No digital future without regional data centres

On 31 May, Datacenter United organised an interactive debate on the role of data centres in our digital future. The venue was the Antwerp location where a brand-new data centre will be built next year, right next to its recently Tier IV-certified data centre. There is no better place to open up the black box that the data centre is for many people.

Datacenter United's ambitious growth plans did not come out of nowhere. They are responding to an unstoppable trend.
Friso Haringsma, CEO of Datacenter United: ‘The data centre plays a crucial role in the development of our future digital society. It is therefore in our best interest to invest in regional and local data centres. Otherwise, we will miss the digitalisation boat.’

Many professional organisations have already made the switch from their own data centre to an external one, or a combination of a hyperscaler with a regional data centre, but such a transition does not always go smoothly.

Hans Witdouck, CEO of Eurofiber: "This often has to do with the user experience, which largely depends on the speed at which you can consult and use applications and data. In many digital transformation projects in companies, applications are moved to the data centre. But if that data centre is not connected via fibre optics, the transition will be very disappointing for users because of the latency (delay). For example, employees may notice that their Teams connection works faster from home than when they are at the office. Such negative experiences at the start are detrimental to the adoption of the new applications. It is difficult to get users on board after that."

Hidden costs

Sometimes it is not the users, but the financial department of an organisation that puts the brakes on, because they estimate that the switch to an external data centre and the cloud will be more expensive than having their own on-premise data centre. Friso Haringsma has a different opinion on this: "When a company makes a financial assessment between its own data centre and an external data centre, it often lacks good points of comparison. The cost of an external data centre is very clear. But the cost of an internal data centre is much less transparent. For example, people forget to factor in the cost of the space, because this is part of a building, the energy bill (because the data centre is included in the total energy bill), the employees you need for it (because they also perform other tasks), etc. In your own data centre, the space is not optimal: it is either too large or too small. Scaling is difficult. Not only financially, but also in terms of infrastructure and equipment, so you are actually comparing apples with oranges.

Unstoppable

Whatever comparisons are made, the move to the cloud seems inevitable. Gregory Pankert, Head of Telecom Information Technology, Media and Electronics Benelux at management and consulting firm Arthur D. Little, agrees. "Due to increasing digitisation, we expect data traffic to increase tenfold over the next five years. Ninety per cent of that data traffic will be between companies. Don't forget that applications and data do not belong to a single cloud. They work across different clouds, both public and private. So we are talking about much more data than we generate today. In the foreseeable future, companies will simply no longer be able to manage and optimise this themselves, even if they wanted to. Don't underestimate the data traffic within the data centre either. This is 20 to 100 times greater than what happens outside the data centre."

We are seeing a similar evolution in our neighbouring countries.

Stijn Grove, Managing Director of the Dutch Datacenter Association and Board Member of the Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact: "In every country, there is initially a reluctance to place one's own data in an external facility. This has been no different in the Netherlands. However, as there are more large companies there, the evolution is already at a more advanced stage than in Belgium. Germany, on the other hand, is very traditional when it comes to IT. They are only now starting to move their data away from the local level. This is due to a lack of trust. However, the past two years have shown that every company needs to operate from a well-connected data centre or data centres. Otherwise, they will no longer be able to reach their own staff, who are increasingly working remotely, or at least not sufficiently.”

Which partner should I choose?

Since each type of data centre has its own specific role, companies will not choose one or the other, but rather a combination of both.

Gregory Pankert: "The advantage of local and regional data centres is that they are much more open than public cloud providers. You can build a relationship of trust with them; it's a two-way street. That's why they are more interesting for hosting your critical business applications. You don't want to place those with the large hyperscalers. However, they are interesting for other business applications that are less critical."

Friso Haringsma: "The data centre is an ecosystem and a partner that advises its customers in various areas and connects them with other parties in the ecosystem who can help them with security, for example. This is very different from a hyperscaler, which offers everything end-to-end on its terms, not yours. Data sovereignty is a major advantage of a regional data centre. And don't forget that you also have freedom of negotiation.

What's more, external data centres are constantly in operational excellence mode because they are constantly audited: we do our own internal audits, followed by external audits for all kinds of certificates, and then we get audits from our customers. That openness is another advantage of a regional data centre. As a customer, try conducting an audit at a hyperscaler...

Would you like to know more? Don't hesitate to contact us!