This audio was created using Microsoft Azure Speech Services
Success in the colocation and cloud computing markets often comes down to being in the right place at the right time. If you’ve got reliable, efficient data center capacity in an area where there’s great demand, chances are you’ll get your share of business.
Of course, market leaders such as Interxion often find themselves in that right place at that right time. That’s why they have long focused on locating their data centers (now 45 of them) in locations with high business demand as well as connectivity points to other countries and continents. For instance, Interxion has seven data centers in Paris due to the market and business conditions — France is Europe’s third largest economy and more than 75% of the country’s IT spending resides in or around Paris.
“Our data centers are gateways to emerging markets and landing stations for major continental subsea cables,” the company’s web site states.
One of its most recent data centers is in Marseille, on the southern coast of France. Known as Marseille 2 (or MRS2), this data center is located near the site of a new undersea cable that gives Interxion’s customers community wide connectivity to Africa, the Middle East and Asia.
Schneider Electric has long been a partner to Interxion, helping with data center design, construction and operation, as detailed in this video featuring Fabrice Coquio, President of Interxion France. We were involved in both the latest Paris data center, known as PAR7, and MRS2 – and the two sites were quite different from each another.
PAR7 is housed in what would be considered a traditional data center building. It has 64 MW of power capacity and supports high density infrastructure – up to 2300W per square meter. It offers access to three Internet exchanges, including France-IX and all the major carriers and ISPs. MRS2, on the other hand, is located in a warehouse near the site where that undersea cable is located.
Interxion needed the facility built in a hurry – just two months – in order to meet its customer obligations.
Schneider Electric was able to provide a solution for both the location and timing issues: prefabricated data center modules. We installed modules into a section of the warehouse, turning it into a state-of-the-art data center. If you were standing in the data center space, you’d have no idea that you were actually inside an old warehouse. It looks, feels and, most importantly, performs as any of Interxion’s other data centers do – with 99.999% reliability.
The MRS2 project reminded me of the keynote address delivered by Rhonda Ascierto, Research Director at 451 Research, at the recent Schneider Electric International Colocation Club event in Paris. As I wrote in this recent post, she noted that prefabricated modules can fit in almost any kind of shell. “There’s really no limit” in design choices, she said. “Put aside any preconceived notions you may have around prefab and take a second look.”
In addition to meeting Interxion’s timeframe and location goals, PAR7 and MRS2 are also highly energy efficient. In part that’s because the company has long used Schneider Electric StruxureWare software to optimize its energy use.
Check out the video with Fabrice Coquio to learn more about the long-standing partnership between Schneider Electric and Interxion – maybe it’ll spark some ideas on how you can add to or improve upon your own company’s data centers.
