EvoSwitch already had two diesel generators to compensate for power outages in the electricity grid. Four extra new diesel generators have now been ordered. A new UPS has also been installed. This is an energy-efficient emergency power supply with so-called ‘Delta Conversion’ technology(*) manufactured by APC to ensure that transfer to the diesel generators is seamless.

“It means that we get more electricity per square metre in the building,” says Laurens Rosenthal, Innovation Director at EvoSwitch. “We decided to make this investment straight away in the initial phase. The longer we put off the expansion, the more difficult it becomes to increase capacity. Once our datacenter is full, it will be difficult to make adjustments of this kind. We can still take measure like this now.”

Competitors’ waiting lists
“This expansion of our capacity amply illustrates our market expectations,” says Rosenthal. “We are still in the phase of acquiring customers, but we can see a shortage of datacenters in the market. Between 1995 and 2001, in the heady days before the dotcom crash, there was a lot of money invested in datacenters. Too much, in fact. Investments stopped after 2001. Investors didn’t want to put any more money into telecom because they’d suffered huge losses. Since then, the Internet has continued to grow gradually based on the overcapacity that was present in the market at that time. Now we’ve arrived at the point when investment in datacenters is needed again. Some datacenters even have a waiting list. The fact that competitors have waiting lists shows that there’s a shortage in the market.”

Sustainable strategy
The expansion fits EvoSwitch’s policy of limiting the energy consumption of the datacenter and, at the same time, making energy capacity amply available for customers. “That may sound contradictory,” says Rosenthal, “but really it isn’t. There is an energy shortage. That is why we have shouldered our responsibilities by investing in energy-saving systems. But now there’s a need for server accommodation and that is a social fact. So there’s also a need for energy. It’s just that we have to handle energy consumption efficiently. Thanks to our investments in energy-efficient systems, including cooling and emergency power, we can provide very efficient server accommodation. And we, and our customers, certainly use 20 percent less power.”
APC Delta Conversion
(*) Delta Conversion is a technology manufactured by APC that provides energy savings of 5 percent compared to traditional emergency power supplies. Normally, electricity is supplied as alternating current and then immediately converted into direct current. It then enters the battery. The direct current is then converted back into alternating current for the use of the servers. A traditional UPS runs this process continuously. With Delta conversion, APC has developed a special technology that by-passes some of these steps.