Once CSC placed the order, the DCoD was delivered in approximately 16 weeks to begin installation at its site in Kajaani. Assembly and acceptance testing was completed within two weeks. CSC deployed its first CommScope modular data centre in 2012, adding a second at the end of 2014.
“Our customer base is growing and their requirements are changing. We needed to provide more data centre capacity in a scalable, environmentally friendly and cost-efficient way,” said Tero Tuononen, director ICT Platforms, CSC. “The new modular data centre concept from CommScope fits nicely into our portfolio.”
With growing demands on its IT infrastructure, CSC needed to expand its existing modular data centre facility in a way that could meet its unique requirements of fitting within a certain budget, a short time to deployment and feature a robust design that would withstand Finland’s harshest temperatures. In less than three years, the solution delivered significant bottom-line benefits to the organization, including:
· Sustainability: Significantly reduced energy consumption and costs, compared to a traditional brick-and-mortar data centre, demonstrates CSC’s commitment to leading- edge technologies that reduce its carbon footprint and complement its ecological credentials.
· Water usage effectiveness: One DCoD at CSC consumes approximately 120 cubic meters of water each year – less than a typical household in Finland (164 cubic meters). The water usage effectiveness of the DCoD greatly offsets the extensive energy required for typical data centre chillers. · Power usage effectiveness (PUE) reduction: While the average PUE for a typical data centre varies from 1.8 to 2.9, the DCoD installation at CSC averages 1.03 to 1.06. This is all the more significant, noting summer-winter temperature swings from +30°C to -35°C.
· Seamless expansion: The DCoD is an expansion of the existing data centre, forming a single expanded facility. Installation and integration had to be achieved without causing any interruption to the existing IT services.
“The concept of a data centre has fundamentally changed. When considering the requirement for the physical space, traditional brick-and-mortar facilities may not be appropriate for all project scenarios,” said Ciaran Forde, vice president, Global Data Centre Solutions, CommScope. “The CSC project is a perfect example of where an organization, requiring more capacity, was able to expand in phases. The modular approach of Data Centre on Demand enabled a phased capacity expansion from an engineering and economically sound perspective.”
A video of the CSC purpose-built data centre, along with an interview with Tero Tuononen can be found here.
“IT technology and applications are changing very fast. So our data centres need to be able to adapt to those changes in a scalable and cost-efficient way. Customers, suppliers, owners and personnel alike must feel certain that we will fulfil our commitments and promises in an ethically sustainable manner,” said Tuononen. “Right-sizing and delivery strategy are key factors when planning for data centre capacity, which is why we decided on CommScope’s Data Centre on Demand solution.”
