This audio was created using Microsoft Azure Speech Services
I had the pleasure of meeting with Stephane Duproz, managing director of Telecity France, when he came to Dubai to speak at Schneider Electric’s Power to the Cloud event. Addressing the largest group of data center professionals and CIO’s ever gathered in the Middle East, Stephane was talking about the benefits of anticipating customer needs and how that had led to Telecity’s Condorcet data center receiving so many accolades. TelecityGroup is one of Europe’s leading provider of premium carrier-neutral data centers, operating facilities in city locations across the Continent. The Group’s data centers provide secure and highly-connected environments for the IT and telecoms equipment that powers the digital economy.
“I’ve been talking about our third data center in Paris Condorcet, which is the most ‘Awarded’ data center in Europe” Stephane told me. “And I was mainly talking about all of the work we did by anticipation during the design process. You know, several data center operators outsource the design process to consultants or other specialist companies. We’ve also used them, of-course. But, we’ve also spent a lot of time ourselves during the design process thinking about how the site will evolve; how legal requirements will evolve so that we’ve been able to anticipate a lot of fluctuations in that market.”
“Also I’ve been explaining how part of that ‘pre-design’ process has involved Schneider Electric, and we’ve appreciated their capacity to give us advice on the whole concept of the data center. So they’re not only able to talk about the electrical part, but also the cooling part and more or less of every part of the data center functionality,” Stephane said.
I suggested that this was because Schneider Electric was in the business of end-to-end data center solutions and not simply component product sales. “That’s the thing,” said M. Duproz. “I don’t think that we followed every piece of advice that they gave, but when they gave advice it was offered from the full perspective of the data center, rather than just a part of it. When you see such a complex building as a data center, when you see it just bit by bit without that general perspective, you’re missing something – and probably you’re in danger.”
“We have our own experts, of-course, but it was very good to see that there was one company at least that had that general vision – it was called at the time ‘One Schneider’… but it really caught that theme and it was agreeable.” Condorcet is Telecity’s third Paris facility and paves the way for a new generation of data centers. This premium infrastructure offers unrivalled service continuity guarantees (Tier 4) and is the most technically advanced and energy efficient data center in Europe. The 3,400 square metre 6.4MW facility offers flexible deployment options from 3.6kW – 30kW per rack position. You can find out more about Telecity’s Condorcet data center by clicking here, or take an online tour of the facility here.
