Good Tuesday morning, and welcome to Data Center Digest.
We’re looking at data centers and the people, technologies, and trends that make them run.

Today’s Newsletter:

 🧮 IBM Develops eco cost calculator for IMB Cloud Enterprise
🌍 Quick run around the globe by CBRE
Big Deals: EdgeCore moves to Reno, Rowen getting greener, and Brookfield keeps growing
Resources: Great DCF podcast on the history of the edge

Est. read time: 6mins, 45secs

- News -

IBM seeks green visibility with its cloud eco calculator

The economy is tough right now, but sustainability pressures are tougher. According to IBM VP Briana Frank, a recent study by IBM reported that 42% of CEOs pinpoint environmental sustainability as their top challenge over the next three years.”

Cloud Computing Calculator: Focusing specifically on IBM Cloud workloads, the new tool brings artificial intelligence to bear in providing an enhanced view of cloud operations.

Features include:

• Emissions tracking across various workloads, including cloud services

• Identifies GHG emissions hot spots and opportunities for improvement

• Leverages data for GHG reports

AI Enabled: The calculator uses machine learning and advanced algorithms to help organizations identify emissions hot spots.

The calculator tracks electricity consumption at the physical and virtual machine levels and determines energy consumption for all cloud services.
Then, with advanced algorithms, IBM uses billing information to allocate the energy for a given service to specific accounts, correlated to how much of the service that account has consumed in a specific time period and for a given location, Frank explained.

Finally, IBM factors in power usage effectiveness and carbon intensity to determine carbon emissions by account and by location for that time period.

IBM’s own sustainability goals are bold. IBM Cloud's adoption of renewable energy directly contributes toward the company's corporate goal of sourcing 75% of the electricity IBM consumes worldwide from renewables by 2025.

CBRE’s quick global data center rundown

Every week CBRE Data Center Solutions publishes a quick global rundown of data center markets across the world. It’s a great resource, and this is what this week’s looks like:

Europe: European demand is at an all-time high, and the development pipeline aims to combat the low European average vacancy rate of 14% across the largest European markets.
Colt Data Centres completed the fit-out of its 25MW Frankfurt West data center, and GTR is set to put a 16MW facility in Barcelona

Middle East: Expanding rapidly, the middle east data center market is expected to reach $10.6 billion by 2029. Big investment is being pumped into the region, with AWS launching a new cloud region in Tel Aviv, and Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund investing in Aligned Data Centers.

Africa: The data center market here too is beginning to expand rapidly, with anticipated investment expected to reach $5 billion by 2026.

The region is becoming an attractive destination to the likes of Meta, whose 2Africa project is the longest subsea cable in the world and stretches 28000 miles long connecting 33 countries.

To get more insights from CBRE Data Center solutions, check them out HERE.

Plans for San Jose hotel development evolve into data center

In an odd twist of fate, plans have been submitted to replace a proposed hotel project with a data center on the same site.

Terra Ventures is the developer who had originally proposed an entertainment district consisting of two hotels, retail, restaurants, and a Top Golf.  The plans were initially submitted in 2018, and years later only the Top Golf has been developed.
The project site is a large parcel of over 9 acres in North San Jose, CA. If approved the data center would be two stories of about 172,500 square feet, and would offer about 15,000 square feet of retail space.

This is a unique pivot from retail to tech infrastructure, but it follows a familiar trend of institutional money shifting investment from other sectors to digital infrastructure.

- Big Deals -

EdgeCore breaks ground on new Reno data center

The new facility is going to be 1.5 million square feet spread out over two buildings on EdgeCore’s new Reno-Tahoe Industrial Center location.

The RTIC, which we’ve covered several times here, is an industrial and digital infrastructure power center that is spread out over thousands of acres of Nevada desert.
EdgeCore’s new campus totals 56 acres and will be capable of supporting 216MW of critical IT load.

"The demand for data center space in California continues to outpace the availability of land and power, so Reno's location just 250 miles and three milliseconds away makes it an incredibly attractive option for the world's largest cloud and Internet companies," said Clint Heiden, chief commercial officer at EdgeCore.

This is the company’s 6th data center in the US.

Brookfield looking to develop over one gigawatt of capacity in three years

After buying controlling interests in both Data4 and Compass Data Centers, infrastructure giant Brookfield Infrastructure partners plans to own and operate one of the largest global hyperscale data center platforms in the world.

The two new acquisitions bring the company’s total data center capacity to more than 485MW.
According to CEO Udhay Mathialagan, “Following the closing of both transactions… an additional 775MW capacity [is] already contracted and reserved that will be built out over the next several years.”

With their current land bank in prime markets and planned and future growth plans, Brookfield could be at over 2GW under development over the next five years.

Quinbrook plans new Rowan Green Data Center in Oregon

Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners is a global investment manager focusing on the infrastructure needed for the energy transition.
The company is currently developing some of the largest renewables and storage infrastructure projects ever seen in the US, UK, and Australia.

Their latest project has been announced under a subsidiary, Rowan Green Data Centers.
Rowan, launched in 2020 to deliver low-cost, renewables-powered land solutions to data center providers, has filed paperwork to redevelop some 274 acres in Northeast Oregon.
The site will consist of a complex totaling four buildings and 1.125 million square feet.

Rowan’s first facility is an 800 MW multi-tenant campus in Temple which is nearing completion of its 220 MW first phase.

Products + Hardware

Resources

Thanks a lot for reading!

Please let us know how we’re doing by replying directly to this email. And if you want to help grow this, share this newsletter with a coworker!

- Taylor