Colony Capital Invests in DataBank, Has Big Plans in Digital Infrastructure

Data Center Frontier | January 09, 2020

The investment firm Colony Capital intends to be an active player in the data center sector in 2020 and beyond. In a sign of its interest in edge computing, Colony said this week that it will invest $185 million in colocation provider DataBank, purchasing equity positions from two existing investors. The deal is part of Colony Capital’s sharpened focus on digital infrastructure. Colony is a leading example of how the data center industry has become a magnet for large global investors. The firm is selling much of its industrial real estate holdings, and reinvesting that capital in digital infrastructure, including cell towers, data centers, fiber and small cell antennas.

Spotlight

Digital transformation was a critical step in Citizens Bank's journey toward resilience. They wanted to reduce costs and generate new revenue by bringing new offerings to customers. Citizens Financial Group, a.k.a Citizens Bank, is the 13th largest retail bank in the U.S., with roughly 1,000 branches across 11 states. The bank p

Spotlight

Digital transformation was a critical step in Citizens Bank's journey toward resilience. They wanted to reduce costs and generate new revenue by bringing new offerings to customers. Citizens Financial Group, a.k.a Citizens Bank, is the 13th largest retail bank in the U.S., with roughly 1,000 branches across 11 states. The bank p

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Hyper-Converged Infrastructure

Digital Realty Announces Its First NVIDIA DGX H100-Ready Data Center

prnewswire | July 11, 2023

Digital Realty, the largest global provider of cloud and carrier-neutral data center, colocation, and interconnection solutions, announces KIX13, its newest data center in Osaka, Japan, has been certified NVIDIA DGX H100-ready as part of the NVIDIA DGX-Ready Data Center program. KIX13 was awarded the accreditation for its ability to provide a dedicated, robust, and resilient environment optimized for intensive computing systems deployments at scale. DGX H100, the fourth generation of NVIDIA's purpose-built artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure, is the foundation of NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD™ that provides the computational power necessary to train today's state-of-the-art deep learning AI models and fuel innovation well into the future. With it, enterprise customers can devise full-stack solutions that accelerate artificial intelligence (AI) deployments, allowing for data localization while meeting the global coverage, capacity and connectivity needs that come with deploying AI at scale. AI is swiftly becoming a driving force behind modern technologies across multiple industries with applications in areas such as optimization, preventive maintenance, virtual assistants, fraud detection, and anomaly detection. Expected to help solve the world's most challenging problems, the success of AI deployments is dependent on data centers that can provide the high-performance cooling, layout and connectivity required for AI to operate highly effectively. As modern enterprises adopt AI, leaders in the technology are increasingly seeking access to real-time data as a core strategy to enable instantaneous changes and decision-making. Digital Realty's highly connected PlatformDIGITAL® community enables customers to access vast data volumes, allowing them to confidently run AI workloads in an NVIDIA-accelerated environment to innovate and solve the world's most challenging computational problems, while overcoming Data Gravity barriers. With ServiceFabric™, Digital Realty's global service orchestration platform, customers can streamline management of their hybrid IT infrastructure while gaining access to a growing, open community of partners to which they can connect and utilize for managed services – all on a single, centralized platform. Thanks to the scale and sophistication of its offerings, broad customer base, and significant technical resources, Digital Realty also provides the precision-engineered power and cooling digital infrastructure that can support the high-power computing needs of AI. At higher workload densities, liquid cooling becomes an attractive option for AI deployments for its more efficient heat dissipation. Digital Realty's rich pedigree in data center engineering allows Digital Realty to provision a future-ready data center environment that can handle the evolution from air to liquid cooling. This also contributes to Digital Realty's and its customers' progress towards reducing their Scope 1 and 2 carbon emissions by 68% and Scope 3 emissions by 24%, by 2030. The KIX13 certification marks another milestone in Digital Realty's and NVIDIA's collaboration. Digital Realty was one of the first data center providers to be awarded the "DGX-Ready Data Center" certification at the launch of the program in 2019 and currently operates DGX-Ready data centers in more than 20 markets worldwide, including six sites across Asia Pacific. "Organizations looking to implement enterprise AI are investing in accelerated computing infrastructure – including hardware and software purpose-built for AI – to deploy their models into production quickly," says Charlie Boyle, Vice President, DGX systems, NVIDIA. "With the certification of Digital Realty's new KIX13 facility in the DGX-ready data center program, customers have access to a flexible, simple option for deploying the world's leading AI platform." "Digital Realty understands the impact AI will have on the way businesses drive digital transformation in the years to come. However, business breakthroughs made possible with AI can only be realized if enterprises are able to integrate the technology into their operations, and that is where we come in," says Chris Sharp, Chief Technology Officer, Digital Realty. "With Digital Realty's KIX13 DGX-Ready Data Center certification, we remain focused on delivering a meeting place that allows our customers to accelerate innovation and growth." He added, "AI is poised to have a dramatic impact on digital transformation initiatives, and it is critical to have a foundation in place to remove the Data Gravity barriers that inhibit innovation. PlatformDIGITAL® provides an ideal location for the data aggregation, staging, analytics, and management that are critical for optimizing data exchange and maintaining data compliance." About Digital Realty Digital Realty brings companies and data together by delivering the full spectrum of data center, colocation and interconnection solutions. PlatformDIGITAL®, the company's global data center platform, provides customers with a secure data meeting place and a proven Pervasive Datacenter Architecture (PDx ®) solution methodology for powering innovation and efficiently managing Data Gravity challenges. Digital Realty gives its customers access to the connected data communities that matter to them with a global data center footprint of 300+ facilities in 50+ metros across 27 countries on six continents.

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Application Storage, Windows Server OS

Scala Data Centers enables new Hyperscale market in Curauma, Chile, on campus with 30MW of IT capacity

prnewswire | August 08, 2023

Scala Data Centers, the leading Latin American platform of sustainable data centers in the Hyperscale market, announces the start of the SSCLCR01 data center operations, located in Curauma, Valparaíso region, Chile. Scala's new data center, boasting an investment of US$ 65 million and a robust 5MW of IT capacity, has been launched 100% booked to one Hyperscale customer. It is strategically situated in our Curauma Campus, poised for exponential growth, as it is designed to reach a critical capacity of approximately 30MW in the coming years. Delivered in just 10 months, Scala's new data center is part of the company's strategy to enable new Hyperscale markets acrossLatin America. In addition to the availability of land, energy, connectivity, and proximity to consolidated markets – it is based 56 miles from theSantiagometropolitan area – Curauma will establish itself on the world's connectivity map with the arrival of the Humboldt submarine cable, which promises to connectLatin Americato theAsia-Pacificregions for the first time. With around 9,500 miles of fiber, the Humboldt subsea cable will bring unprecedented scale, connection quality and lower latency betweenLatin America,Asia, and Oceania. Not to mention the connection the data center will have with the U.S. West Coast. "In a scenario where 5G accelerates the deployment of various services and applications that use high data volume and require low latency, Scala has succeeded in choosing its first campus to become operational inChile," evaluates Scala's CEO and Co-FounderMarcos Peigo. "Furthermore, aligned with our purpose of enabling the future inLatin America, we have created a unique opportunity here for customers positioned on the West Coast of theUSAand for a potential group in APAC (Asia-PacificandChina) to offer their products and solutions to Latin American customers." Powered by 100% renewable and certified energy, in line with the company's portfolio, the new Chilean data center was built based on the proprietary and innovative One Scala Template design and construction methodology. With high efficiency in the use of its resources, the SSCLCR01 data center was designed to operate with a PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) lower than 1.2-1.3 and with a WUE (Water Usage Effectiveness) of zero as it uses air cooling. The SSCLCR01 data center project was led by the company's pioneering Center of Excellence in Engineering (CoE), which has more than 340 engineers, architects, and data center specialists acrossLatin America. CoE oversees the planning and execution of all activities related to the construction and operation of a data center, from site selection, through planning, design, construction, and commissioning, which speeds up delivery to customers and brings gains in scale, energy efficiency, and greater control and visibility of projects. All SSCLCR01 data center monitoring will be conducted by the company's Command Center, located at its operations headquarters in São Paulo,Brazil, where a trilingual team extensively uses technology, artificial intelligence, and rigorous quality processes to monitor and ensure security, in line with Scala's other sites in operation. Growth inChile.In addition to Curauma Campus, Scala continues to build Lampa Campus, in the metropolitan region ofSantiago. This will be the largest data center campus ever built inChilewith an IT capacity of 80MW – considering 30MW for initial delivery in 2024. Also in theSantiagoregion, the installation of a HyperEdge data center is planned. Conceived by the CoE, this building will feature the proprietary FastDeploy design and construction methodology, which allows scalable implementation of edge data centers with the same high-quality experience as the traditional model, in up to 50% less time. Scala will invest approximatelyUS$ 400 millioninChileduring the first phase of the three campuses. Strategically positioned, they will have a combined IT capacity of over 200MW, which is equivalent to around two times the total installed capacity currently in the country, or twice the critical capacity of mature markets inEuropesuch asMadrid. Scala continues its accelerated expansion plan, with the construction of new sites at Tamboré Campus (São Paulo state,Brazil),Porto Alegrecity (Rio Grande do Sul state,Brazil), and Lampa (Chile), as well as advanced projects to implement other data centers in Jundiaí city (São Paulo state,Brazil),Fortalezacity (Ceará state,Brazil),Chile,Mexico, andColombia. Since its founding in 2020, Scala has invested more thanR$ 8 billion(~US$ 1.6 billion) in Hyperscale data centers inLatin Americaand expects to reach 500MW of distributed capacity over the next five years in four countries it operates. In 2023 alone, the company started operating three state-of-the-art data centers inLatin America, located specifically inRio de Janeiro(13.2MW IT), Tamboré (6MW IT) and, now, in Curauma (5MW IT). About Scala Data Centers Scala Data Centers is the leading Latin American platform of sustainable data centers in the Hyperscale market. Headquartered inBraziland founded by DigitalBridge, it was developed to meet and exceed the growing demand for digital access inLatin America. Scala has a highly qualified team of over 800 professionals and applies a flexible and innovative approach to providing exceptional quality colocation services to hyperscale clients, cloud-based software and service providers, and large enterprises. We customize state-of-the-art solutions for each client in the construction of the latest generation data centers, with high availability, the best energy efficiency rates, and superior density. All this allied to the best sustainability practices guided by our ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) program.

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Hyper-Converged Infrastructure, Application Infrastructure

SMART Modular Technologies’ Data Center SSDs Designated as OCP Inspired™ by the Open Compute Project

businesswire | June 26, 2023

SMART Modular Technologies, Inc. (“SMART”), a division of SGH (Nasdaq: SGH) and a global leader in memory solutions, solid-state drives and advanced memory announces that the Open Compute Project (OCP) has accepted SMART’s DC4800 data center solid state drives (SSDs) as an OCP Inspired™ product and will be featured on the OCP website in the Marketplace section. Only products that comply with 100% of OCP’s stringent specifications are selected after a rigorous process that demonstrates the product’s efficiency, openness, impact and scale. SMART’s DC4800 represents a new class of high performance, power efficient, data center SSDs. This family of PCIe Gen 4 data center class drives was designed for compliance with the OCP NVMe data center storage standards and are available in capacities up to 7.68TB in U.2 and E1.S form factors. “OCP-compliant SSDs are becoming the new standard for both data center and classic enterprise storage applications, which is a testament to how essential the standard has become,” states Andy Mills, senior director of advanced product development at SMART. “The Open Compute Project represents a truly cooperative venture in leading innovation within the technology industry and we are proud that our DC4800 product has now joined the ranks of OCP Inspired products.” By designing to OCP’s standards, an expanding base of enterprise class data center SSD users are assured that the OCP class DC4800 exceeds basic NVMe standards by including incremental management, LED and other form-factor related requirements that further help drive a greater level of standardization for data center servers and other equipment utilizing OCP class SSDs. The DC4800 devices are manufactured with a specialized hardware-accelerated SSD controller that draws less power without compromising storage input/output (I/O) performance. This unique new architecture results in near zero thermal induced throttling, enabling these SSDs to perform better under continued duress, even when they are pushed to their performance limit. This further translates to significant power consumption improvement per server, as well as consistent latency performance of up to 7-nines or 99.99999% of the time. The OCP Foundation is responsible for fostering, serving, and seeding the OCP Community to develop new open solutions that meet market needs and help to shape the future of enterprise computing solutions. OCP continues to invest in strategic initiatives that prepare the IT ecosystem for major inflections, such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and optics, sustainable data center solutions, advanced power management, cooling techniques, and composable silicon. About SMART Modular Technologies, Inc. For more than 30 years, SMART Modular Technologies has been helping customers around the world enable high performance computing through the design, development and advanced packaging of specialty memory solutions. Our robust portfolio ranges from today’s leading edge technologies to standard and legacy DRAM and Flash storage products. We provide standard, ruggedized and custom memory and storage solutions that meet the needs of diverse applications in high-growth markets.

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