Why agility is paramount to the future of the data economy

With as much as 2.5 quintillion bytes of data produced every day^[1], data is now the currency that fuels digital transformation strategies. Data has become an economy that businesses the world over thrive off. But all of this data must be appropriately and securely managed, and that presents businesses with a challenge. There’s a demand for data center providers to be available, secure and agile, and the data center community must respond by scaling facilities quickly.

Indeed, with spend on IT storage having increased by nearly 25 % in the past four years and forecast to increase by an additional six per cent by 2019^[2], data center providers are under pressure to deliver facilities on demand. However, with the average build time for data centers sitting at 18 to 24 months, many providers are struggling to justify two years of investment with zero return in the short term.

At e-shelter, we decided to tackle this problem head-on by creating our own agile data center construction plan. This meant we have been able to halve the average build time and in fact, build a data center in less than 9 months. This is how we’ve done it…

The demand for cloud storage has rocketed with the UK adoption rate alone already at 88%^[3]. In light of this we have taken the agile approach from our IT teams and applied it to building works. This is a method that has not been seen previously in our industry. We have streamlined our construction processes by undertaking all design, procurement and project management from the beginning. As a result, we completed construction and delivery of Building H at our Frankfurt 1 campus, the biggest data center campus in Europe, in 9 months.

No easy task

The project was not without its challenges. In the initial phase, adverse weather conditions delayed the foundation stages by a full month. Yet we managed to use the delay not only to our advantage, but to our customers as well.  We used this time to refine our scheduling and planning process and to speak with contractors directly. All parties involved came to collaborate more closely, finding ways to optimise processes by holding workshops to plan and troubleshoot specific aspects of the build. When the weather improved and core works began in February 2017, the team had already made sufficient progress to start planning final fit-outs. working partnerships had been established with an approach to optimisation that continued throughout the build.

Learning from experience

The capacity to collaborate and project manage effectively, and the inclination to plan ahead, proved increasingly important as the build progressed. e-shelter's years of experience operating a building company within a data shelter company really came to the fore. The working relationships we have developed with suppliers and construction experts and the great volume of learning achieved over numerous years of construction experience, allowed us to innovate in ways that would have been otherwise impossible. To give an example, for Building H we used a new construction tool that was designed to promote lean construction management. This meant we approached the build incrementally, addressing sections by type and constructing standardised areas in groups. This enabled us to build all sections of a given type at once, as a 'lot', and then fit them out in consultation with the individual end user, and greatly increased our project agility.

In a similar way, we managed the entire construction of Building H in a responsive manner that flexed over time, according to need. Thus, project management was initially month-by-month, but this evolved into very hands-on, day-by-day management as the build progressed. The construction team met every morning for half an hour to ensure project management and actions were aligned, and that any opportunities for efficiency gains were seized. The team also developed a highly visual system of project tracking using coloured cards, so that a glance was enough to discern which elements had been completed and what was still outstanding.

e-shelter's years of construction experience mean we have now honed processes so well, that for Building H we were fitting out the first floor while the floor above was still being built. In other words, the building quite literally took shape from the ground up, with many final fittings in place before the roof was on. Now complete, Building H covers 7,100 square metres and represents an investment of 100 million euros. It has 17MW power supply and access to more than 350 carriers, as well as cloud and application providers.

Constructing the future

Building H is one of the most recent additions to e-shelter's data center family, but it is certainly not the last. We have plans for new sites in Amsterdam and Frankfurt, also having secured sites for development in London and Madrid, as a strategic initiative is now underway to expand outside of the DACH region.

Understandably the speed and efficiency of this expansion has not occurred in a vacuum.  We have undertaken this in response to strong global demand for cloud services, co-location, scenario and concept testing and emulation. As more data and applications are migrated to the cloud, we must stay agile and keep pace with demand in an ever-changing technological landscape. We must continue to monitor and enhance our resources, and to embrace innovations and new demands.

Having delivered Building H in just 9 months to extremely high specifications by developing an individual building design, construction and project management programme (an attribute that could possibly result in e-shelter being unique among comparable firms) we have proven to understand the needs of modern business. We can provide data center capacity quickly, efficiently and in a flexible way, and our expansion across Europe will bring our services closer to home for a wider customer base. Furthermore, it extends the options for customers wishing to co-locate their data across national borders.