NGD Offers Cloud Computing Data Centre Warehousing From Wales

NGD Europe 1 Highlights

• NGD has opened a new facility to offer data centre warehousing to European markets
• The facility reuses the LG foundry building – part of a massive inward investment project which was never completed
• NGD advantages are in its lower cost location, massive dedicated 180 MVA power supply and flexibility in available data suites and the variety of carriers available in this area
• Container computing can be accommodated on site
• NGD has 2 ‘anchor clients’ who will be operational by Q1 2010 – and others who will take occupancy over the build-out period which should take 3-5 years.

The Largest Ever Inward Investment Broken By The 1998 Korean Stock Market Crash

In March 2005 Nic Neal, of the Welsh Development Agency’s (WDA) is quoted as saying, ‘Like us, Hynix wishes to see the site brought into use for the benefit of the local economy – and we shall be redoubling our effort to find a new owner who can use this facility to create skilled and sustainable jobs for the Newport area.’

The site in question was the massive custom-built would-be foundry, which formed part of a £1.7 billion investment by LG initiated in discussions with the WDA late in 1995. The shell of the building was constructed in 1997, but following the collapse of the Korean Stock Market in 1998 it was never completed or operated. In fact it changed hands from LG to Hyundai and then to Hynix. It’s been a long time, but finally it looks as if the site will finally be put to good use through being repurposed for data centre wholesaling.

Repurposing The Newport Foundry For Data Centre Wholesaling

In 2007 Next Generation Data (NGD) was created by Simon Taylor, Chairman, and Nick Razey, CEO – industry veterans previously working with Cable and Wireless before setting up the pan-European telecoms operator Interoute. Their company will have spent some £200 million ‘repurposing’ the Newport site for data centre wholesaling, when the project is complete.

I interviewed Simon about his company’s offerings and thought it would be interesting to look at what CIOs need to think about when looking for a location from which to run Cloud Computing, Super Computing, Grid Computing and other massive applications.

NGD Offers Flexible Sizes And Services

The NGD Europe 1 site has 75,000^m2 of floor space on three floors with a capacity of up to 19,000 racks of equipment. In total this puts it on a par with the largest data centres in the world – although closer to Microsoft’s new facility in Dublin (90,000^m2) than its latest in Northlake, Chicago (215,000^m2).

NGD is offering the space in around 24 halls (of which it has already secured 2 large ‘anchor clients’) – but major customers will be able to take an entire floor. The largest of these lots is the top floor of the facility, which Simon says would suit a major US corporation.

The company is offering customised tier ratings, ambient temperatures and power density. Its solutions include:

• Co-Location Options including single servers in a shared cabinets, single racks and cages of 10 or more racks (provided through NGD’s customers)
• Container Projects – data centres built into containers have become more popular since Sun’s initial demonstration a few years ago (witness Microsoft’s inclusion of these in Northlake). NGD is offering to accommodate this style of computing as well
• Dedicated Data Halls upwards of 1,500^m2 with shared plant to 3,000m2 for dedicated plant
• Managed Virtual Servers configured as ‘bare bone’ solutions or fully managed
• Private Data Suites (upwards of 9,000^m2) located in high security locked areas with exclusive access and each with a dedicated UPS power distribution board

Simon and Nick are believers in well-managed data centre facilities, especially as they experienced long term outages in their previous companies (the bombing of Canary Warf prevented them from getting to their switches ‘for a couple of months’ and 9/11 also caused major problems). The Newport facility has been designed to be earthquake proof, even though Wales is not known for volcanic activity.

Power Supply, Fibre Optics, High Security And Cooling Offer Advantages

Simon is enthusiastic about the advantages of the new facility linked to its location, original construction and recent negotiated services. In particular:

• Cooling Systems – including hybrid, water and air solutions and claimed to offer ‘class-leading PUE ratings
• Direct Fibre Optic Interconnects – offered by BT, Cable and Wireless and NTL. NGD is also considering offering direct transatlantic connections (which somehow reminds me of Marconi, who in 1897 was the first to demonstrate wireless communications from Lavernock Point to Flat Holm a few miles west of Newport, before moving on to transatlantic connections)
• High Security – to protect its customers data centres NGD has installed many features including double and triple skinned walls, bomb proof glass, prison grade perimeter fencing, anti-ram bollards, infra-red detection and comprehensive CCTV
• Power Supply – the site includes a direct connection to a primary electricity sub-station providing 180 MVA on tap (part of the services built to serve the foundry). This is enough to power ‘a small city’. For many data centre managers securing as much as 4 MVA is a challenge, especially in London. While the UK’s National Grid supplies the electricity itself, Simon claims that up to 50% can be made up of alternative energy if required.

What Can NGD Deliver To Wales And Its Customers?

The creation of NGD Europe 1 is an interesting development. Most new data centres are only being built by Web-based suppliers – companies whose very existence is dependent on providing Internet-based services. However there are a number of good reasons for NGD to succeed. In particular:

• Although the cost advantages of Wales have been overlooked in the last few years as the ITC industry has moved increasingly to Eastern Europe, they are a great deal better than in London and the South East.
• The advantages of a large dedicated plant will also help many data centre managers who otherwise would need to become specialist in facilities management, even if they can secure an appropriate building. I remember well my conversation with an NHS IT Manager a few years ago who could find a data centre floor strong enough to stand the weight of the equipment needed.
• Cloud Computing data centres are currently largely being developed by US companies, who have so far located most of their facilities in America – in fact all of HP’s data centres designed by Randy Mott are in the US. For whatever reason international developments are currently taking place almost exclusively in English speaking countries and Wales is an excellent location (even if officially Welsh is the first language).
• Employment – even when fully populated the Newport facility will employ perhaps 250 people compared with the 3,000 or so promised all those years ago. However this is still good news for Wales, especially when ancillary employment is taken into account.

There are of course a number of applications for which relocating to Wales won’t work – time-critical trading systems dependent on instantaneous transaction processing for instance. I also believe in the current poor economic conditions that smaller organisations (local government and NHS) will find it hard to justify a move, even if there are cost, performance and security advantages. However NGD has seized on an important opportunity, which I expect to succeed and will certainly be interesting to watch develop.