APC by Schneider Electric and IVI to deliver modular and sustainable datacentres

(22/07/2009)

APC by Schneider Electric has announced a Strategic Business Partnership with Internet Villages International (IVI) to form a powerful team to deliver ecologically designed, modular, scalable, datacentres for sustainable operation. The partnership brings together the global leader in critical power and cooling solutions together with a datacentre specialist focused on environmental sustainability and sympathetic rural development.

Under the terms of the Partnership, APC by Schneider Electric will provide the technology and infrastructure for the standardised IVI datacentre architecture. The standardised solution incorporates APC’s award–winning technologies for hardware and management software and will be combined with pre-engineered, pre-assembled and tested elements for the datacentre facility. This will allow greater flexibility of build-out, to closely track clients’ current business needs over time, avoiding the all too common problems of over engineering and high cost often experienced with initial datacentre construction. This versatile solution also provides the ability to reuse virtually the entire facility and infrastructure should the business need arise at some time in the future.

While the initial focus is on the ALBA1 project, located on a site near Ecclefechan in SW Scotland, the long term intention would be to expand the partnership globally. The first phase of this facility comprises of circa 125 acres of datacentre development in campus form which will be owned and operated by several different organisations.

Tony Day, Global Director for Datacentre Projects and Services for APC by Schneider Electric said, "This Strategic Business Partnership is an exciting opportunity for both organisations to develop the next generation of modular scalable datacentres in a genuinely sustainable environment". IVI's Chairman, Peter Hewkin added "Both companies believe that their joint commitment combined with a broad set of capabilities and a strong customer focus will enable us to set a new benchmark standard for datacentre efficiency and deliver real value to our clients worldwide".

Industry pundits have predicted that the ALBA1 location "will be one of the key newly emerging IT markets". The site will provide Europe's largest supply of secure renewable energy (500MW) as well as multiple Pan-European and Worldwide connectivity. In addition to the strict datacentre industry requirements, IVI's ALBA1 site is ideally suited to take advantage of free cooling technology as well as recycling waste outputs from datacentres for productive purposes.

In 2007, Schneider Electric acquired APC and combined it with MGE UPS Systems to form Schneider Electric’s Critical Power & Cooling Services Business Unit, which recorded 2008 revenue of €2,6 billion and employed 12,000 people worldwide. APC solutions include uninterruptible power supplies (UPS), precision cooling units, racks, physical security and design and management software, including APC's InfraStruXure® architecture.

Related categories:  Energy efficiency   Industrial   Office and commercial   Power    Power generation and transmission   UPS and batteries