Altus Continues to Invest and Opens New Data Center

There is a growing need in the Croatian market for space in data centers. Therefore, Altus has decided to expand its existing DC 3, which we talked about with Goran Đoreski, the first man of the company. Although he did not want to talk about the value of the investment itself, he emphasized that it is not essential to invest money into buildings and equipment without a lot of planning.

Đoreski points out that a brand new energy block has been created, providing a new space for server cabinets of 230 square meters, but also announced a much easier future expansion of the data center.

Altus continues to expand its data center. You built a DC3. How much is invested in it?

In similar situations so far, we did not have a habit of talking about the amount of investment. The reason for this is not that we think it is some secret, since at the end of the year, the balance shows the amount of new assets in the company. This is public information.

The reason we do not do it is that we believe that investing in buildings and equipment alone does not necessarily speak about the benefits or the value of this investment. We have frequently witnessed investments of millions in the walls and failed ideas. What we are trying to do is to invest as rationally as possible within the framework necessary for the level of quality, but in the way that each of the invested Kuna in the next few years has multiple returns.

So, this time again I will not say the exact amount, but I can say that we will continue to be in A1 credit rating as well, as we have been so far.

What does DC3 bring new for Altus?

First, Altus gets the expansion of its existing capacities. So far, the existing system halls, with a total capacity of 400 square meters of usable information space, are almost completely full. Here and there, there are small server cabinets that can accommodate equipment, but certainly not enough for further growth as we are accustomed to. The new 230 square meters will allow a period of uninterrupted growth of the collocation and Cloud.

Second, one part of the equipment, power part related to the DC1 room, is now depreciated after 10 years of uninterrupted operation. This equipment faithfully served us and could work even longer, but the cost of its maintenance has begun to increase and it is time to retire it. That is why now the DC1 has got a whole new energy, i.e. it is connected to the same energy room as the DC3.

Third, available power on the overall infrastructure and redundancy were increased. In the first place, I mean here the upgrade of the substation and its cabling, but also the aggregates of that chiller plant.

Fourth, preparations have been made for the next extension step. The future 250 square meters, which will be here even before than we hope, will be very easy to implement because preparations have been made in this step as far as energy capacity and cooling capacity is concerned.

How did the construction process go and what were the challenges you encountered while building it?

This extension was extremely demanding. It should be kept in mind that we have had customers for ten years and that we provide the services whose functionality should not be questioned, regardless of the works we do. During the project, we had three very sensitive moments when some new elements of infrastructure were incorporated into the production environment, which users should not have felt. With the good preparation and organization it has all gone without incident.

Furthermore, Ericsson campus is where thousands of people work every day. Our works required heavy construction and energy projects. Getting into such a working environment, engineering hive, with excavators, but also wanting to minimize the disruption to daily functioning is not a simple task. We have shown that we can do the job safely for all, and I hope we have not tested too much the patience of colleagues who share the work space with us.

For whom is the new data center intended and what are the plans for further development?

The space is intended for all our regular users, meaning telecoms, healthcare and pharma, financial industry, ICT companies, but more and more for craftsmen and other companies who, with the arrival of cloud, are beginning to see the benefit of using data center services.

We want to enter into new market segments, into companies that are not heavily regulated and which are not prescribed by the regulator with a high level of computer infrastructure, but which will see a market advantage in that. Also, our goal is to keep on physically expanding on this location, but we are constantly looking out to extend on a secondary site outside of Zagreb.

What do users look for in data centers nowadays - what is the level of service and requirements?

I think that quality infrastructure only is no longer the first focus. The market has matured to the extent that users recognize what a quality datacenter is and which players in the market have it. Nowadays, the user feels that if he buys the service from any premium data center on the market, he will get more than enough quality for himself. So, the system up-time is no longer a point of differentiation, at least when market leaders are concerned.

What has now become important is how many different needs, how efficiently and price sensitive, the data center can cover for the user. In that sense, we increasingly engage existing customers as partners for other clients, in order to achieve a synergistic effect; the fact is that more or less anything that any company needs, someone in the data center already has. Data center is increasingly becoming a place for sharing services, digital co-working. Altus, with its 27 telecoms, CIX, cloud connect infrastructure for all global cloud providers and a high number of ICT users/partners within the space, is well placed in this game with new rules.

The things will be very interesting over the next few years, with a growing market orientation towards digitization, machine to machine, augmented reality and artificial intelligence. We sincerely look forward to everything new and feel that our time is just coming.