News

Good time for data centers

As announced, ATM S.A. has begun the construction of another colocation facility at the Atman Data Center Warsaw-1. The investment will increase the colocation area of the Polish market leader by nearly 1,500 sq m net. The completion of the construction works is planned for the turn of the second and third quarter of 2021.

The Warsaw operator has just broke ground on the new investment. The new colocation facility with an area of 3,027 sq m gross (1,440 sq m net) will be built on the carrier-neutral campus of the Atman Data Center Warsaw-1 in Praga-Południe. It will have 5 floors and 6 server chambers with an area of 240 sq m each.

Building F6 is designed for data center purposes, so it will be equipped with modern security, air conditioning and fire protection systems, as well as 3.6 MW guaranteed IT power supply and emergency power supply systems. It will meet the requirements of even global cloud service providers. Telecommunications connectivity will be provided by dedicated fiber optic connections to the campus network and direct connections with external operators; there will also be two independent MMRs (meet-me-rooms) for telecommunications operators.

The project also provides for an automatic double ramp enabling collision-free unloading of two TIR transports simultaneously, in all weather conditions, as well as redundant elevators with high capacity and sizes suitable for transporting high density server racks.

After completing the construction of F6 at the turn of the second and third quarter of 2021, the total net technical area of ATM’s data centers will be 10,720 sq m.

“ATM has been a data center operator for 16 years and the domestic market leader for 8 years. Achieving and maintaining this position required and still requires skillful planning of subsequent investments based on regular analyzes of the market, demand, and sales forecasts. The investment process we have developed enables us to prepare a new colocation space well in advance. We take care of this with respect to both prospective and existing clients, because we guarantee to the companies that have entrusted us with their devices that their infrastructure will be able to grow without difficulty in our DC along with the growth of their business,” emphasizes Daniel Szcześniewski, CEO of ATM S.A.

Local server rooms are becoming a thing of the past

The fast pace of development of the data center market in Poland is confirmed by further investments or announcements of the construction of new centers by domestic and international operators. For several years, the constantly growing demand for high standard commercial colocation space has been partly the result of the growing familiarization of Polish business with the idea of moving their servers from company server rooms to an external data center. This also applies to the migration of large server environments of the largest companies, including banks. Financial institutions particularly appreciate the high level of physical and energy security provided by DC operators such as ATM.

“It is easy to demonstrate that if high availability of systems and applications and professional equipment protection against unauthorized access are required, maintaining your own on-premises server room is problematic and simply uneconomical. By using colocation, the customer is provided with the expected quality, the ability to easily respond to changes in the business environment, and a reasonable price due to the economies of scale. This enables DC operators, for example, to buy energy cheaper, divide the costs of maintenance, including 24/7 technical support, into many customers, and, at the same time, keep resources ready for expansion,” explains Daniel Szcześniewski.

The cloud lives in a data center

Colocation services are used not only by the above-said end customers, but also by providers of infrastructure as a service (IaaS), e.g. cloud computing, dedicated or shared hosting. Data centers provide them with optimal environmental conditions and a guarantee of uninterrupted power supply for server farms serving thousands of customers.

“We have been observing the growing interest in cloud services in every model: public, private, and hybrid cloud. For many companies, this solution ideally combines performance and flexibility with comprehensively understood security. Even financial institutions, traditionally very demanding, analyze the use of cloud services to diversify the solutions, locations, and providers used. Moreover, these decisions are supported by further recommendations to use cloud services in the financial sector. We offer tailor-made cloud services ourselves, but there are more providers of such services, and we have good value proposals for them too,” says Daniel Szcześniewski, CEO of ATM S.A.

Finally, the announcements of major global cloud operators’ entering Poland are also of significance for the development of the DC market. The announcement of the intention to create new regions of Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure here proves that the cloud market in our country will develop, attracting large and smaller providers of such solutions. Local data center operators with adequate surplus colocation space and power are becoming natural partners for cloud and hosting providers.

IT outsourcing has proved itself in battle

IT solutions in the service model have proved to be a good solution for business challenges triggered by COVID-19. Administrative limitations of the companies’ operations have forced the universal transfer of business to the Internet and the digital world. Companies that had previously used IT intensively or were able to quickly adapt their business to the new situation are doing well. Companies operating in the e-commerce sector have great results: online stores in Poland have recently achieved an average 240-percent increase in the volume of transactions.

IT outsourcing in the form of cloud services, dedicated servers or hosting has proved to be extremely helpful in maintaining business continuity, including the digitization of many companies during the lockdown. Quick launch of new environments and scalability of IT resources when needed were essential. However, the IT issue will not disappear with the lifting of epidemic restrictions.

“Companies that tried to fill shortages in infrastructure on an ad hoc basis have found that changes in the approach to IT are needed. In the coming months, they may want to analyze their technological potential and answer the question whether they are ready to face similar crises in the future. In turn, analog companies may be looking for a way to enter the online market more decisively. I am convinced that this will increase the popularity of IT outsourcing, especially cloud computing that allows you to increase resources on demand and settle for their actual use (PAYG), while guaranteeing the business continuity even in the most uncertain times,” says Daniel Szcześniewski.