On the migration of EEA’s IT infrastructure from last January

In the weekend of 23-24 January, the EEA successfully migrated its IT infrastructure at its premises on Kongens Nytorv 6 to a co-location data centre, namely DigiPlex. We hereby share the press release drafted by DigiPlex:

Located in the heart of Copenhagen, the European Environment Agency (EEA) has reviewed its data storage strategy, and it became obvious that the existing server room framework had to be upgraded to significantly improve the protection against fire and water damage and that the ventilation and cooling system also needed an upgrade to modern standards.

Data center or cloud?

Various cloud and co-location solutions were assessed based on a number of operational and financial parameters. Eventually, a co-location solution with DigiPlex in Copenhagen was chosen. The European Environment Agency has many small applications handling the same workload throughout the year. It turned out to be uneconomic to transfer the applications to AWS or Azure and, moreover, they were not designed to benefit from such a transfer. An alternative solution to an expensive overhaul of the facilities was to rent space and obtain server room expertise from a data center. The possibility to grow and to team up with a supplier with a green and sustainable profile were key priorities. 

“A key consideration in the decision-making process was for me to know the precise location of our data, and with the co-location solution from DigiPlex we have reached that goal – and our data is now located in a green data centre close to our offices. The solution has proved to be a financial benefit as it has saved us the cost of an overhaul and of ensuring protection against fire, burglary or sabotage and upgrading of the electricity, cooling and ventilation system in our existing server room. On top of that, office space has been made available, enabling us to terminate expensive office leases elsewhere and move staff to the headquarters,” says Søren Roug, Head of IT and Information Systems, EEA.

A sustainable solution

The chosen co-location solution is in keeping with the European Environment Agency’s aim of supporting the environment and sustainable IT solutions. A co-location solution offers a host of advantages: you share the physical framework with others in a flexible and scalable manner while at the same time taking advantage of economies of scale in connection with the purchase of green electricity, etc.

“We are extremely pleased that the European Environment Agency (EEA) has chosen a co-location solution from DigiPlex in Copenhagen. We share the same vision of protecting the environment, and DigiPlex only builds and operates entirely green data centres, where we utilise innovative and sustainable solutions to be able to constantly meet the growing demand for data storage. It is obvious that an increasing number of social-minded businesses consider green IT and data centre solutions where DigiPlex is an obvious partner,” says Fredrik Jansson, CCO, DigiPlex.

DigiPlex was established in Copenhagen in 2018 following the takeover of an existing data centre from Telia, which subsequently became one of DigiPlex’s key customers. The data centre is 1,600 square metres. See here for site specifications.

Just last month, DigiPlex announced it had expanded its Danish portfolio further through the acquisition of a plot of 110,000 m2, secured enough renewable power to support the development, as well as onsite water, planning and building permissions to construct five data centers for a major new campus site. This second DigiPlex datacenter site in Denmark will feature waste heat recovery technology to feed into the existing district heating system as part of a significant environmental sustainability commitment.