Norway has been selected as the location for the construction of the largest data center in the world. US-Norwegian company KOLOS has formally announced its intentions to build the state-of-the-art facility inside the Arctic Circle in the town of Ballangen.
The data center is expected to be open by the end of 2018, and construction work on the facility is set to commence shortly. It has been described a hyper-scale data center, with sustainability, cost-effectiveness and security at the core of its design, construction and operations.
It has been disclosed that KOLOS raised several million from a consortium of Norwegian investors, and the company has expressed its hope that it can secure the rest of the funding required for the project from a US investment bank.
There has been a boom of data centers being erected in the Nordic region, and the announcement that the world's largest will now be built here doesn't come as a huge surprise. The 100% 'green' data center location - with its abundant hydropower and dark fiber infrastructure will provide for the lowest OPEX in the world. Those at the center of the innovative high-scale project have claimed that the new centers offers highly scalable and attractive margins, whilst also ensuring a 50% cost advantage over other satellite data centers.
The CEO of KOLOS, Havard Lillebo, claimed that Norway's unique climate and its access to existing high-performance fiber infrastructure made it the perfect location for the construction of the world's largest data center. He said, "We analyzed locations around the world and identified Ballangen as unique, due to Norway's competitive green energy, cool climate and its large technical workforce. Also, the site's secure moated property and access to international high-performance fiber make it especially compelling."
Co-CEO of KOLOS, Mark Robinson said the construction of this facility is a 'necessity' - as analysts have projected that by 2025 there will be 10 times more data being generated than there is now, as the IoT sector continues to grow rapidly.
Robinson said: "The team understands the importance of building the world's most powerful data center with respect for the community and environment. We can scale up to two gigawatts of excess power from hydroelectric generation facilities within 25 kilometers of the planned site. No data center on earth has access to such abundant, clean and inexpensive power. By 2025, experts forecast that activity on the web, mobile, cloud and the Internet of Things will generate 180 zettabytes of data per year - more than 10x the data being created today."