Good morning, this is Cold Isle Insights.
We’re looking at data centers and the people, technologies, and trends that make them run.

Here’s what we’re having fun with today:

Est. read time: 3mins, 37secs

- Big Deals -

Ctrl P: Europe’s largest 3D printed building will be a data center

Heidelberg iT Management is a cloud and data center provider. They’ve announced plans to use what will be the largest 3D printed building in Europe as a server hotel. (There’s a slightly bigger 3D admin building in Dubai).

The site, known as Baufield 5, is located in Baden-Wurttenberg, Germany (never been there) and will be about 6500 sqft at full build-out.
Key to the operation is the BOD2 3D construction printer. Scaled to each particular job, the printer will use about 450 tons of printing concrete to construct the shell of the building.

What’s wild is it only takes about 140 hours to print the whole thing. Here’s what that printer looks like:

Why build a 3d printed data center? Matthias Blatz at Heidelberg says they are printing the structure due to a growing demand for data center capacity and infrastructure. I think it’s probably more of a marketing thing…

In the US, we wrote about several weeks ago how EdgecloudLink plans to offer 3D-printed modular data centers powered by hydrogen.

Vantage is pumping $3B into massive Malaysian campus

They’re at it again. Vantage’s next hyperscale project will be a second data center campus in the Cyberjaya area that will provide a staggering 256MW of IT capacity.

Hot on the heels of its first campus in what they call Malaysia’s Multimedia Super Corridor, KUL2 is planned to cover 35 acres with 10 facilities and 2.75 million sqft under-roof.

KUL2 rolls out Q4 2025.

- In the Cloud -

70% of tech infrastructure set to be cloud-based, says Hackett

According to a study that pulled data from over 1000 organizations and 4000 migrated apps, 70% of all tech infrastructure will be cloud-based within three years.

That is quite a claim. The Hackett Group examined trends in the post-migration results of enterprise cloud customers, (reduction in downtime, time-to-market of new features, and security incidents) to extrapolate the future migration of enterprise computing.

That may be a specious way to forecast nationwide cloud migration, but the Hackett Group is legit and if these claims are right, we are just scratching the surface of data center and cloud infrastructure development.

Here’s the study.

- telecom -

Gigapower: AT&T + BlackRock’s new venture

The last year has seen AT&T make a pig push towards fiber builds outside their current footprint. The partnership with BlackRock they’re calling GigaPower is an extension of that goal.

AT&T missed big in Q4 when they saw a loss of 43,000 broadband subscribers, and this joint venture is a big step to reach out of network subscribers.

They’re targeting only 1.5 million locations under the GigaPower banner. CEO John Stankey says this wholesale model they’re developing is new to the US market and that Gigapower is a proof of concept before going full bore.

Las Vegas, Mesa, Chandler, Gilbert, and parts of Northeastern Pennsylvania, Alabama, and Florida have been announced so far as areas being targeted by GigaPower.

(Also interesting, GigaPower is a recycled brand for AT&T as it used to be the name of their FTTP business until they changed it in 2016.)

- Extras -

1. Check out these numbers from Fierce Telecom: pay-tv lost a record 2.3 million subscribers last quarter. The seeds of that industry’s revolution have definitely been sewn.

2. The legend Andy Davis shared this article with me. Very interesting look from Forbes at the future of Data Centers, vis a vis AI.

Daily Dall-E

One of my ancestors. I come from a long lineage of tech enthusiasts.

Thanks a lot for reading. Please let me know how we’re doing by replying directly to this email. And if you want to help grow this, please share it with a coworker!

- Taylor