Irish company Premium Power, which provides energy-efficiency and software solutions for data centres, is hosting a free seminar in Dublin tomorrow to get different stakeholders in the data centre industry in Ireland sharing ideas about the growth of the sector here, as well as challenges such as energy and power management.
According to Paula O’Neill and Amit Wadhwa from Premium Power, the company decided to organise the seminar to get a mix of stakeholders from the data centre industry together in one room and to create a structured dialogue around data centres and issues such as power and energy management.
“We want to help create a vendor-neutral discussion platform,” explains O’Neill.
The event itself will take place at the Hilton Kilmainham tomorrow, 21 June, from 3.30pm-6.30pm. Speakers will include Tanya Duncan, managing director of Interxion Ireland, which opened up a second data centre here in 2010; Marta Val Escudero, senior transmission planning engineer from Eirgrid; Pat Howlin, who heads up the ICT department at IDA Ireland; and Philip Collerton, managing director of the Uptime Institute.
Dublin is one of Europe’s densest clusters of data centres, with up to 30 in operation around the city. Back in February, for instance, Microsoft announced it was investing an extra US$130m to expand its data centre in Profile Park in Clondalkin, Co Dublin. Also in February, US data centre provider Digital Realty Trust announced it had acquired a 10-acre site in Profile Park. It said the site would be capable of supporting a 193,000 sq-foot data centre that would require 11.5 megawatts of electricity.
And, last September, Google revealed its intention to invest US$75m in a new energy-efficient data centre on 11 acres of land, also in Profile Park.
As well as this, TelecityGroup, which acquired Irish data centre group Data Electronics in August 2011, for €100m, operates three carrier-neutral data centres in Dublin.
As for the topics that will be discussed at tomorrow’s free seminar, Duncan will be discussing the data centre industry from the perspective of a European commercial/retail data centre operator.
Duncan will also be giving insights into the growth of the industry in Ireland over the past five years, current data trends and what is influencing the demand for premium data centre services in Ireland.
Val Escudero will be discussing the process of connecting a new data centre customer to the transmission grid. She will also be covering areas such as existing capacity on the grid, as well as future development plans to increase capacity.
Other areas that will be discussed tomorrow during the data seminar will include how companies can get a greater return on investment for their electrical infrastructure in their data centres, so that they can use this infrastructure for longer, before reaching capacity.
Premium Power is also setting up an online data centre community group on LinkedIn.
