News

Datacentre energy efficiency and green IT

• December 29, 2020 29 Dec'20

  Top 10 datacentre stories of 2020

  Here are Computer Weekly’s top 10 datacentre stories of 2020

• December 14, 2020 14 Dec'20

  CIO interview: Why IATA is banking on cloud to help the airline industry weather the Covid-19 crisis

  The onset of the Covid-19 pandemic has forced the International Air Transport Association to re-evaluate its IT investment priorities as the aviation industry shifts its focus away from business growth to business survival

• December 10, 2020 10 Dec'20

  Amazon goes public with record-breaking renewable energy generation plans

  Online retail giant Amazon has followed up earlier pledges to do more as a global organisation to tackle climate change by going public with plans to add a further 26 solar and wind farms to its portfolio

• December 10, 2020 10 Dec'20

  Arm to downsize global datacentre footprint through AWS cloud collaboration

  British semi-conductor maker Arm has committed to shrinking the size of its global datacentre estate by 45%, and plans to do so by moving some of its core chip design workloads to the AWS cloud

• December 03, 2020 03 Dec'20

  Tech and data key to achieving low-carbon economy, says Royal Society

  Report says net-zero transition should be data-led, and calls for coordination between government, regulators, industry and third sector

• November 18, 2020 18 Nov'20

  Nokia Software embarks on ‘carbon negative’ datacentre revamp push with HPE Greenlake

  Global telecoms giant Nokia Software opens up about the work it is doing to improve the environmental friendliness of the R&D datacentres underpinning its 5G innovation

• November 16, 2020 16 Nov'20

  Space DC eyes Indonesia datacentre market

  Space DC opens first of two datacentres with reliability and green features to tap Indonesia’s growing demand for datacentres

• November 09, 2020 09 Nov'20

  French bank Crédit Agricole backs immersion cooling for datacentre scale-up push

  Following the completion of a successful two-year pilot project, Crédit Agricole has confirmed it is preparing to roll out Asperitas immersion cooling technology to more sites within its datacentre portfolio

• November 09, 2020 09 Nov'20

  IT Priorities 2020: Covid-19 accelerates cloud investments by UK IT leaders

  The updated 2020 IT Priorities Survey from Computer Weekly and TechTarget shines a light on how the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic has reshaped IT leaders’ technology investment plans

• November 03, 2020 03 Nov'20

  OVHcloud doubles down on sustainability with carbon reduction pledges

  OVHcloud emerges as the latest cloud provider to reinforce its commitment to ensuring the growth of its business does not come at the expense of the environment

• October 23, 2020 23 Oct'20

  Datacentre sustainability a work in progress in ASEAN

  Sustainability efforts have not kept pace with the growing demand for datacentre and co-location services in Southeast Asia

• October 14, 2020 14 Oct'20

  Interxion invests in growing its Austrian colocation presence with Vienna campus expansion

  Digital Realty-owned colocation giant Interxion is continuing to build out its European datacentre footprint, having acquired a parcel of land in Vienna to expand its Austrian server farm footprint

• October 14, 2020 14 Oct'20

  CyrusOne to prioritise water preservation across global colocation estate in sustainability push

  Global colocation giant makes good on its promise to publish first sustainability report into its operations, which contains commitments to curb the amount of water its facilities consume locally

• October 12, 2020 12 Oct'20

  H&M Group signs multi-year colocation deal with Swedish eco-friendly operator in sustainability push

  Clothes retailer H&M has signed a hosting deal, covering all of Northern Europe, with green datacentre operators EcoDataCenter, as its sustainability push continues apace

• October 09, 2020 09 Oct'20

  Datacentre sustainability tipped to become competitive differentiator for colo community by 2023

  Schneider Electric marks 2020 Innovation Summit with release of joint report with 451 Research into global datacentre market’s attitudes towards sustainability

• September 29, 2020 29 Sep'20

  Sustaining Google Cloud: How Covid-19 and green issues are shaping enterprise take-up across Europe

  Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian marks the start of the firm’s five-week EMEA-focused user conference by discussing how the coronavirus is affecting enterprises’ digital transformation priorities

• September 23, 2020 23 Sep'20

  CyrusOne goes public with pledge to become carbon-neutral provider by 2040

  Global colocation provider CyrusOne has pledged to become a carbon-neutral operator by 2040

• September 15, 2020 15 Sep'20

  Microsoft hails heightened reliability of servers run in sub-sea datacentres

  Microsoft concludes multi-year research project into practicalities of running underwater datacentres with positive findings about the sustainability and reliability of sub-sea server farms

• September 15, 2020 15 Sep'20

  BP and Microsoft extend cloud deal with clean energy agreement

  Companies aim to join forces to provide clean energy for Azure datacentres, smart cities and other energy consumers

• September 14, 2020 14 Sep'20

  Google commits to sustainability and erasing its carbon footprint

  Tech giant Google will develop tools to help datacentre managers measure and reduce the company’s carbon footprint

• August 19, 2020 19 Aug'20

  Equinix confirms review under way into UPS failure at Docklands datacentre

  Colocation giant says it is undertaking a review into the power outage that blighted users of its Docklands facility to guard against it occurring again

• August 12, 2020 12 Aug'20

  Beyond.pl plots Polish datacentre campus expansion to capitalise on growing continental cloud demand

  Polish colocation provider Beyond.pI says expansion plans are in direct response to growing demand for sustainably powered datacentre capacity in central Europe

• August 06, 2020 06 Aug'20

  Octopus Energy selects AWS as cloud provider to power its global expansion plans

  UK-based energy market challenger Octopus Energy has named Amazon Web Services as its preferred cloud provider, as it gears up for further global expansion

• August 05, 2020 05 Aug'20

  Egypt’s datacentre plans take key step forward

  Government lays the foundations for a datacentre industry with its new data protection law

• July 30, 2020 30 Jul'20

  Costs incurred by 'major' datacentre outages continue to rise, Uptime Institute research shows

  The Uptime Institute's latest datacentre market survey reveals major outages are costing operators more to bounce back from

• July 27, 2020 27 Jul'20

  NGD’s mega-colocation campus in Wales acquired by Vantage Data Centers

  US-based colocation firm continues its European expansion by snapping up Next Generation Data’s Newport campus

• July 22, 2020 22 Jul'20

  Microsoft targets diesel backup power to reduce emissions

  As it pushes towards becoming carbon neutral, Microsoft has started to look at how it can replace backup power generators in its datacentres

• July 21, 2020 21 Jul'20

  BMW Group signs six-year HPC contract with eco-friendly Swedish colocation firm

  Motor manufacturer agrees to double-down on its use of EcoDataCenter's environmentally friendly colocation facilities

• June 23, 2020 23 Jun'20

  SoftIron aims at data too valuable for commodity storage

  UK array maker hopes to be the storage provider of choice for those that really value their data, with highly optimised Ceph-powered hardware aimed at HPC users and enterprises

• June 18, 2020 18 Jun'20

  Datacentre investment boost as Norway’s government reinstates tax relief

  Government reinstates datacentre energy tax relief for cryptocurrency mining organisations after investments in the country’s datacentres drops

• June 10, 2020 10 Jun'20

  Google partners with WWF Sweden to dig even deeper into fashion industry's sustainability habits

  Google is doubling down on its efforts to support the fashion industry in cleaning up the environmental friendliness of its supply chains through its partnership with WWF Sweden

• June 09, 2020 09 Jun'20

  Netherlands digital sector yearns for government recognition

  The sector building and supporting the Netherlands’ digital infrastructure wants to be valued as highly as Schiphol airport and the port of Rotterdam are for the Dutch economy

• June 09, 2020 09 Jun'20

  Kao Data courts hyperscale tenants for Harlow-based mega-datacentre

  Kao Data rolls out ‘built-to-suit’ service for prospective hyperscale clients, that it claims will speed up the time it takes to bring online new datacentre capacity in a cost-effective way

• June 04, 2020 04 Jun'20

  OVHcloud brings healthcare-focused private cloud offering to UK market

  French infrastructure-as-a-service provider OVHcloud is making its sector-specific portfolio of private cloud and bare metal services available to UK-based healthcare providers

• June 03, 2020 03 Jun'20

  Interxion cuts energy cooling costs by 20% in West London datacentre through EkkoSense deployment

  Digital Realty-owned Interxion said deployment’s success will pave the way for similar roll-outs of EkkoSense technology in other facilities within its portfolio across Europe

• May 11, 2020 11 May'20

  AWS vs Microsoft: US JEDI contract dispute develops into war of words between tech giants

  Amazon and Microsoft are embroiled in a ‘battle of the blogs’ over the former’s continued efforts to get its claims that it lost out on a major US cloud contract due to ‘significant political interference’ fully investigated

• May 06, 2020 06 May'20

  Sustainability credentials of underground datacentre in Norway lure green investment fund

  Norway’s Lefdal Mining Datacenter has designs on becoming Europe's largest server farm, and its green credentials have secured further investment to help it reach its goal

• May 04, 2020 04 May'20

  Digital Realty doubles down on sustainability with pledge to cut carbon emissions by 2030

  Colocation giant Digital Realty is embarking on a 10-year, business-wide carbon emissions reduction quest, led by climate science

• April 24, 2020 24 Apr'20

  Dark data is contributing to carbon emissions

  Almost six million tonnes of carbon dioxide will be pumped into the atmosphere this year as a result of dark data, Veritas research finds

• April 23, 2020 23 Apr'20

  Datacentre M&A closed deal values exceed last year’s total just three months into 2020

  Latest market tracker data shows rebound in datacentre M&A deal values as enterprises look to outsource more of their IT and move to the cloud

• April 22, 2020 22 Apr'20

  Google creates datacentre task scheduler to limit non-urgent work to peak renewable energy periods

  Google lifts lid on how it is using forecast data to ensure non-urgent compute workloads within its datacentres are carried out at peak supply times for renewable energy

• April 07, 2020 07 Apr'20

  Coronavirus: Microsoft Azure suffers datacentre capacity shortages in Europe

  Microsoft is working to “expedite” additional datacentre capacity after reports of users struggling to access resources due to coronavirus demand surge. But how easy will that be amid a global pandemic?

• March 25, 2020 25 Mar'20

  DCMS creates datacentre-focused resiliency team to keep UK online during coronavirus outbreak

  Tech trade body TechUK reveals further details of the work going on behind the scenes at government level to ensure datacentre operators have access to the resources they need to cope with the surge in businesses and consumers accessing online ...

• March 25, 2020 25 Mar'20

  Global spend on enterprise datacentre kit and private clouds down 1% in 2019

  Market tracker data from Synergy Research Group reveals continued decline in spending on private datacentres, while investments in kit destined for use in public cloud facilities continues to soar

• March 23, 2020 23 Mar'20

  Coronavirus: Sellafield workers ordered to stay home as ‘controlled shutdown’ of site accelerates

  Staff email warns that “decisions” made now in response to coronavirus pandemic could have far-reaching consequences for ongoing efforts to decommission former nuclear power plant

• March 23, 2020 23 Mar'20

  Coronavirus prompts cross-industry collaboration from datacentre operators to keep UK online

  TechUK positioning document reveals datacentre operators are putting their competitive differences aside to share best practice on how to keep staff safe and keep the UK online during the coronavirus outbreak

• March 18, 2020 18 Mar'20

  Covid-19: Uptime Institute advises operators to suspend non-essential datacentre projects

  Datacentre resiliency think-tank issues 18-page guidance to help operators protect staff during the coronavirus pandemic while keeping their facilities ticking over

• March 12, 2020 12 Mar'20

  Virtus confirms Q2 go-live date for next two datacentres, as expansion plans gather pace

  Virtus Data Centres is making good on its datacentre expansion plans, which have been previously billed as among the biggest construction projects ever embarked upon by a colocation provider

• March 10, 2020 10 Mar'20

  University of Hertfordshire and Goonhilly hail deep learning-led UK mapping data breakthrough

  Tech tie-up paves the way for creation of UK mapping data that is free from cloud cover for the first time

• February 28, 2020 28 Feb'20

  Greenpeace urges AWS, Google and Microsoft to cut cloud ties with oil and gas customers

  Environmental group wants three of the public cloud market’s biggest players to stop selling their technology to oil and gas companies – but will they?

• February 20, 2020 20 Feb'20

  Executive interview: Making IT sustainable

  Defra recently reported that “cloud-first” IT strategies are driving green information and communications technology in government. This puts a greater emphasis on datacentre transparency

• February 18, 2020 18 Feb'20

  Amazon employee activists dismiss Jeff Bezos’ $10bn pledge to combat climate change

  Outspoken environmental activists working at Amazon dismiss CEO’s $10bn climate change pledge by pointing out firm’s ties to oil and gas market

• January 27, 2020 27 Jan'20

  Private equity players fuelled record number of datacentre mergers and acquisitions in 2019

  While the number of deals being struck in the datacentre market hits new highs, the average deal size shrinks for the second year in a row

• January 24, 2020 24 Jan'20

  HPE joins Swiss-backed bid to 'decarbonise' datacentres across the world

  HPE has joined forces with tech leaders and academics in Switzerland to support the take-up of a datacentre accreditation geared towards improving the energy efficiency of server farms worldwide

• January 20, 2020 20 Jan'20

  Modern telecoms has opened up Sweden’s far north

  Modern telecom infrastructures mean datacentres can be further away from users, and environmental and cost advantages are to be had in locations such as Sweden’s far north

• January 17, 2020 17 Jan'20

  Davos 2020: Why IT sector must address climate issues

  Climate change is set to be top of the agenda at the World Economic Forum, with Microsoft chief Satya Nadella declaring he aims to delete the company’s emissions

• January 14, 2020 14 Jan'20

  What is behind Stockholm’s datacentre boom?

  Datacentres are springing up in Stockholm – but what is drawing major IT companies to the Swedish capital?

• December 27, 2019 27 Dec'19

  Top 10 datacentre stories of 2019

  Here are Computer Weekly’s top 10 datacentre stories of 2019

• December 04, 2019 04 Dec'19

  AWS fleshes out edge computing strategy with hyper-local datacentre hubs planned in major cities

  Amazon Web Services (AWS) plans to supplement its ‘mega’ datacentre regions with smaller cloud data processing hubs in major cities to support enterprises requiring low-latency connections to its compute and storage resources

• December 03, 2019 03 Dec'19

  AWS plans renewable energy project in Australia

  AWS’s renewable energy project in Australia is one of six projects that the cloud supplier is spearheading to reduce its global carbon footprint

• November 18, 2019 18 Nov'19

  How DBS is pushing the limits of IT efficiency

  Besides shrinking its datacentre footprint by 75%, Singapore’s DBS Bank is running twice as many virtual machines on a single socket and decoupling applications from its infrastructure stack

• November 05, 2019 05 Nov'19

  TechUK calls on datacentre sector to scale up climate change action efforts

  Tech trade body TechUK claims the datacentre sector must do more to tackle climate change, and assist the government with its pledge to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050

• November 05, 2019 05 Nov'19

  Best of VMworld 2019 Europe User Awards: The winners

  Find out who won what, including the best of show prize, at the 2019 VMworld Europe User Awards in Barcelona

• October 25, 2019 25 Oct'19

  Defra sustainable ICT paper highlights datacentre water crisis

  A new paper on sustainable ICT published by Defra in conjunction with the IT industry has identified the areas of e-waste that need urgent attention

• October 22, 2019 22 Oct'19

  Assessing the aftermath of Apple’s abortive effort to build its Irish datacentre

  The site Apple had earmarked as a prime location for one of its first non-US datacentres is up for sale, but what will become of the site and the community that supported the tech giant through its four-year battle to get the server farm built?

• October 16, 2019 16 Oct'19

  Government IT hosting providers fail to provide emissions data

  Cloud computing is driving the government’s IT and sustainable tech strategy, but cloud and hosting providers are unable to divulge emissions data

• October 08, 2019 08 Oct'19

  All change: How big data could shake up cloud strategies and fuel demand for edge environments

  As enterprise data volumes continue to grow and grow, for cost and performance reasons, enterprises might find an all-in approach to public cloud may not be the way forward, according to several NetEvents panellists

• October 03, 2019 03 Oct'19

  Southern Water embarks on £15m datacentre modernisation programme

  Southern Water has enlisted the help of service provider MTI Technology to revamp its datacentres, with a greater emphasis on the use of software-defined processes and hyper-converged technologies

• September 30, 2019 30 Sep'19

  German police seize darkweb servers from datacentre housed in ex-NATO bunker

  Following a lengthy investigation, law enforcers in Germany have raided a datacentre in an ex-NATO bunker that is alleged to have been hosting illicit websites on the dark web

• September 30, 2019 30 Sep'19

  HPE refurbishes legacy IT assets to make money for users

  HPE Financial Services is giving old IT assets a new lease of life at its tech renewal site in Erskine, near Glasgow, as part of a promotion of the circular economy

• September 24, 2019 24 Sep'19

  Amsterdam new-build datacentre ban is not an ‘attack’ on operators, says government

  Dutch Data Center Association says a government official has offered written assurances that the temporary ban on new server farms in two areas of Amsterdam is just designed to spur adoption of sustainable growth habits

• September 20, 2019 20 Sep'19

  Drive for Nordic datacentre transformation

  Nordic enterprises looking to spread abroad are outsourcing datacentre IT in cutting-edge ways to gain international advantage

• September 20, 2019 20 Sep'19

  Google pairs ‘record-breaking’ green energy deal with European datacentre expansion commitment

  Google CEO Sundar Pichai publicly commits to expanding the company’s datacentre footprint in Europe and gives details of its largest-ever renewable energy purchase

• September 16, 2019 16 Sep'19

  DigiPlex to build two green datacentres near Oslo by the end of 2020

  Nordic datacentre operator Digiplex has set itself an ambitious target of bringing two new datacentres online near Oslo by the end of 2020

• September 12, 2019 12 Sep'19

  Digital Realty expands Docklands datacentre campus by opening Cloud House colocation facility

  Colocation giant expands datacentre campus in London’s Docklands and publishes research hinting at the economic benefits it could help to generate

• September 12, 2019 12 Sep'19

  Kao Data secures EMBL-EBI as tenant as bid to become leading life sciences colo gathers pace

  Essex-based wholesale datacentre operator Kao Data’s bid to become the colocation provider of choice for the life sciences community sees it secure the European Bioinformatics Institute as a client

• September 09, 2019 09 Sep'19

  Green energy developer earmarks Scotland for 'world's first' ocean-powered datacentre

  Plans are underway for a hyperscale-focused datacentre to be built in the north of Scotland, which its developers claim would be the first in the world to be powered by tidal energy

• September 02, 2019 02 Sep'19

  Nordic greentech attracts investment

  The Nordic region is seeing digital innovation across a diverse range of sectors and, not surprisingly, a region known for its green credentials also has a burgeoning green technology (greentech) sector

• August 27, 2019 27 Aug'19

  Ireland’s power network needs €9bn investment by 2027 to sustain datacentre sector, claims report

  Report by the Irish Academy of Engineering highlights how the expansion of Ireland’s datacentre industry has contributed to it becoming the country's biggest source of growth in terms of energy demand

• August 20, 2019 20 Aug'19

  YPO debuts £400m datacentre and cloud framework for local councils and schools

  Procurement management organisation YPO has set live a public sector framework designed to support local authorities and educational institutions embrace hybrid cloud

• August 08, 2019 08 Aug'19

  British Airways resolves IT systems issues that forced it to ground and delay hundreds of flights

  British Airways has confirmed the IT system-related technical difficulties that resulted in it having to cancel hundreds of flights have been resolved

• August 01, 2019 01 Aug'19

  Amazon to build second wind power plant in Ireland to support AWS green cloud push

  Amazon sets out plans to ramp up availability of green power in Ireland and US, as its push to make its datacentre fleet run in a more sustainable way continues apace

• August 01, 2019 01 Aug'19

  Enterprise-readiness of business cloud services found lacking in Netskope research

  Latest analysis of cloud and internet usage trends in the enterprise space by Netskope suggests the majority of the off-premise services businesses use are not fit for purpose from a security and data protection standpoint

• July 30, 2019 30 Jul'19

  Google increases presence and investments in Finland

  New next-generation datacentre at Hamina and technology training hub in Helsinki illustrate Google’s growing interest in Finland

• July 25, 2019 25 Jul'19

  Microsoft-owned LinkedIn commits to multi-year, all-in move to Azure public cloud

  Professional social networking site reveals plans to move all its workloads to the Microsoft public cloud over the next few years

• July 25, 2019 25 Jul'19

  HPE and SAP among tech industry backers of UN climate change mitigation campaign

  Enterprise tech giants HPE and SAP are among a number of technology firms which have responded to the UN’s calls for corporations to do more to reduce the risk of global warming and cut their emissions

• July 16, 2019 16 Jul'19

  Dutch authorities temporarily halt datacentre construction

  Two local authorities in the Netherlands have put the brakes on datacentre construction to give them time to put policies in place to gain more control over builds

• July 15, 2019 15 Jul'19

  Green datacentre goes live in Goonhilly to support AI ambitions of enterprises and academia

  Almost a year to the day after it was announced, a renewably-powered datacentre has gone live at Goonhilly Earth Station, as the radio-communications site prepares to position itself as an AI innovation hub

• July 10, 2019 10 Jul'19

  Tax changes lead to review of Sweden’s datacentre development

  Swedish government has changed the rules on how it offers tax rebates to datacentre providers and users, hitting domestic companies

• July 09, 2019 09 Jul'19

  Amsterdam’s datacentres face challenges to retain high growth

  The Amsterdam datacentre market is growing rapidly, but the industry behind it must get on top of some burgeoning challenges

• July 08, 2019 08 Jul'19

  Case study: Using pre-fab datacentres to meet Norway's growing demand for colocation space

  Datacentre operator Green Mountain embraces Schneider Electric's pre-fabricated datacentre designs to ensure it is positioned to respond to the growing demand from the hyperscale and HPC communities for colocation capacity in Norway

• June 27, 2019 27 Jun'19

  MPs to probe UK’s growing e-waste problem

  The parliamentary Environmental Audit Committee has launched an inquiry into electronic waste and the circular economy

• June 25, 2019 25 Jun'19

  Growing diversity of datacentre types revealed in latest Vertiv 2025 market predictions study

  Datacentre power specialist’s latest poll on what the industry will look like in 2025 reveals a change in attitude from respondents to powering sites with renewable energy, and shines a light on how its looming skills crisis is developing

• June 12, 2019 12 Jun'19

  Apple cancels plans to build second European datacentre in Denmark

  The consumer electronics giant plans to focus its efforts on expanding its soon-to-be completed datacentre in Denmark, rather than invest in standing up a second facility in the country

• June 07, 2019 07 Jun'19

  Schneider Electric CTO claims AI and cloud could give DCIM market new lease of life

  Kevin Brown tells Datacloud Europe Congress that the datacentre infrastructure management market could be on the cusp of a second coming, buoyed by cloud, big data and artificial intelligence technologies

• June 06, 2019 06 Jun'19

  Datacentre operators under pressure to embrace sustainability as climate change activism rises

  The rise in climate change activism across the globe means consumers are becoming increasingly likely to vote with their feet and shun brands that do not operate in a sustainable way, and datacentre operators must prepare

• June 06, 2019 06 Jun'19

  Datacentre operators urged to look beyond past experience to fill talent gaps

  Panellists at the annual Datacloud Europe Congress in Monaco claim operators will continue to struggle to plug talent gaps while focusing on finding candidates with years of experience in datacentres, rather than those with an aptitude for the type ...

• June 03, 2019 03 Jun'19

  Nordics block European Commission tech tax levy to protect digital investment

  The Nordic EU countries have formed a powerful voice against the European Commission’s plans on digital service tax.

• May 30, 2019 30 May'19

  Microsoft embarks on renewable-powered datacentre push in Sweden

  Microsoft is doubling down on its efforts to have more of its datacentres powered by renewable energy, with commitment to make its facilities in Sweden the most sustainable yet

• May 29, 2019 29 May'19

  Inside Digital Realty’s datacentre playbook

  Digital Realty’s chief technology officer talks up key trends that are shaping its business and the datacentre industry, including edge computing and the impending roll-out of 5G networks