ICT suburbanization and the module data center

A viable answer when demand outpaces capacity

In the 1950’s, many of the US military forces that had returned from World War II were starting families. They wanted to own their own homes. But the real estate market couldn’t provide them quick enough. A company called Levitt & Sons had an answer: entire cities of rapidly erected prefabricated homes. It was a raging success. Thousands of houses sold in “Levittown” in the first few days.

The flight from the big (data) cities

The IT and telecommunications industry may be on the brink of its own era of suburbanization. As I’ve covered here before, the Internet of Things and 5G networks will be driving large chunks of compute and storage capacity to the edge of the network, closer to consumers, mobile users, and industrial facilities. As these new networks and devices roll out at scale, operators and manufacturers may find that they need to deploy capacity faster than the 12-18 months or longer it takes to build a conventional data center.

Lots of models to choose from

When people think of a prefabricated data center, the first thing that comes to mind are often ISO shipping containers. Certainly, containerized data centers are very effective, for instance at large events and in other cases when datacenter capacity is needed temporarily or on very short notice. But there are other options available as well. Delta, for instance, offers prefabricated solutions that consist of modular building blocks which we use to create the data center. These solutions ship as fully functional, all-in-one “containerized” data center units that can be easily transported to any location where they are required.

The advantages of a controlled production environment

By building everything at our own production facility, we can deliver precisely what the customer requires with very high quality, but in a fraction of the time that it would take to construct a conventional datacenter building and then install all the necessary infrastructure. The modularity of our prefab data centers is also a key benefit, because we gain the flexibility to help customers who may have stranded power, cooling, or compute resources at some location within their existing facility. A modular approach allows them to quickly and easily add only the missing ingredients, so to speak.

A race to the finish line

Construction time for a traditional brick-and-mortar data center is normally one and a half to two years. Depending on the scale of the project, it can be even longer. With prefabrication, we can deliver the same capacity in half the time. One of the main reasons a prefabricated datacenter accelerates things so dramatically is that all the on-site work including foundations can be done while we build everything else in our factory. These modules ship with all the equipment pre-installed and ready for commissioning. And when we’re talking about colocation or cloud services providers, the faster those servers can go online, the sooner revenue streams start flowing. It’s also a huge head start on the payback period versus on-site construction and installation. Financing a data center has a significant impact on the balance sheet, after all.

Good things come in small packages

There are also knock-on effects that this agility provides. With traditional approaches, you’re tied to whatever maximum capacity you’ve initially scoped because of the lead time involved. So, companies tend to build more than what they initially need, which of course increases the cost per square meter. What’s more, modular data centers usually have very high densities. This characteristic alone can make them an attractive option.

Scaling up is easier

With prefabricated data centers that bring along everything they need to operate inside their four walls including power, racks, cooling, and all other supporting systems, scaling up is far easier. You are no longer tied down to the initial capacity of your facility. You can simply add more units without worrying about existing capacity. For businesses expecting growth that is difficult to forecast, prefab datacenters can reduce the risk of both overcapacity and undercapacity.

Pack your bags and go

Although it’s not something most organizations do very often, companies sometimes pick up and move to a new location. A prefabricated data center can, unlike a conventional building, move with you. And with a bit of cladding as beautification, a plot of land populated by data center modules can be given the appearance of a regular building.

Hybrid solutions, and where we go from here

One way we’re seeing many of our clients start to take advantage of the flexibility of a modular data center is by employing a hybrid approach. They’ll use a traditional building for parts of the data center, normally the white space, but then source prefabricated modules for power and cooling. With these building blocks readily available on short notice, they always have the capacity they need when it’s time to expand. It’s a great way to pay as you grow. And speaking of growth, we’re seeing a lot of it with these solutions. The market for prefabricated data centers is already somewhere between 10 and 15 billion dollars, depending on who you ask. That number is expected to roughly triple over the next four years. The overall data center growth rate, however, will remain in the single digits. So, while prefabricated datacenters are only a small portion of the market right now, they are very rapidly becoming very important.

I think we’ll see a lot of this growth coming from telecom applications and the roll out of 5G. Prefab is also very interesting when you want to deploy in remote locations where it is difficult to build a reliable, high quality data center. Or when you need a solution that you can duplicate as necessary. I also think we’ll see colocation and cloud providers start adopting a hybrid approach as well. Any way you look at it, the chances that your next data center will come fully installed and tested before it’s deployed on site have never been better. When we combine the modular approach and prefabrication, we have an interesting formula for shorter delivery times and meeting deadlines and budgets with great precision. Based on my experience, that is exactly what most customers want!