< PreviousConfiguring and integrating solutions We used to provide fibre cabling and management solutions as kits for customers to build on site, with many individually packaged components. Now, we provide customers with an on-site configuration tool. They can configure the solution they need and receive completely assembled and suitably packaged modules. This saves enormously on packaging and transport, and waste has been reduced significantly. In fact, packaging volume is reduced by 67% in comparison to the delivery of single parts. This approach won’t work in every situation, but when it does, it’s highly efficient. A modular approach Why install cooling, power, fire protection and so on throughout a vast space when you’re using just one or maybe a few racks? SMEs that don’t need a huge data centre yet, can opt for a ‘DC in a rack’ incorporating optimised power, cooling and everything else required. They can just keep adding racks, without having to first install raised floors, for example. Growing companies that need to relocate can move their DC instead of creating a whole new installation with fire management, power, cooling and so on. That's not only quicker and cheaper but also reduces the CO 2 footprint as (re)building purpose-made rooms has more impact than moving a self-contained, preconfigured solution. Working smarter with data Data and AI are crucial to continuously optimising logistics, production, and supply chain processes. They provide valuable insights that allow you to make energy-saving tweaks. In data centres, for example, we see the uptake in targeted cooling. This is crucial in helping customers scale up and down much more efficiently. The more flexible these solutions are, and the more data they have about system usage, the more efficiently the DC can be cooled. Data-driven management of lighting and heating etc, also help improve companies’ overall sustainability performance. Integrated intelligent building solutions, based on a common platform such as IP, leverage and scale up these benefits. Making the most of power If you supply 10kW to each rack, with today’s processing capacity combined with equipment densities, you can only fill 50%-60% of that rack. There are simply not enough kWs per rack to power more hardware. So even though equipment performance and connection density may be higher, a lot of space is wasted. You end up building and cooling larger rooms that you really don’t need. Targeted cooling and new low-power chip and memory designs reduce energy usage and space usage and increase computing power per square metre. carbon reductions www.networkseuropemagazine.com 20Critical rethinking Apart from the obvious benefit of saving our planet for future generations, sustainability performance and CO 2 reduction are also essential to company branding and attracting young talent and critical workforce. Being environmentally friendly is not only about adopting new inventions and more efficient technologies and materials. It’s not just about setting targets, ticking boxes and sharing PPTs about your results – it requires constant questioning of industry and company processes that often haven’t fundamentally changed in decades. This approach to sustainability needs to be genuinely rooted in company culture. The real gains come from following industry- wide guidelines and best practices, while also evaluating and critically rethinking processes that are highly specific to your own operations and customers’ needs. Copper vs fibre Not all copper can be replaced by fibre. However, for each segment of the network, it’s definitely worth examining which type of cabling offers the best environmental performance, looking at aspects such as idle consumption of power, which can be an issue with copper. A recent report from BREKO, Germany’s leading broadband association, indicates that copper networks consume up to 17 times more electricity than fibre networks. A study by the German Umweltbundesamt (Environmental Agency) shows that the CO 2 emissions per hour of video streaming for FTTH are just half that of the fastest copper network. Furthermore, optical fibres are light and thin, which lowers transport emissions, and are made of silicate, which is available in virtually unlimited quantities. In data transmission terms, 1kg of glass is as powerful as 1000kg of copper. A study from the FTTH Council Europe demonstrates that fibre networks emit 88% less greenhouse gas per Gigabit compared to legacy technologies. carbon reductions www.networkseuropemagazine.com 21Rob McKernan, SVP Secure Power Europe, Schneider Electric The digital transformation is in full flight, and data centres are at the heart of this transformation. Global analyst firm IDC for example, predicts that by the year 2025, we will be witnessing an astonishing five-fold growth in the generation of global data. new opportunities www.networkseuropemagazine.com 22Europe, thanks to its diverse talent, skillsets and geographies, is uniquely positioned to benefit from the new opportunities that come with digitalisation and our current appetite for data. The number of European technology companies that have reached “unicorn” status — a valuation of $1 billion or more — has grown from 223 last year to 321, and Europe as a region is now approaching 2,500 data centres in operation, making it an IT force to be reckoned with. Europe’s booming business So, clearly data centre demand in Europe is growing at unprecedented levels, with investment in Europe’s traditional FLAP-D data centre markets, (Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris, Dublin), enjoying massive growth, of around 20% in 2021. To highlight this scale, Germany is currently home to 453 data centres, closely followed by the UK at 448. The European Data Centre Boom: Bringing New Opportunities to Unexplored Markets new opportunities www.networkseuropemagazine.com 23The emergence of secondary markets Significantly, in Europe, we are seeing the emergence of new or ‘secondary’ markets. Cities like Warsaw, Milan, Madrid, and Berlin are emerging as the growth story for the new decade, with data centre growth doubling or even tripling in some of these new markets. As these secondary markets begin to establish themselves, so this calls up various obligations and opportunities. First and foremost, climate change and corporate social responsibility are driving a new mandate for a sustainable data centre industry, as backed by the European Green Deal, and more specifically by the recent EU Carbon Neutral Data Centre Pact 2030. Turning obligations into opportunities So, it’s clear then, that the European data centre industry has a responsibility to adhere to sustainable, energy-efficient practices, as laid out in formal government regulations and initiatives. Not only this, but data centre owners and operators are increasingly committing to their own robust Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) programs that they are implementing internally. So, what does all of this mean for data centre owners and operators when establishing sustainable practices in these new secondary markets? To begin with, it offers up brand-new opportunities for these new locations. Establishing a sustainable data centre in a fast-growing new European market goes beyond the technology. It requires the newly arrived data centre practice to develop its own local ecosystem of cloud services providers, developers, investors and occupiers. In turn, this opens up new local opportunities and will likely attract a highly-skilled workforce, inspiring a new generation of talent in a new European location. new opportunities www.networkseuropemagazine.com 24Making a positive impact Establishing data centre hubs in new markets is a win- win. Think of the new partnerships with local companies that can be established, local community tie-ins, or governmental partnerships that this can kick-start, and then think of the overall positive impact that this could have on the local economy and immediate community. It’s no exaggeration to say that the emergence of new data centres in secondary markets has the power to revitalise entire towns. Eastern and southern Europe are already enjoying the fruits of this new boom. Several digital excellence centres are already emerging there, making this region one of the most exciting new hubs for growth and innovation. The biggest names in tech are now moving their data centre operations to this part of Europe, with Google and Microsoft investing in Poland, one of the largest data centres in Europe being built in Romania, and Greece attracting the likes of Microsoft and Amazon. The power of collaboration Today’s CXO must take into account the full breadth of the hybrid IT environment – by considering the cloud as well as the edge when planning a sustainability strategy. What’s more, we believe the best chance of achieving true sustainability within our industry is through an integrated approach; that’s to say, based on an ecosystem of alliance and channel partners, working as one to solve challenges and drive innovation. Finally, as one of the world’s most sustainable companies, we feel a genuine social responsibility when it comes to establishing and nurturing new data centre operations, no matter the location. We believe that it’s through the convergence of digital and electric that we can make data centres more efficient, sustainable and resilient. We call this convergence Electricity 4.0. In this respect, we have a key role to play in addressing the current climate crisis. However, we can’t do this alone. It’s by establishing a comprehensive partner network that we can join the dots and help to ensure that the provision of smart energy runs right through the data centre ecosystem. I expect to see a ramping up in these collaborative industry partnerships over the next few years. And, right across Europe – from established data centre hubs to new European markets alike, we are going to see many new shining examples of what’s possible when we work together in purposeful partnerships that promote social cohesion. This is the way to drive positive influence and meaningful innovation within our industry. new opportunities www.networkseuropemagazine.com 25Today, holding onto legacy architectures could slow down processes, and thereby be seriously detrimental to organisations – particularly in the increasingly digital world. For many, it’s no longer a viable option. There are significant reasons why the time is now to migrate away from legacy architectures such as Apache Hadoop, which are hard to maintain and costly. Specially trained and highly skilled individuals are needed to manage these systems, which is not sustainable in the long term. As businesses are continuing to grow exponentially, the need for advanced analytics with an emphasis on machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) will take centre stage. Toby Balfre, VP Field Engineering, EMEA, Databricks Migrating away from legacy data architectures: Breaking away from legacy IT systems can be a significant challenge for many UK businesses. When making the switch to more modern data architecture, merely deciding to make the initial move can be the most difficult part. Digital transformation has been accelerated in recent years, with the shift to hybrid working and the rise in demand for digital services across all industries acting as a trigger point. how can UK businesses move to the lakehouse? legacy architecture www.networkseuropemagazine.com 26 legacy architecture www.networkseuropemagazine.com 27Navigating the different data architectures Half of chief analytics officers, chief information officers (CIOs), and chief data officers (CDOs) surveyed by Harvard Business Review last year, indicated that they are currently evaluating or implementing a new platform to address their current data challenges. The biggest challenge is understanding the different data architectures that are on offer, and how to migrate seamlessly from old to new. Taking the step from on-premises can be a challenging task and if a new migration is deemed unsuccessful, slow or costly, this could have serious consequences for data teams. It's now critical for CIOs and CDOs to consider modern data architectures that seamlessly scale and work effortlessly with the cloud in an era where there are many options available. As businesses continue to grow, it will become even more important to choose an option that is easily administered by data teams who can then focus on use cases instead of managing the migration. A lakehouse is becoming an increasingly popular choice. It provides a structured transactional layer to a data lake to add data warehouse-like performance, reliability, quality and scale, but for all data. It allows many of the use cases that would traditionally have required legacy data warehouses to be accomplished with a data lake alone. For businesses that have made the decision to transition to a lakehouse architecture, there are some simple steps they should take into consideration. Step 1: Communicate Before any successful migration happens, data teams, CIOs and CDOs need to talk specifics. They could begin by discussing where they are, and where they would like to be when it comes to their data infrastructures. Are current systems fit for purpose? Data teams can then assess the state of the current infrastructure and plan for the implementation of a new one. There will, without a doubt, be a lot of experimentation and new learnings at this first stage. Organisations need to have the right conversations with their teams to truly grasp why their business wants to migrate to a new data architecture, who should be involved and how the migration fits into their overall cloud strategy. Step 2: Assess You won’t find an ‘instant click’ with any migration project. The most realistic approach for most will be to take it step by step, project by project. Organisations must understand what jobs are running and what the code looks like. In many scenarios, organisations will also have to build a business case for their migration, including determining the total cost of adopting a lakehouse platform, for example. Step 3: Set the technical foundation and evaluate As we near the execution phase of the migration, organisations need to consider all aspects of their target architecture and ensure it will support business needs for the long haul. Usually, this entails mapping older technologies to new ones or simply optimising them. Organisations must also understand the specifics of how legacy architecture www.networkseuropemagazine.com 28to move their data to the cloud with the workloads. Then, organisations will need to carry out an evaluation, targeting demos and production pilots to approve an approach for the new data architecture. Step 4: Execution phase Finally, after all of these considerations, organisations reach the execution phase. A migration will never be easy, however getting it done right the first time is essential to how quickly the organisation can start to scale its analytical practices, cut costs and increase data team productivity. To ensure continuity, businesses should determine if it is necessary to run workloads on both their old and new systems to ensure everything is identical. Gradually, the decision can be made to completely cut over to the new data architecture and decommission the use case from the older one entirely. As organisations seek to enable their teams to do more and achieve better outcomes with data and AI, it is time for UK business leaders to stop just thinking about adopting new data architecture and confidently make the move. The longer organisations wait to make the switch, the more difficult it will be to keep up with competition and growing customer expectations. legacy architecture www.networkseuropemagazine.com 29Next >