year, there has never been a more crucial time for businesses across the world to accelerate their commitments to sustainability and Net Zero. The data centre industry itself is becoming increasingly accountable and has a key role to play in driving sustainable operations. In fact, today data centres directly contribute to 5 of the UN’s sustainable development goals and various analysis suggests that they represent 1-2% of global electricity consumption. It’s expected we’ll see an 11% growth (CAGR) of new European hyperscale and colocation capacity between 2020-2023, and with such providers setting ambitious sustainability commitments, they have long been driving the market, inspiring and pushing the boundaries of data centre design. Schneider Electric is no stranger to Net Zero, and in 2019 it publicly announced it would play its part by: • Accelerating its 2030 goal of carbon neutrality in its extended ecosystem by five years to 2025; • Removing gas and ensuring the end of SF6 by the end of 2025; • Reaching net-zero operational emissions by 2030 as part of validated SBT target; • Achieving a net-zero supply chain by 2050. In 2020, Schneider Electric announced it was further accelerating its sustainability commitments and promised to help customers save/ avoid 800M tonnes of carbon emissions by 2025. Just months into that program, it has helped to reduce CO2 by 276 million tonnes. Today, data centre sustainability is now being driven by customers and in a recent survey of more than 800 global operators, Schneider Electric and 451 Research found that 97% of providers’ customers are asking for contractual sustainability commitments, and that requirements account for the top drivers for sustainability, (50%). Schneider Electric has a long history of providing energy efficient products that help both owners and operators to minimise energy consumption, but in recent years have pushed the boundaries of innovation and design, bringing disruptive technologies to market. They include: • Lithium-ion uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) such as it’s Galaxy series - Providing up to 99% efficiency when operated in Schneider Electric’s patented ECOnversion mode. • Uniflair Cooling Portfolio – using a free cooling architecture to 25% more efficiency and sustainability than comparable systems • Liquid cooling technologies – offering greater levels of energy efficiency, smaller footprint, lower noise pollution and up to 14% CapEx savings compared to air-cooled systems. • EcoStruxure Row Data Centre – using a standardised methodology including racks, power, IT and cooling to drive energy efficiency, reduce install time and decrease risk. • Prefabricated, Modular Data Centres – enabling facilities to be designed for an ultra-low PUE and be both deployed and operational within 6-9 months. • EcoStruxure Micro Data Centres - pre-integrated, energy efficient edge computing systems combining power, cooling, physical security, IT, software and services. • SF6-free switchgear – utilising pure air instead of SF6 gas, which has a high Global Warming Potential (GWP). • Microgrids – helping operators to integrate on-site renewables such as wind and solar, and generate new revenue by both storing electricity and selling it back to the grid during peak demand. Schneider Electric holds 16,250 patents and or patent applications and devotes 5% of sales to R&D annually, ensuring a continuous commitment to technology innovation. Software is also another key differentiator of its business and is an essential component of sustainability and energy efficiency programs. What’s not measured cannot be managed, and to help operators gain access to data driven insights that drive sustainable decision-making, Schneider Electric has created the market’s first, vendor-agnostic and open, interoperable, next-generation data centre infrastructure management (DCIM) software, EcoStruxure IT. This DCIM software uses predictive analytics and machine learning to deliver real time visibility into the health and status of data centre and edge computing environments anywhere, at any time. Further, it enables operators to monitor and manage their energy consumption remotely, while ensuring greater levels of resiliency. Tangible impact on the market Today, Schneider Electric has helped create market-leading products, software and services to help customers drive sustainability and efficiency. However, it has also devised strategies to think outside of the confines of traditional designs, consider the wider ecosystem and the impact of scope-3 emissions. Here, Schneider Electric’s future vision is focused on six key vectors of a holistic sustainability strategy.. These include: 1. Creating and deploying a Global Climate strategy - including benchmarking climate change strategies, engaging internal stakeholders, identifying goals, prioritising sustainable actions, deploying programs, establishing reporting systems and measuring progress against set targets. 2. Maximising renewable and clean energy - allowing operators to decarbonise their energy mix and optimise costs with a renewable procurement strategy inclusive of PPAs, VPPAs, microgrids, energy-as-a-service and carbon offsets. 3. Establishing resource-efficient data centre designs - creating customised, efficient, repeatable data centre designs to meet infrastructure needs globally. 4. Driving efficiency in day-to-day operations - Utilising software and analytics to drive efficiency in day-to-day operations; ensuring resiliency with remote monitoring and predictive insights; and optimising the lifecycle. 5. Utilise circular materials and systems – Schneider Electric has been recognised by the WEF for its Circular Economy approach, which includes retrofit and take-back programs, manufacturing resource efficiency (plastics/packaging), Green Premium and Eco-design products. These efforts result in equipment that lasts longer, is easily recyclable and support a low-waste circular economy. 6. Reducing carbon within wider supply chains - helping customers to drive the transition to a low-carbon economy through a Scope 3 footprint evaluation and hands-on supply chain engagement strategies to meet decarbonisation objectives. Energy consumption at the edge is another key challenge for operators, with edge computing energy usage set to dwarf that of traditional data centres. According to Gartner, by 2025, 75% of enterprise data is expected to be created and processed at the edge. At the edge, deploying 100,000 data centres (each consuming 10kW of power) would create a power consumption of 1,000MW for the IT energy alone. Assuming a moderate power usage effectiveness (PUE) ratio of 1.5 would mean these systems also emit the equivalent of 800k tons of CO2. However, if each edge facility was standardised and designed for a PUE of 1.1, we could reduce the total CO2 emissions to 580K tons annually. Consequently, there is also a clear benefit in producing pre-integrated systems where standardisation, modularity, performance, and sustainability form fundamental components. This is where Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure Micro Data Centres come in. These building blocks offer users the ability to design, build, and operate edge data centres for greater sustainability, while using energy efficient technologies to reduce burdens on the system, overcome failures, and increase performance without negatively affecting PUE. Next-generation DCIM platforms are also essential, not just from a remote monitoring perspective, but to drive energy efficiency, security, and uptime. By considering energy efficient deployment methodologies and embracing a culture of continuous innovation, Schneider Electric is helping operators to choose a more sustainable approach to edge computing. Differentiators, customer service and success stories As Corporate Knights’ Most Sustainable Corporation in the World, Schneider Electric is honoured to work with customers globally to drive sustainability and efficiency. Key European examples include: Iron Mountain • 75% of electricity use converted to green power • 100% renewable energy serving the entire U.K., Ireland, and Benelux operations • Generated clean energy to power the equivalent to 56,000 U.S. homes equivalent to removing more than 10,000 cars from the road annually EcoDataCenter • Delivered a sustainable solution with ultra-low carbon footprint • Heat recovery and liquid cooling enabled for HPC workloads • Peak shaving to support the grid • PUE of 1,15 for its TIER IV design. Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) • Cut energy costs by 30%; • Reduced emissions by 4%. Cardiff University • Reduce energy consumption by 50%. • Leading to an overall reduction in data centre energy costs of £125K. Wellcome Sanger Institute • Increased visibility into the environment, helped to lower energy consumption and reduced environmental impact. Through its outstanding commitments to energy efficient technologies, sustainable business strategies and delivering tangible results that result in significant customer carbon emission reductions, Schneider Electric is undoubtedly the world-leader in data centre sustainability and efficiency.

John Booth is one of the driving forces behind energy efficiency and sustainability for data centres globally and has been for 10 years, recognising that the industry was facing a series of problems, John has made it his business to assess and develop Standards, assess data centres themselves to a series of relevant standards and guidelines, identify emerging technologies and concepts that can be used to adapt and mitigate these problems and speak about them at industry events, as a result he has participated via his company, Carbon3IT Ltd in an EU Horizon 2020 project, EURECA and on a personal consultant basis for CATALYST (via Green IT Amsterdam). This deep knowledge of the data centre sector and the difficulties ahead have seen him gain influential postions for various organisations as follows: John is the Chair of the DCA Energy Efficiency SIG and a committee member on the Comissioning and Sustainability SIGs John is the global lead assessor for the DCA Certification programme He provides the DCA with expert advice on energy efficiency and sustainability issues. He also is a joint author of the EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres (Energy Efficiency) and works closely with the EU-JRC to review and approve applications for participation. He sits on the BSI TCT7/3 committee that develops and maintains the EN 50600 series of Data Centre, Design, Build and Operate Standards. He is a Certified Data Centre Audit and Sustainability Professional (C-Net Training) He is the global lead assessor for the Certified Data Centre Enerfy Efficiency Award (DCD) and has assessed over 100 data centres globally for energy efficiency and sustainability. He works tirelessly to ensure that he is up to date with every aspect of energy efficiency and sustainable data centre operations and has contributed expert content to the DECC (on the Climate Change Agreement for Data Centres) EU-JRC on the EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres, the EUDCA/European Commission on the Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact, BRE Global on the BREEAM Data Centre Annexes, the Indian Green Building Council, and many other organisations on Data Centre Energy Efficiency/Sustainability strategies including global telcos, government agencies, and data centre operators. John speaks on a regular basis for the Data Centre Alliance, DataCenter Dynamics, Digital Infra Network, Data Center Forum, British Computer Society and others on the topic of energy efficency and sustainability for data centre operations. He has recently been appointed to the advisory board of the Sustainable Digital Infrastructure Alliance (SDIA) He is also a visiting lecturer at the Birmingham City University where he provides the Data Centre Systems Management course to students on the Computing and Networking Degrees. He holds the following qualifications: BSc (Hons) Technology (Open) Certified Data Centre Audit Professional (C-Net Training) Certified Data Centre Sustainability Professional (C-Net Training) ISO 22301 Business Continuity Lead Auditor (BSI) ISO 50001 Energy Management Systems Lead Auditor (BSI) Energy Managers Association- ESOS Assessor Foundation Certificate in Green IT (BCS) Intermediate Certificate EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres (Energy Efficiency) Prince 2 PM ITIL v3 Foundation John is currently training for the BREEAM International Assessor accreditation and will be undertaking the Uptime Institute- Accredited Tier Designer in the near future. He also provides training on data centre energy efficiency and sustainability and via the National Data Centre Academy which will be opening soon, practical training courses.

Going over and above for the client and his team
Lewis Mears - Data Centre AC Engineer Lewis joined the Telstra data centre approximately two and a half years ago, having completed his apprenticeship with Optimum. He is solely responsible for the uptime of 120 DX CRAC units, covering full maintenance, repairs and more recently, installation works. The systems on site are now becoming EOL and Lewis has had to develop a number of EOP's and train the shift technicians on site to be able to resolve any issues on site to maintain cooling uptime and temperature / humidity within SLA across 24/7 shifts. I find Lewis to be extremely professional and diligent, particularly when dealing with the client in managing his expectations whilst delivering a great service and the client has also reflected on these comments. Lewis is on his path to becoming a data centre supervisor and has really demonstrated over the past 2.5 years especially during COVID how supporting and accessible he is to support and develop.

Rutger Koning, Engineer of the Year, CBRE DCS
Rutger has been with CBRE for over 3 years, starting with us straight from school, having completed is MBO Diploma. He began as a temporary hire through an employment agency, however he quickly demonstrated his competence and was offered a full time contract with CBRE working on our confidential client site in Eemshaven, the Netherlands. Rutger was very eager to learn and very quickly learned all the procedures and works that required to operate the data center. Over time he underwent significant training and has developed himself more and more to become one of the most important technicians on the server floor. He is an invaluable member of the Client site team and knows the system inside out, being trusted to solve problems and lead the team well beyond his years. The Client team recognised him for his contributions and as a result, he was asked him to join the commissioning team for a new build data center site. Here he learned so much that he developed more knowledge than a lot of other team members that were much older than him and implemented several improvements for the customer that have been used also on other Client data centers. For confidentiality reasons we cannot share this information. Rutger had an immense impact on the commissioning stage of the project and was instrumental in training the new site team, to ensure they were familiar with both the CBRE and Client processes and procedures. Once the full team was ingrained and the site went live he returned to his operations role with a great deal of extra knowledge. He used this valuable knowledge to train other team members and help them on a daily basis. Our Client is expanding again, and the first engineer they requested for the commissioning team was Rutger, he is now leading this new project for the CBRE team which is a great accomplishment. As Critical service Supervisor, Rudolf Thijssing is Rutger’s manager and has stated that “Rutger takes great responsibility in developing the teams’ working methods in terms of increasing efficiency and quality, and he has repeatedly shown that he goes the extra mile to solve a task, on time and with a very high quality result. I have repeatedly received excellent feedback from the Client on his performance and collaborative spirit and he is a great talent.” Rutger Koning is truly one of the best engineers we have onsite and both CBRE and our Client are very thrilled with his performance and proud to have him in our team.

Andy Hirst - Sudlows
Andy Hirst began his Sudlows career as an Electrical Manager and has since progressed through the business. In 2018 Andy was promoted to his current role of Managing Director of Critical Infrastructures, a role that involves overseeing the division in its entirety. Having over 35 years’ worth of experience in the electrical industry, Andy has been instrumental in transforming Sudlows from a £2m data cabling company to a multi-award winning £30m data centre infrastructure design and build company and continues to work closely with his fellow Directors to define the growth strategy and commercial direction of the business. Andy has achieved several industry and business accolades including being named among the top most influential people in the technology, media & telecoms sector by ‘Insider’ magazine, and has more recently need awarded the ‘Inspiration Award’ at the Networking Computing Awards and in 2019 was awarded ‘Business Person of the Year’ at the Oldham Business Awards in 2019. Andy has played a critical role in the championing of energy efficiency and sustainability in the data centre industry, which attracted attention from a number of key trade event organisers across Singapore and Dubai, resulting in Sudlows being awarded, and successfully delivering data centre projects in multiple regions such as Dubai, Turkey, Saudi, Mumbai to name just a few, leading Andy to open Sudlows’ first international office in Dubai in 2014, followed by an Indian office which was recently opened in 2020. Playing a crucial role as a mentor for Sudlows’ Design and Engineering Teams, Andy has helped Sudlows’ employees achieve some of the industry’s highest accolades including an IET Technician of the Year and a Young Mission Critical Engineer of the Year and most recently a Data Centre Solutions award for ‘Data Centre Engineer of the Year’. He has also trained, registered and takes an active part in mentoring young Engineers across the industry for the IET to work with them to receive incorporated status. Andy is a committed and active participant in the data centre community, for example, Andy was Chairman for the ECA (Electrical Contractors Association) for a number of years and has sat on multiple steering committees in the UK focusing on energy efficiency and ‘green’ data centres. Andy has also worked with the ECA to look at and promote gender diversity, upskilling and certifications along with quality standards within the mission critical sector. Andy is also committed to continuous professional development within the industry and is an ambassador for raising technical standards within the industry and as a result has achieved numerous professional qualifications and accreditations including his Uptime Institute Accredited Tier Designer status, CDCDP (Certified Data Centre Design Professional), HNC Building Services Engineering, HNC Electrical Engineering and has been an Incorporated Engineer (IEng) for a number of years. He is also a fellow of the IET (FIET). Andy has recently become one of the first people to achieve a Masters Degree in Data Centre Leadership and Management. Andy’s critical contribution has ensured that strategic growth is planned and controlled with significant investment in sourcing a high standard of Engineers and Designers in all disciplines around the data centre environment. This long term investment and managed growth has produced a Data Centre Team that consisted of just one person ten years ago, into an award winning division of 40 dedicated Designers, Planners and Specialists who manage over 150 Site Engineers. Andy has also been key in developing opportunities not only for Sudlows, but also on behalf of the UK data centre industry, as a whole, in international markets. Although the UK data centre market has seen significant growth over recent years, the global market opportunities have potential to grow exponentially. Andy has been profiled in several industry publications over the last year including being named by the “Insider” magazine as one of the top 33 most influential people in the technology, media & telecoms sector alongside well known industry figures such as Richard Tang, owner of Zen Internet and Stephen Wild, Managing Director of Media City. Andy also makes regular contributions to industry publications and is regularly invited to share his thoughts and opinions on the latest data centre industry trends, most notably in the publication Inside_Networks. On an academic level, Andy researches into new green technologies especially focused around the field of carbon reduction. His ambition is to constantly improve efficiencies and resilience around these critical products and as such this takes him around the country, Europe and even globally. It would be a great honour for Andy to win this award and to have his achievements and commitments to the data centre industry recognised at an awards dedicated to what he is so passionate about.

Country Manager Keppel Data Centres
After 21 years’ Gary Watson is a worthy winner for the DCS Data Centre Industry Contribution of the Year Award. Our submission on behalf of Gary Watson, is focused on his 'firsts for the industry', his innovations but also the difference he has made to Ireland – a country that is now firmly on the map for data centre location. MAKING WAVES IN DATA CENTRES FOR TWO DECADES With over two decades experience working across the telecoms, data centre, managed services and cloud sector across Europe, Gary has made a significant contribution to the technology sector in Ireland. His flourishing career began in the early-nineties, when Watson joined TeleCity during the early start-up phase in 1998. Having spent a number of years rolling out new facilities across Europe, he then moved to Ireland to establish and run the Irish business. After the merger between TeleCity, Redbus and Globix UK, he was appointed as Senior Operations Manager in 2006, based in London UK. Watson led and managed seven key data centres and the integration of the three newly merged businesses before moving to Sungard Availability Services (Sungard AS) as the Country Manager for Ireland. Now Country Manager for Asia’s leading Real Estate Investment Trust – Keppel, Watson has undertaken innovative projects to extend the life of the data centres in a sustainable and commercially successful way. THE STORY BEGINS IN '98 Gary joined TeleCity as a Startup in 1998 in Manchester and rolled out carrier data centres across Europe (Manchester, London, Amsterdam, Frankfurt Paris and Dublin). He settled in Ireland in 2000 after building one of the first carrier neutral data centres and worked along side the Department of Public Enterprise and Global Crossing delivering the first point of presence to enable the delivery of the interconnection between the US and Ireland. After the dot com bubble burst, Gary successfully grew the business and led a Sale and Lease-back Deal with BT Ireland. He continued to drive the business in Ireland and won the first data centre services 10-year deal with ESB and rolled in numerous international carriers with Citywest, which later then became the home of the Irish Internet exchange and their team. In 2003, Gary won the first data centre services 10-year deal with ESB and was the first to deliver a VM based platform to the hosting industry. In 2006 Gary moved into a Senior Operations roll for Telecom and took on the challenge to integrate operations and client delivery into a single unit from the three organizations TeleCity, Redbus and Globix in London. IRELAND WAS A KEY PART OF THE JOURNEY On return back to Ireland with an indigenous hosting company, Gary led the first delivery of a VM based platform with HP and good friends in Evros. 2010 saw his acquisition of the hosting company by Sungard AS, a US based Business Continuity and IT services organization. As Country Manager, Gary worked alongside a number of Government bodies both home and abroad to promote the Irish tech sector. Not only did he drive significant investments in Sungard AS but created further employment. HISTORY IN THE MAKING As country manager for Keppel and as a board member for host in Ireland, Watson has continued to promote his new home, Ireland, as a land for investment. In 2016, Gary joined Keppel DC REIT after the acquisition of Citadel 100, which rebranded to Keppel Data Centres. Since then, he has secured significant investment (over 120m euros) to drive change in the Irish data Centres. Leading one of the largest upgrades of a live data Centre seen to date in Ireland, this upgrade is driving a more energy efficient delivery using some of the latest technologies available in the industry. In the past four years Gary has generated over €120m+ investment on Keppel alone. Through continuous investment opportunities and his role in Host in Ireland, Gary has helped put Ireland on the map as a provider of Data Centre services to the globe, including Asia, the USA and China. In 2015, he created, promoted and gained the approval of a new five-year Irish strategy to the US Global Leadership team driving investment in a new data centre, people and managed services with significant revenue targets within Sungard AS Ireland. In addition to all of this, Gary's tireless approach to the evolution of data centres, investment in Ireland and the data Centres’ sustainable agenda, has resulted in him being one of the founding members of the successful Host in Ireland initiative. After six years he continues to be a Member of the Host In Ireland Executive Council with some of the industry leading figures in the data centre industry promoting Ireland globally. THE FIRST PUBLIC CLOUD OFFERING Gary has managed the successful first global public cloud offering for Sungard AS. Now a leading provider of information availability through managed IT, cloud and recovery services, announced its most significant expansion in the Irish market to date, in partnership with Digital Realty Trust. This investment set up by Gary increased Sungard AS’ presence and capability within Ireland, and at the same time its commitment to driving substantial business growth across the region. Named as 'a crucial gateway for US based organisations seeking to do business in Europe', Sungard AS has since experienced significant growth. Innovation for data Centre customers Gary's systems have improved efficiencies in delivery of hosting services through virtualisation. He has delivered a greater energy efficient Data Centre project in Citywest and has championed new products in the Data Centre and managed service industry to allow for great agility in service delivery INNOVATION FOR INVESTORS With a clear understanding of data centres as an investment for funds or for a nation, Gary has helped to support the billions of euros that are invested in data centre hosting in Ireland. Gary's tireless approach and passion for the evolution of data centres has resulted in more than just investment and putting Ireland on the map for data centres. As one of the five founding members of Host in Ireland he has worked with Garry Connolly and the Host In Ireland team to drive forward the significance of data for the world and help to put Ireland on the map for hosting some of the globes largest operators. In the past two years, Gary has contributed to address the controversy around the green credentials for data Centres. From working on the DCs for Bees initiative to ensuring that his own data centres are green and have a low carbon impact on the environment.

Data Centre Manager of the Year: Roland Fenwick
In August 2020, CBRE Data Centre Services, (DCS) successfully completed one of its largest physical Data Centre migration programs for a client, running concurrently across three regions. This was the first time a program of this scale and complexity was undertaken and completed by CBRE DCS, primarily relying on internal expertise, and leveraging a “self-delivery” model where it was possible to do so. This project was led by Roland Fenwick, who CBRE would like to put forward as Data Centre Manager of the Year as he went above and beyond in order to deliver this project for the client. Background Due to a strategic business separation, our client was obligated to migrate ICT services to new data centre locations within a 2-year period of activity. A strategic program was therefore initiated to facilitate these requirements and CBRE’s capability and experience was leveraged to support a significant proportion of this global deliverable. The Scope The scope covered a wide range of client platform environments including production, non-production, disaster recovery and development. Over 12,000 individual devices were migrated between 17 different data centre locations during the full program of activity. As well as the migration activities, legacy devices were also identified and decommissioned. In total the program of activity resulted in approximately 22,000 devices being decommissioned, enabling the target environments to be as efficient as possible in terms of space and power allocation. This level of complexity required significant planning, overtime and scheduling requirements to manage risk to the client, Roland ensured this planning was conducted thoroughly, and with high quality communication and collaboration with the client. The Approach Prior to any physical migration of services, a new UK Data Centre location had to be identified, and space secured by the Client. Roland was integral to this phase of the strategy, subsequently supporting the buildout of a new facility in the west of London. Running in parallel to this, Roland led a new operational team, which needed to be mobilised and on-boarded to ensure migration and operational support could be facilitated at the new location to the required standards. For the migration itself, some variations were applied but as standard, all devices moved were live/live moves and critical to the service or support of the Clients business. All devices for the weekend’s migration were shut down on a Friday, moved, powered, and connected to the network prior to market opening hours. Approximately 65 weekends were committed during the program, with some variances in different countries across EMEA, which was a huge time commitment for Roland. Resource planning and management took considerable time and effort, and Roland is to be commended on leading his team through this project with no impact to the client schedule. The ability to facilitate a programme of this size and scale over such a pro-longed period required the utmost consideration to the personnel undertaking the work. Roland effectively ensured that work life balance and wellness for his staff was maintained whilst fulfilling contractual support obligations to the Client. Planning and Commencement • EMEA, planning commenced in Nov 2018, with the Physical movement of equipment initiating in February 2019. • Final work concluded early 2020. The Team Leveraging operational resource, the programme was closely co-ordinated by Roland with key Client stakeholders and Client sub-contracted service providers. To facilitate the effective management of the deliverables, key personnel were appointed to take responsibility for certain co-ordination or management activities. This was underpinned by the whole of the CBRE ICT Services team throughout the duration of work activities. Roland, leading the project, co-ordinated with the Client stakeholders to ensure continuity of reporting and escalation management. Key Suppliers Roland also maintained relationships with our Supply Chain partners to bring supplementary services and added value to the client and facilitate the programmes deliverables. He coordinated the below: • Anixter was the supplier chosen to facilitate the Cabinet and Infrastructure within the target data centres. In addition, CURRAN were used for Phase 1 CAC and Infrastructure installation and bespoke CAC for free standing devices. • BBNS were utilized for Phase 2 & 3 installation of the CAC & Infrastructure. • Network Centre, Corning provided the manufacture and design assistance for copper and fibre infrastructure. • Panduit were the CAC design provider and cabinet manufacturer. • JJR were utilized for the shipping related requirements of all devices between the UK sites and Connectium provided additional labour to support large move preparation and implementation. Challenges The main challenge was the fast-paced movement of the deliverables and the deadlines that had to be met to maintain key milestone dates. Such an approach required rigorous co-ordination, co-operation and review across all phases of Change activity, all of which Roland managed with efficiency and consideration for the client. Roland also provided advice and consultation against the target Capacity management-based considerations. This engagement mitigated any risk of the target whitespace not being able to accommodate the required hardware subject to migration. Risks During the middle of the migration programme, COVID-19 presented a very clear risk to the continuity of the scheduling. As the migrations were not all Client owned facilities, Roland needed to establish effective and prompt assurances from Colocation providers to ensure continuity of the programme and its milestone deliverables. Different providers operating in different geographical locations in EMEA resulting in a dynamic and unique situation with variations depending on the COVID status. We also had to ensure that Government and localised restrictions were understood and effectively adhered too such as PPE, Key Worker exceptions, Permission to Travel and Social Distancing obligations. Any migration has a dependency on minimum number of persons to facilitate a movement so QHSE considerations had to align also. Pro-active measures taken by Roland and his team, ensured that we had visibility on all potential risks and the ability to address them promptly. Through this engagement and effective communication process, the potential risk posed to the client programme was mitigated. Recognition A program of this type requires the full commitment from the team as a whole and all personnel that have supported to their fullest capability. However, Roland Fenwick, Operations Manager has successfully led and delivered this significant accomplishment to the highest of standards, including: • Support in the site selection process • Design and Build out of new whitespace in preparation for the migrated platforms • Recruitment and onboarding of a new operational team to support the migration and in-life operational support requirements. • Provided the Client with a single point of contact for all EMEA based program activities. • Effective COVID mitigation planning • Roland successfully oversaw all program activity during the period and was physically engaged in the relocation work at the target sites, working many weekend shifts to enable the commitment to timescales. Uptime and Service was always maintained during the migration period. • Physical Cabinet footprint was significantly reduced due to P2V migrations with an original power density of 4.2MW condensed to 1.5MW at the end of the Program. • Supported the dilapidation works of the legacy Data Centre and successfully supported Network isolation by the given deadline. • Post migration support activities facilitated

Going over and above for the client and his team
Following conversations with Rob Crook of Telstra we have decided to put Michael Streeter forward for the data centre manager of the year award. This is based on his drive and commitment to maintain the sites infrastructure along with his dedication to support and develop his team on site. Michael has been in place for 2 years and stepped up from a shift leader to the role of DCM, during that period of time has come across a number of issues which he has stepped up to the occasion and consistently driven improvement and awareness for his client Telstra and his team on site through hardwork and dedication. There have been a number of infrastructure upgrade projects and with the Telstra DC being of an age this has created a number of operational obstacles which he has risen to overcome and continue uptime across the DC. Michael has also developed a number of his staff and has dedicated a huge amount of time into our apprenticeship program which he is very passionate about in creating the talent of tomorrow.

Open-E JovianDSS
Open-E JovianDSS is a ZFS- and Linux-based Data Storage Software designed especially for enterprise-sized Software Defined Storage environments. With its unique features, the product ensures the highest data reliability and integrity with optimal data storage, protection, and recovery. The software addresses the needs of Data Centers, Enterprises, SMB users, and Cloud Providers seeking a unified NAS and SAN solution with On- and Off-site Data Protection, consistent Snapshots, Thin Provisioning, Compression, Deduplication, and more. There are three main areas covered by Open-E JovianDSS: 1. Data Storage 2. Backup & Disaster Recovery 3. Business Continuity Centralized Open-E JovianDSS data storage is accessible over protocols such as iSCSI, Fibre Channel (FC), NFS, and SMB/CIFS. It also supports VMware, Citrix, and Microsoft Hyper-V making it a perfect fit for any virtualized storage environment. Open-E JovianDSS can be easily set up as a virtual storage appliance in a virtual environment or can be installed on a physical server. Thanks to the implementation of the ZFS files system, it provides multiple layers of data protection mechanisms including Self-healing, Data and Metadata Check-summing, Atomic Transaction Writes, and more. Backup & Disaster Recovery is supported in Open-E JovianDSS by On- and Off-site Data Protection feature. It allows you to create and manage data backups and perform instant data restore in case of data loss. The backup is independent of underlying data – everything can be backed up. This functionality is based on snapshots which can be restored on local as well as on remote destinations. The data can also be instantly accessed from the backup destination. You are also able to define retention plans that will help you to set up even very complex backup schemes, according to your needs. This solution is especially useful when working with Open-E JovianDSS in a data center. Open-E JovianDSS provides the continuous availability of all company data that is essential when maintaining critical business operations in case of unexpected harmful events. Business Continuity in Open-E JovianDSS is achieved by a High Availability failover clustering which minimizes server downtime periods, eliminates single points of failure, and provides the highest performance, reliability, and data availability. The built-in solution supports a huge number of topologies ranging from small cluster-in-a-box setups to big rack servers with multiple JBODs, local clusters up to stretched metro clusters, handling both: shared and non-shared data storage environments.

Qumulo Core
Qumulo Core is a high-performance file data platform designed to help customers store, manage and build workflows and applications with data in its native file form, at massive scale, across on-premise and cloud environments. Designed along three pillars (store, manage, build), the system allows you to securely store petabytes of active file data, easily manage it with real-time IT operational analytics and build automated workflows and applications. Storing petabytes of file data is as crucial as ever, given nearly every industry is undergoing a digital transformation and becoming data-intensive. But Qumulo goes a step beyond its competitors by creating simplified, scalable solutions that are enjoyable for the end-user. Qumulo believes that managing data should be simple and delightful; therefore, Qumulo Core was designed to show users everything they need, and nothing they don’t. It has a flash-first design that enables uniformly fast ingestion. The dashboards were designed to showcase capacity awareness, performance awareness and usage awareness at a glance. This allows customers to easily visualize how their data is growing and predict capacity growth trends in real-time. For example, award-winning Animation Studio Jam Filled Entertainment deployed Qumulo Core to centralize and accelerate its massive animation file stores. Jam Filled anticipates tight deadlines as part of its work with premiere studios and multiple projects. Its legacy system began to frequently slow down and crash, leaving the artists to wait until the network was back online. With Qumulo Core, Jam Filled saw a major boost in uptime and productivity, freed up IT for innovative new projects, saved more than 50% of data center space, saved on energy costs and gained insight into real-time native analytics. “Since we’ve implemented the Qumulo platform, we’ve never had a single person complain about file system performance — and it’s a relatively small cluster. If we need higher performance in the future, all we have to do is add more nodes.” – Aaron Pearce, Director of Systems Engineering at Jam Filled Entertainment Qumulo Core’s architecture was designed with hardware flexibility in mind for customer ease. In their first year as a company, the Qumulo team interviewed hundreds of file storage customers and one of the strongest themes to emerge was a desire to have the freedom to run file storage on the latest data center hardware, as well as in the public cloud. Qumulo Core’s “hardware agnostic” software design leads to ease of feature implementation by creating a clear abstraction layer from the hardware as well as higher confidence in testing. Most vendors in the data management space have been around for decades and are confined to legacy standards. Qumulo recognizes that legacy scale-out and scale-up solutions weren’t designed to handle today’s data volumes, file types, applications, and workloads – nor provide the visibility, control, and scale that customers need to manage their data. Qumulo stands out with its interoperability across software platforms, cost-effective performance, unmatched customer delight and unique approach to the hybrid cloud that lets you manage your data seamlessly between your data center and cloud environments.

CrowdStrike Security Cloud Integrates with Network Detection and Response Solutions For Comprehensive Platform Responses to Threats
CrowdStrike, a leader in cloud-delivered endpoint and workload protection, announced a series of integrations with CrowdStrike Security Cloud that correlates the CrowdStrike Falcon® platform’s enriched endpoint and workload telemetry with network telemetry for greater end-to-end visibility and contextual insights to combat threats. These integrations with leaders in network detection and response (NDR) and network threat analytics (NTA) help mutual customers build a cohesive platform tailored to protect and defend against any threats across all enterprise software components, wherever those threats are encountered. With the surge in remote workforces and ever-increasing cloud adoption, modern security operation centers (SOCs) are faced with increased attack surface blind spots and an uptick in operational challenges due in part to lack of interoperability across point security solutions. Security professionals are spending too much time and resources investigating increased alert volume impacting their productivity and efficiency in addition to compromising their security posture. CrowdStrike customers desire a strong connection between the Falcon platform and the NDR ecosystem to boost their security efficiency and efficacy with shared contextual telemetry and indicators of compromise (IOCs). Today, along with our partners we are delivering to customers better ways to maximize their investment in the Falcon platform. With CrowdStrike’s integrations with ExtraHop, Vectra, Awake Security, Corelight, Darktrace, IronNet and ThreatWarrior, mutual customers can now integrate CrowdStrike’s industry-leading next-generation antivirus (NGAV) and endpoint detection and response (EDR) with leading NDR solutions that monitor east-west traffic and communications within the network itself and help surface any blind spots that span across network and cloud environments. Through these integrations, customers can take advantage of: ● Concise and actionable insights based on coordination of alerts and telemetry across CrowdStrike and leading NDR solutions ● Integrated data feeds that enable enhanced response capabilities to identify and isolate risks faster with cloud-scale artificial intelligence (AI) ● Enhanced threat intelligence to pinpoint novel attack methods with identification of new attack signatures ● Customizable response actions are available for partners to execute leveraging Real-Time Response capabilities (RTR) on the Falcon platform, based on early attack behaviors observed on the network ● Open ecosystem of purpose-built integrations for cloud-delivered extensibility and flexibility “The increased complexity in corporate networks, coupled with the heightened sophistication of cyber threats, can quickly overwhelm today’s security analysts. While many point solutions promise comprehensive security, security teams are often not only left with blind spots in their environments but also siloed tools and data in the IT stacks that put security teams at risk of missing or overlooking critical alerts,” said Amol Kulkarni, chief product officer, CrowdStrike. “CrowdStrike’s Security Cloud is an open platform enabling seamless integration with best of breed solutions. This integration with NDR partners provides mutual customers a comprehensive, holistic cybersecurity solution with enhanced visibility, streamlined detection and response and frictionless automation to address protection and operational challenges, while helping drive total cost of ownership down.”

OVHcloud and Elastisys partner up to provide UK businesses with GDPR-compliant managed container services
OVHcloud have announced Sweden’s biggest managed services provider Elastisys as an Advance Partner. This partnership will enable customers of both companies to access enterprise grade security-focused container services that are fully EU compliant. Containerisation involves encapsulating or packaging up software code and all its dependencies so that it can run uniformly and consistently on any infrastructure. OVHcloud and Elastisys’ partnership addresses customers’ increasing focus on security and data compliance. Customers will have access to enterprise grade Kubernetes that are managed fully in Europe and meet a number of security certifications, including GDPR, PCI DSS, ISO-27001 and healthcare compliance. This will particularly benefit European enterprises in highly regulated sectors including healthcare, public sector vendors and financial services. As data sovereignty continues to rise up the agenda for UK businesses, OVHcloud and Elastisys together offer viable enterprise options that are ‘CLOUD Act free’ and not affected by the Privacy Shield ruling. Failure to adhere to regulations such as GDPR can result in fines equating to up to 4% of annual turnover. This means that businesses must ensure they are compliant. As a member of the GAIA-X initiative, OVHcloud offers total European data sovereignty and fosters transparency, trust, openness and security. The partnership also gives businesses the freedom to choose how their containerised workloads are deployed across a mix of data centres, public and private cloud, and on-premise. The partnership extends Elastisys’ geographical reach further in mainland Europe. Together, OVHcloud and Elastisys offer customers cloud native technologies such as Kubernetes accessible through a large data centre footprint partnered with local presence and service. Customers are able to embrace the benefits of multi cloud – giving them genuine choice in terms of where, when and how to deploy applications. “Leveraging OVHcloud’s feature rich cloud allows us to serve our enterprise customers in sectors such as healthcare, education, public sector and financial services that are looking for a production grade and security hardened Kubernetes platform built for continuous compliance but also want to take advantage of modern cloud services like databases and analytics under European jurisdiction,” said Elastisys CEO Robert Winter. He continued, “Our customers care deeply about the security of their users’ data and often want to leverage a combination of our open source Compliant Kubernetes distribution and our managed services to deploy their containerised workloads in a seamless manner across a mix of data centres, public or private cloud and customers’ premises. OVHcloud is a great fit for this.” “All 20 of our European data centres are fully GDPR compliant and CLOUD Act free. As OVHcloud is an active member of the GAIA-X initiative, our partners are able to fulfil a rapidly growing demand for new European-built solutions, such as Kubernetes from Elastisys. We also have a separate US OVHcloud entity which allows our partners customers to choose CLOUD Act or EU data compliance, a key factor in US expansion.” explains David Devine, OVHcloud Partner Program Manager, Northern Europe.

WAN Data Acceleration Powers Back-Up-as-a-Service, Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery
Bridgeworks' WAN Acceleration technologies accelerate data transfers and eliminate data management challenges are known as ‘WAN acceleration’. Bridgeworks patented artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies accelerate organisation's existing technologies and dramatically accelerate their Wide Area Networks (WANs). AI underpins the patented technology to provide process intelligence, reduce latency and mitigate packet loss. Our solutions, such as PORTrockIT, dramatically improve data throughput up to 98% of bandwidth – regardless of distance. Organisations can therefore gain significant WAN performance without touching any of their data, maintaining security protocols, governance & compliance. WAN Acceleration is re-defining Wide Area Networks by enabling organisations to reach transfer speeds up to 200x faster, whether with large volumes of data, encrypted or media files. By dramatically alleviating the effects of latency and packet loss data can get to where it needs to be quicker while maximising business performance with dramatic ROI. Solutions such as Bridgeworks PORTrockIT go beyond the traditional choices and capabilities of WAN Optimisation and SD-WAN, allowing organisations to improve the efficiency of their WAN links. Francois Steyl, a former Solutions Architect at StratIT and now a Sales Specialist at Datacentrix says: “Bridgeworks is unique in what it does, and addresses the latency, packet loss and ingress and egress rates which is the culprit for poor throughput rates across the WAN. The ease of the Virtual appliance deployment and the adjusting of routing rules makes Bridgeworks the clear solution to accelerate data across a customer’s WAN. The implementation of Bridgeworks’ solutions at Investec Private Bank, has realised a 424% increase in total traffic sent across the WAN, which provides an almost instantaneous Return on Investment”. For Investec Private Bank, alternatives such as Aryaka were considered, but solutions such as PORTrockIT were found to meet all of Investec’s requirements after a proof of concept (POC) of 6 months duration. This POC was carried out after StratIT introduced Investec to Bridgeworks. POC: No Acceleration The baseline for the POC began with no acceleration, and with host-to-host traffic with accelerator in-path. The total traffic transferred between 1st February and 1st April 2018 was 9.3TB. The average rate of transfer was 3-5MB/s, and all of the databases were out of sync. POC: With Acceleration The next step was to add accelerator to accelerator traffic in-path of servers. The total traffic transferred between 1st February and 1st April 2019 equalled 55TB. This amounted to a 424% increase in total traffic, with an average rate of transfer 11-15MB/s. Unlike when there was no WAN data acceleration, all of the Oracle and SQL databases were in sync. Journalist Joe O’Halloran writes in his Computerweekly article, 'Investec Bank cashes in on WAN acceleration' that Mark Backes, infrastructure architect and team lead at Investec Bank, said the company couldn't simply add faster connectivity at the problem: “No matter how much bandwidth we threw, we couldn’t resolve [the challenges] with more speed. TCP application packet acceleration was the limiting factor – there is only so much a day that you can push, and we just had to find a way to reduce latency.” Backes concludes: "The bottom line of the WAN acceleration technology is that more people can go online and are able to trade – and that means money. The type of gains taken from the Bridgeworks technology will now be put into future RFPs. “We need a federation of acceleration.” Venesia Oxford, Senior Account Manager at Datacentrix has also stated: “Through the utilisation of the Bridgeworks technology, Investec can finally utilise more of their actual Bandwidth investment, compared to what was possible in the past. The improved application response times means quicker turnaround times enabling faster decision making which impacts customer satisfaction and internal business collaborations. The Bridgeworks technology is one of the data management principles available to customers from the all-encompassing data management portfolio offered from Datacentrix." The Bank has 10,000 employees. As for its IT environment it currently has: • An MPLS WAN link with a handover from one SP to another between continents. • A Microsoft Windows and Red Hat Operating systems on Dell commodity kit. • An Oracle Enterprise Database, SQL Enterprise Database. Tackling challenges For the purpose of GDPR the Investec must ensure critical system data in not older than a few hours to meet regulatory requirements. Data sovereignty regulations for SecuritEase mean the servers will need to be hosted in the EU. Subsequently, the data cannot be older than a few hours to achieve compliance with the regulations. Investec Wealth and Investment require access to servers residing in the UK to provide clients with offshore investment capability. The Bank is partnered with Swiss Bank, and it uses its Swiss brokering licence. The issue is that geographic latency between South Africa and the UK meant less than 20% utilisation of WAN links for the replication of RRP data. MPLS latency between the two countries is +-180ms. The time for these data sets to be moved across the South Africa and the UK link is currently between 14-15 hours, which can cause challenges in keeping RRP databases in synchronicity. The need to achieve the following led Investec to Bridgeworks: • Reduce data replication times and keeping DB’s in sync; • Reduce non-productive transfer windows; • Ability to fully utilise all available WAN bandwidth i.e. WAN infrastructure investment is right sized to the transfer task ; • Ability to reduce application visible latency i.e. deliver content quicker to customers and collaborators. • Minimal impact and footprint to existing WAN/LAN infrastructure • Solution available as virtual machine • Software/Routing changes required for acceleration no need to deploy additional physical hardware to the environment. The price of Bridgeworks solutions was also a factor that attracted Investec. The Bank expects to save money as a result of the introduction of Bridgeworks WAN Data Acceleration solutions. It will also allow Investec to fully utilise the available bandwidth between the sites – helping to resolve the core business problems faced by Investec – such as the replication of SQL and Oracle enterprise databases. South African Insurance company expedites data with WAN Acceleration A South African Insurance company needed to speed up its data replication and to reduce latency between its 3 data centres. The firm’s main Centurion data centre is in Die Hoewes and the second is in Doringkloof – both in the Pretoria and Johannesburg area. The third data centre is in Parc Du Cap Bellville in Cape Town. The latency between the Parc Du Cap Belleville (PDC) Cape Town is over 20 milliseconds. A network architect from the insurance company explained that most of the data replication occurs between the Die Hoewes and the PDC data centres. Replication activity with the Doringkloof occurs, but it isn’t so significant. However, the firm has 40Gb fibre links and the latency between them is 1m/s. The important factor to note is that data routing happens to and from wherever an application resides. In 2020, the business decided to decommission the Doringkloof data centre, and its team began to ask questions about what would happen If they removed it from their armoury. These queries were about what would happen to the data replication traffic. Despite all of the data centres remaining active, they found that they had to re-route the data traffic – making the Centurion and PDC data centres the main ones with traffic being re-routed to PDC from Centurion. Latency conundrum The company’s network architect explains the issue that occurred: “This means latency would be 20 times worse. How do we address that? Regardless of our link size between Centurion and PDC, we were going to have lower throughput speeds. We had to ensure that latency is not going to be a constant issue, making sure that our replication finishes in time.” To find a solution, the network, application, and infrastructure teams were asked to investigate the latency problem to find a way to resolve it. “They couldn’t find anything they could do on the Veritas NetBackup Application”, he reveals, before explaining that Veritas NetBackup is an enterprise-level heterogeneous backup and recovery suite. The suite provides cross-platform backup functionality to a large variety of Windows, UNIX, and Linux operating systems. NetBackup features a central master server which manages both media servers (containing the backup media) and clients. Core server platforms include Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, Tru64, Linux and Windows. Netbackup database backend is based in Sybase. Data compression inability Another problem arose in that they could not do compression on the server side. They therefore asked: “Is there any form of network device that could beat this latency?” To resolve this issue, the company’s network team explored devices and services that could address it. First off, they went to Riverbed and Exinda. The network architect explains why: “We already have Exinda in our network, and we knew about Riverbed. They both do WAN optimisation, which relies on caching at the other end. It gives you the impression and the illusion of beating latency, but it didn’t work for us. If you look at NetBackup, it relies on the same type of data being sent over the WAN.” “With NetBackup, they don’t re-send data. It goes through the system and asks: what did I send to you before? Every time it sends data, it’s new data. So, we realised it’s not going to work for us. If I have a server, I want a copy backed up somewhere. It has to happen within a time window, otherwise it may be deleted the next day. If your data replication takes too long, it affects your next day’s replication. We then approached Datacentrix. They usually provide us with network equipment, and so we asked for suggestions.” POC: Accelerating replication Datacentrix referred the insurance company’s teams to Bridgeworks. As a result of proof of concept, (POC) was carried out on 20th November 2020 and ended on 26th January 2021. With Bridgeworks they studied the POC, using the NetBackup application. The results were significantly notable as they enabled WAN acceleration and data optimisation. WAN Acceleration takes the traffic and breaks it up to send it over our WAN links, sending smaller, multiple links. Organisations can then send their data faster over the WAN. There is no caching of the data involved. The network architect adds that it “involved a virtual deployment of Bridgeworks, and that the POC was an evaluation of PORTrockIT.” The POC involved the following: - VPR 400/PR 800 - The Bridgeworks devices to be placed in the Centurion and PDC Cape Town Data Centre’s - Licensing - 20Gbps bandwidth & Protocol (NetBackup) –additional protocols to be added at a later stage. - Virtual appliance is preferred. Up to 25 times faster He reveals that data transfers were around 25 times faster after POC deployment. “We tested NetBackup speeds without Bridgeworks, and then tested the same data backup with Bridgeworks”, he says. Tests over the 20ms latency with a 200GB file would normally take 1 hour and 42 minutes with a single TCP/IP session. The average network utilisation was 400 Mb/s. The team then added Exinda WAN Optimisation with 20ms and a 200GB file. To complete the replication, it took 18 hours with a single TCP/IP session. The average network utilisation was 40Mb/s. The Exinda licence for the POC involved 1Gb/s shaping and acceleration of 150Mb/s. Furthermore, according to current statistics, the replication of a 270GB file took 46 minutes to complete. With Bridgeworks PORTrockIT, a 220GB data file was replicated in just 25 minutes – over 4 times faster. So, a third test was carried out, this time with a 50GB replication, which completed in only 7 minutes. More tests are expected, as they need to study how two more applications performance with PORTrockIT, and further applications, will be added over time with licensing needed to cater for additional services and protocols. Recommending Bridgeworks The network architect therefore recommends Bridgeworks: “Organisations should speak to Bridgeworks if they have latency challenges that are affecting your application and replication performance. I would recommend Bridgeworks. We have been through the process and we have gained significant results. I am happy and impressed. We had a concern, but the solution gave us the results we were looking for.” There are now discussions within insurance company to expand the scope of possible deployment of both virtual and physical solutions across its matrix.

Opengear Expands OM2200 NetOps Console Server Product Line with Launch of Models with 10GbE Interfaces and 1GbE Ethernet Ports
The first NetOps console server with both Smart Out-of-Band management and advanced automation tools, featuring support for 10GbE network infrastructure as well as 24-port serial and 24-port 1GbE Ethernet Opengear, a Digi International company, and a leading provider of solutions that deliver secure, resilient network access and automation to critical IT infrastructure, launched the OM2224-24E-10G-L, the first console server to combine Smart OOB™ management and standard NetOps tools with support for 10GbE networks. The new model features 24 managed 10/100/1000 Base-T switched Ethernet ports, and a 10GbE SFP+ interface allowing for 10 Gbps transfer rates. The OM2224-24E-10G-L is the newest member of the NetOps Console Server series, enabling both advanced automation applications and Smart Out-of-Band features in a single appliance. With the dual 10GbE SFP+ Ethernet ports, the new model supports the higher bandwidth infrastructure common in data centres and high-density installations and also adds flexibility to configurations with both serial console and Ethernet ports. An embedded 4G-LTE cellular modem ensures access even when primary connections are not available. Managed through Opengear’s Lighthouse software, the OM2224-24E-10G-L is part of Opengear’s Network Resilience Platform, which provides an independent, secure management plane that supports secure remote access and standard automation to critical devices. “The growing popularity of the OM2200 series of NetOps console servers among network and data center managers has driven us to expand and enhance the product line further,” said Ryan Hogg, senior product manager at Opengear. “The OM2224-24E-10G-L meets the growing customer demands and reinforces Opengear as an innovator and leader in out-of-band access, monitoring and management of network infrastructure.”

Turkcell RPA
Organizations, such as DataCentre Solutions, helps the DC teams to keep track of the latest developments and technologies. DCS awards, makes people to see what is going on in the industry and ignite people to achieve more and more. Therefore, it is important for Turkcell to participate and to be part of the DCS awards organization. Turkcell is the largest telecommunication, information, and service provider company of Turkey. Growing potential of the company, pushing the teams to maintain certain level of quality and keep them working hard to take the company to the next level. There are several directories in Turkcell which works for different services. One of the biggest directories in Turkcell is Data Center and Cloud Management. Inside Data Center Management, there are certain teams works specially for infrastructure management. Operators of ICT departments need to check or perform lots of different tasks in their daily routine. RPA steps in to business here to make their work life easier. Robotic Process Automation is technology that enables computer software to emulate the typical actions that humans perform by interacting with digital systems to run business processes. They are systems that enable the transfer of routine works to software robots by automating processes that are rule-based, fixed and regular, repetitive, medium and high volume, prone to human error, thereby creating more value by turning to work with high added value, requiring analysis and judgment. RPA brings in digital workforce and digitized employees, increases customer experience, reduces costs, automates routine work, speeds up processes, makes the error rate zero or close to zero, increases efficiency and functionality, increases employee experience and satisfaction. The first thought that comes to the mind is that if a robot will do this job, they can take my job away from me. However, after the processes had automated with RPA robots, less routine and manual work increases staff productivity and employee satisfaction. Routine Control Robots Created to automate OneDesk (Turkcell internal system) calls created for routine checks in data centers. Aims to carry out routine controls on time and without forget. Manually, three minutes lasting call creation time has done in forty-five seconds by the robot. Calls are opening for 8 locations and 24 halls. These controls have carried out twice a day during the pandemic process, so 106 Onedesk calls in total per day controlled by the robot for routine works in Data Centers. Following scenarios have been prepared and started use for other routine controls; Energy Control Robot It has been prepared for our energy customer so that the controls made every night in the Gebze Data Center have not forgotten, and the call opening process has not skipped. After the call created, relevant team and customer has informed by e-mail. ICT routine control robot Failures, warnings and all sorts of alarms in white spaces of all devices creates calls for the control of the situations and notifies the relevant team by e-mail. Camera control robot It is prepared to control the cameras that are not working in the halls of Dudullu, Kartal, Yenibosna, Söğütözü data centers and to inform DC admins by e-mail by checking the last registration date retrospectively. It creates calls and notifies the relevant team by e-mail. Warehouse Delivery Robot (RDA) It is aimed to update the records of the devices sent from the data center to the warehouse on OneNT without any errors by the robot. This scenario will be run from the user's computer as RDA when needed. Serial Number Inquiry Robot Data center operation personnel can receive serial number, ciNo, ciName, location, cabinet etc. from the field via OneNT. Asset Handling / Inventory Robot It is aimed to automatically check the status of asset transport calls and update the records on the ERP by the robot, thus ensuring the accuracy of the inventory. Delays and human errors are also expected to be avoided here. Dispatch Note It is aimed that the data center operation personnel can prepare E-waybill without going from the field to the computer. It is expected to save approximately 10 minutes for each waybill, as in the serial number query robot. Power Consumption Automatic preparation of the report for customers requesting a power consumption report by collecting information from necessary points. All these processes allow Turkcell personnel to be more creative and active working with additional achievements such as, Preventing the possibility of making mistakes in manual transactions and accelerating the long-lasting work flow with the help of robots to gain operational awareness. Speeding up the work flow within the team, laying the groundwork for more work to be done. Reduce the workload within the team and allow time to be allocated to other works in the time saved. Carrying customer satisfaction to higher levels and increasing the workforce within the team in processes that touch the customer. Increasing the satisfaction of the personnel in the site. In summary, with all the effort and hard work of the engineers and technicians, sharing the excitement of all the project members, we sincerely hope to participate and to be nominated for these awards.

SQream Data Analytics Acceleration Platform
Due to exponentially growing data, organizations today are facing slowdowns, with analytics taking hours or even days. Time-consuming data preparation is needed for each change in perspective, and some complex analytics simply cannot be done. SQream is a data analytics acceleration platform that accelerates analytics on massive datasets. SQream works as a speed layer alongside enterprises' MPP ecosystems, reducing long-running queries on terabytes to petabytes of data from days to hours and hours to minutes or even seconds. With SQream's GPU-accelerated processing power, enterprises can analyze a much larger portion of their historical and fresh data on more dimensions - for more accurate insights, better predictions, more reliable AI models, and better business decisions. SQream analyzes raw data directly, enabling data scientists and BI analysts to freely explore their data from a variety of perspectives and dimensions, without the need for arduous preparation. Leading organizations in telecom, retail, healthcare, finance, and additional industries around the world use SQream to improve quality of service, accelerate medical research, improve AI models, and gain access to previously inaccessible business insights. Case Study LG Uplus Cuts Analytics from Hours to Minutes, Enhancing Service for Millions of Subscribers LG U+, the mobile carrier owned by LG Corporation, launched 5G services in December 2018. LG U+ wanted to improve network operations and efficiencies, reduce costs and downtime, and offer better quality of service to customers. These are a few examples of the game-changing processes they wanted to implement: • The LG U+ Customer Service team needed to analyze, understand, and predict customer usage from the massive data generated from millions of users. This process was taking hours and sometimes days due to extremely long-running queries. They needed the ability to rapidly “slice and dice” their data. • Network Engineering needed to better understand and model the noise on a call using frequency analysis to classify good quality calls. The data was gathered from multiple sources, and manually curated in a process that could take hours for each model. They needed to be able to rapidly update their models for better decision making while the data was still relevant. • The Security team used a machine learning-based operation for analyzing data from multiple security sources in order to detect and prevent cyber and DDoS attacks on the LG U+ network. The operation had two parts - the training of the models and the execution. During the training phase, it was critical to sample as much data as possible, which could not be done with their existing system. LG U+ chose SQream as their data analytics acceleration platform for its ability to rapidly ingest, compress, and analyze massive amounts of data, while meeting key performance indicators. LG U+ was able to significantly increase the amount of data they analyzed, while reducing long-running queries from days to hours, and hour to minutes.

XpedITe by RiT Tech
Overcoming the disappointment of DCIM Effective Data Centre ICT Automation and Orchestration requires something that has been lacking in our sector for many years. This missing element is true integration of the separate ICT and Facilities elements that comprise the core of any data centre. Ken Brill, the founder of the Uptime Institute in 1992 recognised this and even published a paper in 2006 with the title of: ‘Why IT and Facilities must work closely together’. Despite all the obvious advantages including improved energy efficiency, cost reduction and enhanced reliability we have not moved a great deal forward in this area. Service delivery remains heavily siloed, facilities and ICT teams are often not aligned and do not share common objectives while digital infrastructure deployments are becoming increasingly more complex and hybrid. Many organisations now have an ICT estate comprising Private and Public Cloud, Edge, Colocation and legacy on premise enterprise. The obvious solution to the management of these increasingly complex estates is DCIM, however DCIM has failed to impress and thus far done very little to bring together the worlds of ICT and Facilities even in single data centres ever mind the kind of complex deployments highlighted above. This is changing though and at last DCIM is starting to banish the ICT blind spots and provide a panoramic window into the ICT stack. RiT Tech has taken DCIM into the IT stack and with their use of open-sourced API and SDK solutions, the opportunities to finally embrace the entire ICT stack and integrate with legacy Facilities systems are endless. The roadmap to continuous innovation in automation and orchestration is, of course, to make complex infrastructure, tasks and workflows easy to manage. But more than this, true automation and orchestration must provide predictability through scenario planning, the aggregation of data from multiple sources and systems, the analysis of that data to create useful information and finally to use the compiled information to offer solutions and to allow informed automated management across the entire data centre estate. A genuine DCIM product, such as XpedITe from RiT Tech, offers true management capabilities rather than just the monitoring available with the historically disappointing legacy DCIM systems. It is often forgotten that the ‘M’ in DCIM stands for Management and not merely Monitoring. XpedITe provides the ability to analyse facilities and ICT infrastructure across different types of geographically dispersed sites. This has proved extremely important to clients during the Covid Pandemic with the restrictions on travel and the inability to get people to sites to verify infrastructure details. For those using XpedITe, there has been no need to rely on site visits to verify installations to create work orders or manage third party installers, this is all dealt with by XpedITe. Management and integration are available throughout the IT stack based on seamless and effortless integration with specialist systems such as BMS, CRM and ITSM solutions through to application performance and ICT Hardware analytics. The data centre sector needs to have a solution they can have faith in, one that provide reliable, accurate information and that can support the data centre growth and increasing expansion into remote ‘dark’ and unmanned ‘Edge’ sites without reductions in site reliability and the introduction of risk. Without the use of effective management tools offering ICT Automation and Orchestration this growth and expansion at scale is not possible. Modular by design is the only way to tick all the boxes – HDIM, ML, DCIM XpedITe has this ability to make all of this possible. Rather than attempting to be the entire ecosystem, its vision is to supplement existing capabilities – not replace them. XpedITe is modular by design – a hi-tech toolset from which data centre operators can select the services they require. For data centre operators, this encyclopaedic insight - coupled with automated planning and provisioning tools - delivers a tangible return on investment by ensuring any unexpected downtime is diminished and the performance of assets is optimised. To this end, the platform’s ever-expanding range of integration adapters allow it to interact with commonly used devices and software systems, reducing disruption and risks during deployment. Whether connecting to switches, servers and chillers or building management systems, configuration management databases and customer relationship management (CRM) software, XpedITe actively streamlines the sharing of information and processes. Indeed, it thrives on federating previously disparate systems, data sets and environments to create an accurate real-time picture across any given network. The more systems available for XpedITe to connect to, the more detailed the insight it can provide of the make-up and performance of every rack, cabinet, cable and port, and the greater the efficiencies it can deliver. XpedITe is a platform that proudly works well with others to provide an extensive knowledge chain and information exchange across the whole business, giving those who require a window into operations an up-to-the-minute picture to consult. Connecting the ICT department with data centre management and clients with sales and support teams through CRM, XpedITe is a conduit for community communication, service delivery and cooperation and has no interest in operating in isolation. Delivering on the promise with Intel inside In order to enable a full stack ICT approach, RiT Tech has enabled a strategic integration of Intel® Data Center Manager (Intel® DCM) into their XpedITe platform. Together, the companies provide the opportunity to significantly improve visibility into the granular level of data centre compute assets to track and optimize available resources. This addresses an increasing demand from data centre operators for innovative opportunities to leverage software for resource optimisation. Intel® DCM adds industry leading features to RiT Tech’s platform for data centre management, automation and orchestration within the ICT estate. Intel® has developed their DCM suite to offer data centre operators the ability to collect and analyse real-time health, power, thermal profiles and hardware inventory of devices and groups of devices within data centres. As well as health and utilisation monitoring among the many benefits offered is that the Intel® DCM suite allows data centre operators to automate health monitoring, identify underutilized servers, measure energy usage by device, safely increase rack density, power management and optimization of application power consumption, cooling capacity consumption, cooling effectiveness monitoring, improved asset management, reliable project planning predictive identification of cooling problems and more. Intel® DCM has been developed from the outset as a data centre management solution designed specifically for data centres, it collects the real time data directly from the IT devices and is able to deliver the value both to the IT and Facility operators The seamless integration between RiT Tech’s XpedITe platform and the Intel® DCM has resulted in the realisation of some major data centre optimisation advantages. Specifically, the benefits of this joint approach cover both operational and financial efficiencies across the entire data centre estate. Hybrid Operational Efficiency and Availability: - Bridging the ICT and Facilities gap. - Real time granular data at the ICT equipment level using telemetry direct from Intel chips within servers - Monitoring of temperatures is direct from the ICT equipment (Every server is a sensor). - Real time monitoring of power on the device level with no need for a smart PDU - Improved granularity of data offering more scope for analytics. - Increase rack densities without risk. - Improve capacity planning and project management. - Identification of cooling risks and hotspots within the rack. - Collate info for Machine Learning to look for anomalies to predict cooling events before they impact the SLA - Automate ICT System Health Monitoring - Retrieve data to Power-aware Job Scheduling Tasks - Optimize Application Power Consumption - Greater understanding specific server models and configurations - Identify Firmware inconsistencies - Capture alerts directly from ICT equipment - Right sizing the infrastructures to eliminate over or under provisioning of power/cooling Financial Efficiency: - Reduced power consumption. - Reduce cooling associated costs by increasing cooling efficiencies. - Power capping to the physical level (Rack/Row/Room) and to logical groups (departments/projects/clusters) - Lower management and technician overhead. - Optimized infrastructure utilization and deferment of capital costs. - More effective capacity planning and available resource utilisation. - Ensure that racks are provisioned for best asset and resource usage. - Use the maximum available power in rack. - Shift workloads using ‘power and thermal aware job scheduling’. - Ensure that servers and storage are highly utilised to work most efficiently (High utilisation on 5 servers is far more efficient than low usage on 10 servers – a minimal decrease in performance saves a disproportionate amount on power / cost). - Accurate view of the service(s) supported, the performance and utilisation level of each device. - Avoid the need to use Expensive PDUs and Smart Power Strips. - Increase Rack Densities to increase site capacity. - Identify Underutilized/ ‘Zombie’ Servers - The ability to push set points up on CRAC units to reduce energy consumption and cost. Unlike the DCIM tools developed by data centre infrastructure manufacturers, the integration of XpedITe and Intel® DCM has resulted in a platform that enhances data centre operational processes and provides a platform for facilities and ICT professionals to more effectively communicate and collaborate with a common understanding and a single shared window into the heart of the data centre operational process and infrastructure. Technology is embedded in day-to-day business, and should not be seen as a cost, but rather as an enabler and opportunity to create competitive advantage. Business goals and processes can be facilitated using technology based in efficiently operated data centres, and conversely business risks and technology risks can be minimised by using approaches and solutions such as XpedITe. XpedITe is a conduit for community communication and operation In the future we may broaden this spirit of collaboration by inviting developers from different organisations to experiment and innovate with a view to adding to our inventory of integration adapters. Going “open source” could open the door to further connectivity and we would, of course, ensure any products created collaboratively satisfy our stringent security and accuracy standards. XpedITe, our next-generation data centre, network, infrastructure and operations management solution, empowers its users with "X-ray" vision by federating disparate systems and environments to create an accurate, real-time picture of any given network. Example innovation this year: A customisable client facing portal, providing 360 degree visibility Delivering round-the-clock clarity and peace of mind as to the health and performance levels of systems, the portal affords clients "hands-on" control of provisioning from a distance and keeps customers informed at all times through its automated alerts and resolution notifications. XpedITe's integration with existing Customer Relationship Management platforms further enhances this visibility - arming sales teams with the statistics to communicate with authority and track the progress of new and existing accounts in real-time and ultimately improving data centre Service Management capabilities. In brief, there is no reason to leave your clients in the dark. It's time to become a beacon of best practice and deliver an unprecedented level of customer care. Why are we worthy winners? XpedITe, RiT Tech’s next-generation data centre infrastructure management system removes a significant burden from the shoulders of all those responsible for running and preserving digital services by becoming an all-seeing eye and enabling the ability to orchestrate operations across all sites and assets in any given network. Armed with a complete and high-fidelity picture that bridges previous gaps between disparate systems and environments, migration goes from being a mission wrought with risk to a controlled and easy-to-manage process. XpedITe brings expediency to the transition by identifying any potential points of failure, flagging impacted devices and – using its advanced algorithms – producing accurate work orders for execution (even by third party operators), in order to maintain continuity of service. And our hi-tech tool’s attributes go far beyond the planning of which plugs to pull and replace first during a migration. Indeed, a data centre does not need to be on the move to benefit. XpedITe enhances everyday operations by enabling points of failure and breaches of physical security to be immediately detected, optimising networks and mitigating against any unnecessary or unplanned downtime. Its automated work orders significantly reduce maintenance times and any network changes can be implemented and properly labelled with complete peace of mind having been forensically thought through. Regardless of its point of introduction in a data centre’s lifecycle, RiT Tech’s innovative solution delivers reassurance and a return on investment. Whether utilised to plan a new facility, improve the efficiency of an existing site or manage self-migration, XpedITe’s live data allows informed decisions to be made quickly today, while planning, provisioning and preparing for tomorrow.

Pluribus Networks: Disaggregated Networking for Highly Distributed Cloud Environments
As 5G, AI/ML and edge compute drive data center (DC) locations to become more distributed, miniaturized and often “lights-out”, virtualizing and automating DC networks to increase agility and automate operations becomes an imperative. Networking has always been the DC automation laggard and an impediment to delivering the agility needed by DC operators in the modern cloud era. This has been the case in large centralized and regional DCs and is only exacerbated with highly distributed and space/power contained DCs located in central offices, at base stations and in enterprise edge locations. The team at Pluribus Networks is delivering a new and highly innovative approach to this emerging networking challenge, leveraging the principles of disagreggation, network virtualization and controllerless SDN to deliver a data center network fabric optimized for highly distributed cloud environments. The Netvisor ONE operating system (OS) is designed to run on bare metal switches delivering the cost, scale and speed-of-innovation benefits delivered by disaggregation. Netvisor ONE runs on white box switches from multiple hardware providers and is the exclusive OS to support Celestica’s Edgestone, the industry’s only NEBs-compliant DC switch designed for central office environments. In turn, Netvisor ONE powers the Adaptive Cloud Fabric (ACF), a controllerless SDN solution that provides a fully automated underlay and overlay fabric that virtualizes the DC network to provide cloud-like agility, multi-tenancy, network slicing, per-flow telemetry and multiple orchestration integrations. Federating up to 1,024 switches across any set of geographically distributed DCs, ACF enables this fabric of switches to act like a single logical Layer 2 / 3 switch with a single management IP for radical automation. DC operators can easily move workloads from one DC to another (VMs or containers) and share DC resources for maximum efficiency. The underlay and the overlay network are automatically deployed via the powerful UNUM Fabric Manager GUI and a single command will consistently instantiate a network service across the entire fabric with ease. In turn multiple fabrics can be federated together with EVPN to distribute network services on a per tenant or per slice basis across multiple fabrics. The SDN automation requires no external controllers - lowering licensing and hardware cost and reducing space/power consumption. Pluribus has taken a completely different approach to achieve this, developing innovative and compact software that leverages the embedded compute and memory footprint contained within the DC switches themselves to create a distributed, controllerless SDN implementation. Think of each switch acting like a server and containing a mini-SDN controller and a distributed SDN database for the underlay and overlay network. The value is clear and the solution has gained tremendous traction. Pluribus Networks is embedded in the Network Function Virtualization Infrastructure (NFVi) of a major NEM and now has more than 100 mobile network operators that have deployed Netvisor ONE and ACF in mission critical 4G/5G virtualized mobile cores around the globe. Pluribus has more than 350 customers worldwide and is growing rapidly as the value of this approach is understood by an increasingly broader set of customers. For example, imagine there is an 5G operating area with 20 edge data center sites with each site containing 6 switches - these 120 switches would be formed into a single, automated and sliceable multi-tenant fabric.

Park Place Technologies; Entuity
As anyone tuned in to the global events of the past year may attest, a year can seem to fly by faster than you can say, “a new normal.” On Aug. 6, 2019, Park Place Technologies announced the acquisition of Entuity, described as “a global network performance monitoring software company.” A year may pass quickly, but the Entuity integration has demonstrated how much progress may be packed in 365 days. In the acquisition announcement, Chris Adams, President and CEO, Park Place Technologies, was quoted as saying, “When Entuity is integrated with our award-winning ParkView™ monitoring product, we will deliver enhanced network visibility, driving uptime for our global customer base.” As the one-year anniversary of the ParkView/Entuity marriage arrives, those words have been proven prophetic. Entuity was Park Place’s 12th acquisition since 2016, and while every acquisition is strategic and benefits clients, Entuity has proven to be a game changer that led to the creation of a new technology category (more on that in a moment). For more than 20 years, Entuity has focused on network performance monitoring to ensure uninterrupted service delivery. Entuity provides the analytics needed to keep networks performing and visibility into issues before they impact business services. Entuity was seen as a perfect complement to Park Place Technologies as both organizations were customer-centric, have a deep-seated commitment to their employees and are laser-focused on maximizing customer Uptime. Here are some of the Entuity highlights of the past 12 months: New Product Releases ENA 18 Geographical Maps/Sure Path: Entuity Network Analytics (ENA) integrates Google Maps directly into its dashboard framework, allowing users to automatically plot network Views on an interactive Google Map. The map also drills down to show incident health within that View. For Network Operations Centers and Enterprise Operations Centers, the View markers can be customized to pulse if specific incidents are raised, providing an immediate visual notification where those problems are arising. IT teams gain a global perspective of the network based on Views and their hierarchies to resolve incidents faster and ensure more uptime. Introducing rapid monitoring of application paths and their components, SurePath bridges the gap between application management and network management. Network management teams can now quickly identify where a problem is and keep critical connections resilient. VPN Enhancements: ENA allows IT organizations to proactively manage firewall anomalies/alerts when there are issues, to ensure that traffic continues to flow back and forth at optimum levels. This is vital for remote end-users to gain access to VPN connections which in turn provide access to applications. ENA offers a number of ways to capture metrics for VPN connection management. The Entuity Network Analytics’ dashboard includes various dashlets for quick viewing, and shows VPN Users, Maximum Sessions Supportable, Sessions % of Max, and Sessions for Remote Access by device. This dashboard allows IT to fully understand the status of activity on a device, providing a way to proactively monitor where more VPN tunnels are needed to accommodate users. People Impact The Entuity acquisition has led to many more “feet on the street,” with the hiring of professional tech staff, development staff, and account representatives. The investment in staff has helped handle an increase in the number of client requests for proof of concept and discovery sessions, and robust technologies being developed for integration into the Park Place ParkView portfolio. ENA in the News The technology media has noticed! Scores of articles have been published on the Park Place acquisition of Entuity, including feature stories in Network Computing, “Network Monitoring and Management Turned Upside Down”; Data Economy, “You can’t manage what you can’t see”; and SC Media “Are you treating your data centre like a game of risk?” In the Case Study, “Putting a Different Spin on Network Management,” Grundfos Pumps, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of water pumps and water systems for both commercial and home use, testified to the benefits of ENA. Fred Wiest, Network Engineer and Global Network Architect at Grundfos, said, “ENA’s Configuration Management functionality offers us extensive capabilities to really simplify configuring our network. We are a lot more efficient in handling new roll out deployments and can see any changes immediately before it impacts performance. For example, we can set up a virtual router in Azure in less than 5 minutes. We configure SNMP, add it to ENA, hit a button and the router is automatically configured to our specifications in the Azure cloud.”

Turkcell RPA
Organizations, such as DataCentre Solutions, helps the DC teams to keep track of the latest developments and technologies. DCS awards, makes people to see what is going on in the industry and ignite people to achieve more and more. Therefore, it is important for Turkcell to participate and to be part of the DCS awards organization. Turkcell is the largest telecommunication, information, and service provider company of Turkey. Growing potential of the company, pushing the teams to maintain certain level of quality and keep them working hard to take the company to the next level. There are several directories in Turkcell which works for different services. One of the biggest directories in Turkcell is Data Center and Cloud Management. Inside Data Center Management, there are certain teams works specially for infrastructure management. Operators of ICT departments need to check or perform lots of different tasks in their daily routine. RPA steps in to business here to make their work life easier. Robotic Process Automation is technology that enables computer software to emulate the typical actions that humans perform by interacting with digital systems to run business processes. They are systems that enable the transfer of routine works to software robots by automating processes that are rule-based, fixed and regular, repetitive, medium and high volume, prone to human error, thereby creating more value by turning to work with high added value, requiring analysis and judgment. RPA brings in digital workforce and digitized employees, increases customer experience, reduces costs, automates routine work, speeds up processes, makes the error rate zero or close to zero, increases efficiency and functionality, increases employee experience and satisfaction. The first thought that comes to the mind is that if a robot will do this job, they can take my job away from me. However, after the processes had automated with RPA robots, less routine and manual work increases staff productivity and employee satisfaction. Routine Control Robots Created to automate OneDesk (Turkcell internal system) calls created for routine checks in data centers. Aims to carry out routine controls on time and without forget. Manually, three minutes lasting call creation time has done in forty-five seconds by the robot. Calls are opening for 8 locations and 24 halls. These controls have carried out twice a day during the pandemic process, so 106 Onedesk calls in total per day controlled by the robot for routine works in Data Centers. Following scenarios have been prepared and started use for other routine controls; Energy Control Robot It has been prepared for our energy customer so that the controls made every night in the Gebze Data Center have not forgotten, and the call opening process has not skipped. After the call created, relevant team and customer has informed by e-mail. ICT routine control robot Failures, warnings and all sorts of alarms in white spaces of all devices creates calls for the control of the situations and notifies the relevant team by e-mail. Camera control robot It is prepared to control the cameras that are not working in the halls of Dudullu, Kartal, Yenibosna, Söğütözü data centers and to inform DC admins by e-mail by checking the last registration date retrospectively. It creates calls and notifies the relevant team by e-mail. Warehouse Delivery Robot (RDA) It is aimed to update the records of the devices sent from the data center to the warehouse on OneNT without any errors by the robot. This scenario will be run from the user's computer as RDA when needed. Serial Number Inquiry Robot Data center operation personnel can receive serial number, ciNo, ciName, location, cabinet etc. from the field via OneNT. Asset Handling / Inventory Robot It is aimed to automatically check the status of asset transport calls and update the records on the ERP by the robot, thus ensuring the accuracy of the inventory. Delays and human errors are also expected to be avoided here. Dispatch Note It is aimed that the data center operation personnel can prepare E-waybill without going from the field to the computer. It is expected to save approximately 10 minutes for each waybill, as in the serial number query robot. Power Consumption Automatic preparation of the report for customers requesting a power consumption report by collecting information from necessary points. All these processes allow Turkcell personnel to be more creative and active working with additional achievements such as, Preventing the possibility of making mistakes in manual transactions and accelerating the long-lasting work flow with the help of robots to gain operational awareness. Speeding up the work flow within the team, laying the groundwork for more work to be done. Reduce the workload within the team and allow time to be allocated to other works in the time saved. Carrying customer satisfaction to higher levels and increasing the workforce within the team in processes that touch the customer. Increasing the satisfaction of the personnel in the site. In summary, with all the effort and hard work of the engineers and technicians, sharing the excitement of all the project members, we sincerely hope to participate and to be nominated for these awards.

gProfiler
In February 2021, Granulate released the gProfiler as an open-source resource for the DevOps community. The gProfiler is a production profiling solution that measures the performance of code in production applications to facilitate compute optimization. Granulate’s gProfiler empowers R&D and DevOps teams to identify previously unknown bottlenecks with their applications' performance, and then work to remedy the issue and improve services. Granulate open-sourced the gProfiler to address a growing need for practical profiling solutions. The current profiling solutions available require substantial code changes and are either hard to use, resource-intensive, or expensive. These barriers create significant challenges for the use of profiling in production, which forces teams to use the solutions for limited durations. These challenges are amplified in modern environments and workloads which require continuous profiling data aggregated across the entire cluster with jobs across multiple batches - such as Kubernetes-based environments and Big-Data workloads. The non-continuous nature of traditional profiling creates substantial visibility gaps, resulting in unidentified bottlenecks and inefficiencies, making it unsuitable for such environments. Granulate’s gProfiler overcomes these challenges by aggregating profiling data across multiple nodes and multiple application languages over any time frame, with no code changes or performance penalties. These new capabilities will enable development teams to identify and optimize performance bottlenecks more efficiently, in any environment. The gProfiler is based on internal tools created by Granulate’s R&D teams as part of the company's real-time continuous optimization solution. Granulate decided to open-source the product to support the DevOps community and accelerate industry awareness of computing inefficiencies that may otherwise have gone undetected. Especially during an era of cloud-native computing, code profiling is more important than ever for improving application performance, taming cloud costs, and increasing margins. The gProfiler is a powerful and essential tool that allows development teams to gain visibility and expand performance. Due to the complexity of implementation and performance overhead, it is an unfortunate reality that many teams cannot afford to utilize such profiling tools. The open-source gProfiler addresses these needs and allows teams to reap the benefits of a profiler without having to make changes in their code in an extremely cost-efficient manner. Granulate’s gProfiler provides several unique benefits for development and software engineers managing production applications: ● Open-source: An open-source package for community use ● Plug and play installation: Seamless installation without code changes and minimal effort ● Immediate visibility: Facilitates immediate visibility into production code - up and running in less than 5 minutes ● Low overhead: Minimal performance overhead, less than 1% utilization penalty ● Continuous: Designed to work continuously, facilitating effective analysis of performance issues in all environments, in real-time ● Wide coverage: Native support for Java, Go, Python, Scala, Clojure, and Kotlin applications. Support for Node.js, Ruby, and PHP planned by end of Q1

Ubuntu 21.04 is here
Canonical released Ubuntu 21.04 with native Microsoft Active Directory integration, Wayland graphics by default, and a Flutter application development SDK. Separately, Canonical and Microsoft announced performance optimization and joint support for Microsoft SQL Server on Ubuntu. “Native Active Directory integration and certified Microsoft SQL Server on Ubuntu are top priorities for our enterprise customers.” said Mark Shuttleworth, CEO of Canonical. “For developers and innovators, Ubuntu 21.04 delivers Wayland and Flutter for smoother graphics and clean, beautiful, design-led cross platform development.” Ubuntu has established itself as the enterprise engineering platform of choice, from the desktop to public cloud and microservices, with a wide range of corporate adopters in the finance, automotive, tech and government sectors. "Canonical's desktop solutions are cost-effective, easy to manage at scale, and simple to integrate with enterprise systems. For our 100,000 police officers, Ubuntu is user friendly, reliable, and delivers the requisite privacy and security without additional third-party solutions. Ubuntu is our operating system of choice" said Lt-Colonel Stéphane Dumond, French Gendarmerie Nationale. Microsoft SQL Server on Ubuntu delivers an optimised, cost-effective database platform Enterprise performance and scalability work from this release has been backported to Ubuntu 20.04.2 LTS, in support of Microsoft SQL Server. The database management system (DBMS) and its command-line interface (CLI) are now available on optimised Ubuntu images on Azure, providing a production-grade, highly available database platform with ten years of security maintenance. Canonical and Microsoft will provide integrated support for Ubuntu with Microsoft SQL Server deployed on-prem or through the Azure Marketplace, for mission-critical workloads. The joint solution comes with performance enhancements, like Force Unit Access (FUA) on XFS filesystems for data durability. Persistent memory (PMEM) offers high performance data storage without any additional configuration. Finally, the entire platform is highly available, backed by Corosync and Pacemaker, to ensure resilience. Active Directory: Bridging the gap between system administrators and Linux developers Ubuntu machines can join an Active Directory (AD) domain at installation for central configuration. AD administrators can now manage Ubuntu workstations, which simplifies compliance with company policies. Ubuntu 21.04 adds the ability to configure system settings from an AD domain controller. Using a Group Policy Client, system administrators can specify security policies on all connected clients, such as password policies and user access control, and Desktop environment settings, such as login screen, background and favourite apps. Flutter and Wayland: a smoother graphics experience Ubuntu 21.04 uses Wayland by default, a significant leap forward in security. Firefox, OBS Studio and many applications built with Electron and Flutter take advantage of Wayland automatically, for smoother graphics and better fractional scaling. Flutter SDK snap build integration makes it easy to publish your multi-platform Flutter app for one-click install by millions of Linux desktop users. “Canonical has been a fantastic contributor to Flutter, enabling Linux desktop support in Flutter and opening up the opportunity to bring high quality Flutter apps to Linux. We look forward to our continued partnership in making Flutter the best choice for app developers, no matter which platform they target." Chris Sells, Product Manager, Flutter New dark theme provides a refreshed user experience 21.04 includes a redesigned dark theme, Yaru, with accessibility improvements in navigation, and new file icons. Yaru is maintained by the community, backed by Canonical.