Fujitsu Services builds green data centre on brownfield site

Fujitsu Services plans to build a new 44 million green data centre.

The 65,000 square foot data centre will be built in Stevenage, Hertfordshire and is claimed by the company to have green technology incorporated into the design that will save enough electricity to power up to 6,000 homes every year, equivalent to saving 10,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide each year.

There is a shortage of data centres in London, according to Fujitsu Services who pointed to figures from research firm Company-I, which found that 37 per cent of UK companies with their own data centres will have run out of capacity by 2008.

The new datacentre development will be on a brownfield site and will see an existing warehouse refurbished in order to minimise environmental impact compared to building on greenfield sites.

The use of an intelligent cooling system in conjunction with variable speed fans, pumps and heat exchangers significantly reduces the energy used to keep the IT systems cool, saving enough energy to power over 2,000 households every year, according to the company.

Combined with a reduction in the amount of power consumed by customer systems housed in the data centre by consolidation of servers and other equipment, enough power equivalent to the energy requirements of 4,000 homes will also be saved.

Martin Provoost, Fujitsu Services' head of data centres said companies have realised that expanding their data centres to cope with IT growth is expensive and wastes resources.

"They need lower costs and want their data centres and systems to be efficient and planet friendly," he said. "This new data centre provides the capacity the UK needs now and through our modernisation programme with our customers, we will drive out historic inefficiency in IT systems, reduce costs and create a sustainable green data centre environment."

Rene Millman

Rene Millman is a freelance writer and broadcaster who covers cybersecurity, AI, IoT, and the cloud. He also works as a contributing analyst at GigaOm and has previously worked as an analyst for Gartner covering the infrastructure market. He has made numerous television appearances to give his views and expertise on technology trends and companies that affect and shape our lives. You can follow Rene Millman on Twitter.