BASE anticipates a future of more data and opens new data centre
Tuesday, August 25, 2015 — The future is mobile. The use of mobile internet in Belgium is still in its early stages, but in the years to come, Belgians will be using more and more mobile data. Consequently more and more data must be stored. BASE is preparing for that future, and opens today an ecological data centre that will guarantee the security of its customer details.
By the end of June, 65% of BASE postpaid customers owned a smartphone. In July, the average BASE postpaid data users used around 900MB. All that information has to be processed and stored somewhere, and that where our datacenter comes in. A data centre is a building in which all the business-critical ICT-equipment is stored (such as the servers). It is also the place where we process our customers’ data.
SECURITY, ACCESS AND ECO-FRIENDLY
The processing of the growing data flow calls for more and more machines. To enable the processing of all the information in a secure manner, our engineers have carefully thought about the optimum organisation of our data centres.
As a result, our installation in Ghent has recently undergone a huge expansion and upgrading. It is now a high-tech data centre that is also 100% future-proof.
This data centre will therefore fully support the big increase in data usage. In addition, it will also serve as a back-up for the information that is currently stored in Aartselaar. That information will be accessible from Ghent at all times, also in the event of a technical breakdown in Aartselaar. And vice versa.
BASE gives high priority to the privacy its customers. Therefore, all the information is stored in data centres located in Belgium. This is important for the security and protection of our customer details.
The new data centre is furthermore extremely eco-efficient. More mobile data means more machines. And all those machines in operation produce a lot of heat. For purposes of energy-saving, we paid particular attention to cooling systems. In order to control the temperature of the data rooms and associated systems, we opted for extremely eco-friendly and cost-efficient designs. Result? We are able to maintain the right temperature through efficient management of cold air flows and by not allowing cold air to escape. The energy-saving installations bring down the PUE-value (Power Usage Effectiveness) from 1,8 to 1,4. This energy-saving is similar to the annual consumption of 1200 average families.
With the opening of the new data centre, BASE is getting ready for a future in which mobile data will play a central role. The smartphone is already our extra limb, and in the future it will play an increasingly important role in our daily lives. We wake up with it, we go to sleep with it, and we send a huge amount of data with it every day. And BASE aims to process that data safely.
THE DATACENTER IN FIGURES
- 740 m² surface area (spread across 2 data rooms): this is equal to the surface of 3 tennis courts
- A tank of 30,000 litres of diesel: this is equal to 12 normal oil tanks of an average household – available to operate 3 emergency generators.
- A maximum energy of 2 MW (= 2000kW): this is equal to the energy of 225 normal households (at 9kW per home).
