Subscribe

Data centre lessons from Ireland

Kirsten Doyle
By Kirsten Doyle, ITWeb contributor.
Johannesburg, 07 Feb 2020
Dermot Reidy
Dermot Reidy

Ireland has become the European data centre location of choice for organisations such as IBM, AWS, Microsoft and Google, and is now in a good position to become a global cloud centre.

The country is seen as a compelling location for the facilities for a variety of reasons, including the cool climate, which reduces running costs for heat-generating computers, its connectivity to the US via transatlantic data cables, and a favourable data-protection regime for tech multinationals.

So says Dermot Reidy, senior development adviser at Enterprise Ireland who will be speaking at the ITWeb Cloud, Data Centre & DevOps Summit 2020, happening on 11 February at The Forum in Bryanston.

Reidy’s presentation will demonstrate the capability of the Irish construction industry to design, project manage, construct, commission and maintain both hyperscale and colocation data centre facilities.

ITWeb Cloud, Data Centre & DevOps 2020

Register for free for this one-day event, to be held on 11 February at The Forum in Bryanston. Themed 'Setting future innovation in motion,’ the event will give you the opportunity to listen to industry experts and learn how to gain maximum benefit from your cloud, data centre and DevOps investments

One of the key takeaways will be an estimate of EMEA expenditure in hyperscale facilities over the coming years. “For those interested in both hyperscale and colocation, this is the future marketplace, sized and geographically designated,” he says.

Reidy will discuss areas of strategy for business in the future Internet environment, in terms of where we are going, what is already here, and what the limitations as well as the opportunities for growth are.

His presentation is titled 'Latency as a driver for more data centre hubs'.

“Latency is an issue which not only concerns commodities and financial trading, but things such as currency too. Latency also increasingly covers individual commercial transactions and using a very simple example, I hope to give an understanding of this issue too.” 

In terms of governance, he says the location of data centres dictate how secure the data within is. 

Finally, he will discuss connectivity. 

 “Would we think of the Internet generally as we think of the cloud – is that the perception? And what is the cloud? Is it all of the world’s data centres? And critically, how are they all connected?” he asks.

“At a recent mining conference, CEO of Teck Resources, one of the world’s largest mining companies said clearly and unequivocally that the Internet is rooted in the ground. It needs base and exotic minerals, stone for cement, copper and aluminium for power, through to lithium and cobalt for batteries. The cloud is a physical place.”

Share