Tieto is expanding the biggest commercial data centre in Finland

Today, more than 150 large Nordic companies and organisations use Tieto’s cloud services. Additionally, Tieto has several hundreds of data centre customers and multiple data centres in Finland, Sweden and Norway. In response to the growing amount of data and the demand for stricter security measures, Tieto is currently expanding Finland’s largest data centre in Espoo by thousands of square metres. Erwin de Bont, Vice President, Infrastructure and Platform Services at Tieto and Tom Grönqvist (Senior Technical Architect) of Tieto discuss this innovative project.

INCREASING AMOUNT OF DATA

The Espoo data centre opened its doors in 2011 and was first provided with a 10 million euro expansion in 2014. The investment budget of the current expansion project is approximately 17 million euro. But why is Tieto constantly expanding? “The amount of data is increasing exponentially”, says Ekström. “Each image taken or sent through e-mail is saved to a server in a data centre. Companies are starting to use larger amounts of data for more efficient operations, for example, by introducing predictive analytics-based capabilities. As a result, the demand for local and secure data centre services is on the rise.”

EVER-GROWING SECURITY REQUIREMENTS

In the coming years, legislation related to the protection of privacy will become quite strict, for example, with the addition of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). “Tieto’s data centres in Finland are able to respond to the ever-growing security requirements particularly well. Tieto’s data centres are already able to offer a service environment with an elevated level of data security for the preservation of sensitive data.” And this is important to Tieto’s customers. “Companies and organisations are increasingly interested in where and how data is stored. The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation for all companies comes into force in May 2018. Then each operator involved with data must be able to indicate where the end-user data is stored. In particular, it is important for our governmental agency customers that citizens’ data are stored within the borders of Finland.”

RAPID GROWTH

The safe location of the data centres, as well as the long-term development of innovative technology have enabled the rapid growth of Tieto’s cloud services. In the third quarter of 2016, the use of Tieto’s cloud services increased by 29%. “Tieto is not only expanding and investing in security measures1. We are also investing in environmentally friendly energy solutions and services, such as virtualisation and cloud services, in all of our data centres. With our services, our customers modernise their applications and IT infrastructure but they also innovate and renew their business in a sustainable way.”

PROJECT CONSTRAINT: LOW CEILING, CUSTOMER-SPECIFIC SOLUTION

Tieto will get access to its new premises in stages between 2017 and 2022. Minkels and its partner, system integrator Enkom Active Oy are committed to realising this innovative expansion. “Minkels and Enkom offered us a true customer-specific solution”, says Tom Grönqvist, Senior Technical Architect. “We had to deal with a limited height for the first data room, i.e 2.5 meters from the raised floor to the ceiling. We had to fit the cabinets, a cold aisle containment system, cable management and patch panels on top of it. That’s why we started looking for a supplier that could provide a customised solution package. Legrand, Minkels and Enkom were convinced that they could design a solution that would fit under the ceiling. And they have succeeded! Right now, we are in the process of building six data rooms with corridors that are supported by cabinets with cable management above – just like we requested.”