ABB supports NEXTDC in delivering Australian businesses with 100% uptime

Headquartered in Brisbane, NEXTDC is an ASX200-listed technology company enabling business transformation and hybrid IT solutions through innovative data center outsourcing solutions, connectivity services and infrastructure management software.

 

With an existing footprint of nine data centers and two more under development, NEXTDC’s next-generation data centers are ground-breaking not only due to their size, but also because of their business uptime capabilities and long-term reliability. 

 

Constant increases in consumer, business and government uptake of big data, cloud computing, ‘Internet of Things’ (IoT) and analytics – along with the ever-present rise of mobile data traffic – are all driving huge demand for colocation services in edge and hyperscale data centers across Australia.

 

Demand is so great that Gartner anticipates that 80 percent of organisations will shift workloads to colocation and cloud-based computing models by 2025, with the global market for hybrid cloud expected to reach a value of $138.63 billion by 2023.

 

Challenge:

As a leading innovative Data Center-as-a-Service provider across Asia, NEXTDC delivers enterprise-class colocation services to local and international organizations. With a focus on sustainability and renewable energy, NEXTDC’s build infrastructure platforms are based around three core components of data center excellence: power, security and connectivity.

 

As consumer demands grow throughout Australia, building a flexible and scalable platform for partners and customers was important to NEXTDC, particularly as it aims to expand its customer capacity in the territory to a staggering 300MW and support customers in their transition towards a hybrid could environment.

 

Due to the footprint of existing facilities and progressive expansion plans, NEXTDC required a partner to holistically monitor and fine tune the critical data center infrastructure in real-time. All of this was critical to delivering against NEXTDC’s 100 percent uptime brand promise.

 

In addition to the needs for greater resiliency, the focus at the new facilities in Australia was also on reducing carbon footprint, delivering energy efficiency along with cost and time savings.

As such, NEXTDC was looking for a partner that could deliver critical services monitoring system (CSMS) to provide real-time visibility including both high level (aggregate) and low level (granular) views of the data center infrastructure. This would help NEXTDC make faster and better operational decisions and actions, and therefore deliver more effective operations, saving multi-million dollars for NEXTDC and its customers.

 

Solution:

Key to ABB’s offering for NEXTDC was the complete ‘integrated power train” including “Isolated Parallel Switchboard – IPSB”, medium- and low-voltage switchgear, high and low capacity busduct, including intelligent tap-off boxes, along with ABB Ability™ Data Center Automation solution – an industrial grade CSMS providing best-in-class power, automation and monitoring integration capabilities, all in a single platform.

 

The ABB Ability™ Data Center Automation system’s capacity to integrate multiple vendor equipment with ease and adapt on-the-fly to changing technologies while providing continuous uptime was a huge advantage compared to competing solutions on the market. The system integrates data from IT, power, cooling and building systems, eliminating the need for manual data entry when calculating utilization metrics and other KPIs. 

 

For NEXTDC, ABB’s ‘integrated power train’ solution, CSMS and local engineering and project management capabilities meant timely implementation for three of NEXTDC’s sites allowing the company to optimize “time to market” of its “next generation Tier IV” facilities.

 

ABB’s sector manager for data centers in Australia, Narain Chandwani, said: “Our critical services monitoring solution alerts NEXTDC and ABB to early indications of any equipment deterioration, allowing us to work together to proactively isolate and resolve potential issues before they arise. We are committed to working with NEXTDC on providing a very fast response, to ensure they maintain their 100 percent uptime guarantee.”

 

Results:

NEXTDC Chief Operating Officer Simon Cooper said: “We are building the infrastructure platform that powers our thriving digital economy, and we know that our facilities underpin a large swathe of the country’s IT services.  We take our responsibility seriously and we are committed to building and operating the most reliable, secure, powerful and energy efficient data centers in the country, if not the world. To achieve this, we work with only the best partners and suppliers globally to support our vision of building these incredible facilities.

 

“ABB has a great vision that projects their deep electrical engineering capability into the brave new world of big data, robotics, 3D printing, power distribution and generation (including smart grids, sustainability and storage), a vision that NEXTDC shares. We are looking forward to working with ABB as we continue to drive new innovations that will assist in growing our digital economy.”