Two and a half years ago now, I presented a whitepaper on the future of the data center marketspace. This was linked to a business pitch and some funding that we were trying to raise at the time. The feedback, although constructive, essentially told me that I was wrong… mainly due to my age (20 at the time) and supposed “lack of experience”.

The key things I was predicting, and to be honest anyone that really understood the industry at the time would also have known;

• Supplying power (electricity) would be the biggest issuefor the London data center space.
• Effectively cooling servers/data halls, would be a close second.

The biggest problem with cooling is the heat transferal capability of air, companies like spraycool have finally commercialised and are bringing to market water cooling technologies that case modders and enthusiasts have been playing with for a long time. Its strange in a way as the old IBM mainframes and VAX20 systems used to use water cooling, or “cold water cooling” well before the days of i386 and the Intel/AMD infrastructures we are used to today. Air cooling at the time made sense, at least now we are starting to learn from some of the wisdom of the past.

Anyway, the reason for this ranting; We’ve (a few of us select battling entrepreneurs) have been working on a plan to build a datacenter, or at least a chain of datacenters, for the market of tomorrow. What will the data center scape look like in 2 to 3 years time? Well… I’m not going to share that now am I I was right two years ago, and I’m sure as hell going to be right in a few years time! Hopefully this time people would have learnt that the way of the Hamlesh is the right way o/

Recent new data center build announcements;

TelecityRedbus has begun construction on a new $100 million (£50 million) data center in Central London. The Powergate facility, will include 50,000 square feet of space and open in the second quarter of 2008, will be TelecityRedbus’ eighth data center in London.

“Google, welcome to Iowa!” With those four words, Iowa Gov. Chet Culver ended months of speculation this morning and confirmed that Google will locate a major data center in Council Bluffs, Iowa. The $600 million data center will provide 200 jobs for the local economy, and “will have a tremendous impact on Council Bluffs, western Iowa and the entire state,” Culver said.

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