Key Kao Data Announces

Key Kao Data Announces

Kao Data Announces Paul Finch as Interim CEO as it Enters Next Phase of Data Centre Expansion at its North East London Campus

  • Paul Finch becomes Interim CEO to lead the company through the next phase of development and expansion.
  • Professional services consultants have been instructed to initiate pre-construction activities at the North East London data centre campus.
  • Through technical leadership Kao Data continues to drive innovation; increasing reliability and supporting 100% availability at reduced total cost of operations.

Kao Data, the home of innovation and the UK’s leading entrant to the wholesale colocation data centre market, has announced that Paul Finch is to lead the company as interim CEO through the expansion phase of the 43.5MVA campus development. The announcement is made as incumbent, Jan Daan Luycks stands down from the company based on his decision to return home to the Netherlands.

Paul Finch has 30 years of progressive experience in the industry, including over a decade at senior management level, focussed on data centres, technical real estate and complex engineering infrastructure. Paul was the first person recruited to the senior management team at Kao Data, and this new appointment demonstrates the company’s commitment to the next phase of its wholesale data centre development.

David Bloom, Partner at investors, Goldacre said, “Paul Finch has successfully led the strategic operations and platform delivery function, resulting in Kao Data’s entry into the London wholesale multi-tenant data centre (MTDC) market. The breadth and depth of his technical expertise combined with his operational knowledge has been evidenced by the outstanding performance outcomes achieved thus far for our customers and investors alike. It is evident that Paul and his highly experienced senior technical team provide the highest quality resources based on tailored customer requirements. He is the perfect appointment to take Kao Data through this important next phase and has the full support of the Board. The Board would like to take the opportunity to wish Jan Daan Luycks all the best as he returns to the Netherlands and thank him for his tremendous contributions in completing the first chapter of the Kao Data story.”

Paul Finch stated, “I’m proud to have the opportunity to lead Kao Data through this interim period and build on the solid foundations created. The Board have demonstrated their belief in me to not only ensure the digital infrastructure execution cycle continues seamlessly, but also that the broader business strategy aligns with ever changing market dynamics and evolving technologies. Kao Data is well set to deliver a strong customer advantage and continued success in a competitive and maturing market”.

Under the operational leadership of Paul Finch, Kao Data has recently made headlines with two prestigious industry awards: Excellence in Corporate Social Responsibility at the Datacloud Global Awards 2019, and Real Estate Deal of the Year for Goldacre Noe and Legal and General Capital at the Finvest Awards. Both events took place in Monaco in June this year.

About Paul Finch

Paul Finch is Interim CEO and COO at Kao Data, providing strategic direction, innovation and leadership in the creation and delivery of the digital infrastructure platform for today’s Cloud and Edge computing requirements. Initially joining the team as CTO, he subsequently took on broader responsibilities as COO, successfully bringing Kao Data Campus (+£230m, 43.5MVA) to the London multi-tenant data center market in 2018.

Named as one of the Data Economy 50 “The Top Influencers in Data Centers, Cloud and Data,” Paul is a highly respected technical thought leader, skilled in data center product strategy, platform delivery, strategic operations and sales enablement. He maintains an acute focus on how the evolution of technology together with increasing end-user expectations are influencing the future shape of the data center landscape, as well as connectivity product-sets and services.

During his 30-year career, Paul has played key roles at Fortune 500 corporations and publicly traded REIT's including CBRE (NYSE: CBG) and Digital Realty Trust (NYSE: DLR), as well as embryonic start-ups and scale-ups. In total, he has overseen the creation and execution of global developments exceeding £1.0bn in capital deployment and supporting over 200MW of technical space.

Under his operational leadership Kao Data made headlines with two prestigious industry awards: Excellence in Corporate Social Responsibility at the Datacloud Global Awards and Real Estate Deal of the Year for Goldacre Noe and Legal and General Capital at the Finvest Awards, Monaco, 2019.

He has also been engaged at a policy level representing the data center industry, having made formal representation in Europe and North America on draft data center policy, standards and regulations.

Paul Finch’s many credentials include: Chartered Engineer and Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Member of the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air-conditioning Engineers, Voting Executive Committee Member of ASHRAE Technical Committee 9.9 (TC9.9) - Mission Critical Facilities, Data Centers, Technology Spaces and Electronic Equipment (2014-2018), TC9.9 Sub-Committee Marketing Chair (2018 - Present), TechUK Technical Committee Member, EUDCA Technical Committee Member.

He holds a BSc (Hons) in Building Services Engineering from London South Bank University, PgDip in Engineering Management from Brunel University and has completed the General Management Programme at the University of Cambridge, Judge Business School.

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About Kao Data

Situated in the London-Stansted-Cambridge technology corridor, the £200m+ Kao Data Campus provides around 150,000 sq. ft. technical space and 35MW power for IT equipment. The completed site will comprise four 8.8MW data centres, providing a customer product set from a Technology Pod, Technology Cell, Technology Suite and complete Technology Building, tailored to meet the demands of conventional ITE infrastructure, through to specialist HPC and Edge at Scale deployments.

Through technical leadership Kao Data continues to drive innovation increasing reliability supporting 100% availability at reduced total cost of operations. Dynamic load tracking at the campus site ensures high energy-efficiency with ultra-low PUE <1.2, even at 20% ITE utilisation. The company has made the added commitment to 100% renewable energy to power its data centres.

Served by a dedicated and redundant 43,5MVA power supply, the quality of the design, construction and systems installation has helped Kao Data achieve BREEAM excellent certification. The technical capability, hyper-connectivity strategy and secure data resilience of the Kao Data Campus makes it ideally placed to support both cloud and hybrid-cloud solutions for a range of enterprise businesses, including financial services, life sciences, defence and the health sector.

For more details, please visit www.kaodata.com

Press Contact

Spa Communications for Kao Data Campus
Simon Merrick
Tel.: +44 1892 511413
[email protected]


Kao Data Secures 1.5MW Contract from EMBL-EBI and begins second phase of campus technology deployment

  • New customer contract triggers second phase of the Harlow campus build.
  • Harlow location provides a highly scalable, ultra-low latency solution with local access for the EMBL-EBI engineering team, saving significant OPEX.
  • High-quality RFP submission detailing Award-winning CSR, renewable energy and low carbon aspects played a key factor in the customers’ decision making.
  • Kao Data continues commitment to delivering in ‘best in class’ capabilities for customers in the Hyperscale and life sciences communities.

Kao Data, the home of innovation and UK’s leading entrant to the wholesale collocation data center market, has announced it has signed a new customer contract with EMBL-EBI, a not-for-profit, international research infrastructure and global leader in the storage, analysis and dissemination of large biological data sets. This is a key development in Kao Data’s strategic goal to become the leading provider of compute capability to the UK’s Life Science community, based along the London-Stansted-Cambridge corridor.

The EMBL-EBI contract will initially utilise 1.5MW of capacity across six Technology Cells within Kao Data London One’s first technology suite (TS01), offering the ability to scale quickly into the new development in TS02 as future demands require.

EMBL-EBI provides some of the world’s most comprehensive open access biological data, used by millions of researchers in academia and industry globally. To-date, their data centers store over 270 Petabytes (277,000 Terabytes) of raw storage; an amount that continues to grow daily, as new information from life science research and genomic sequencing aids scientists in the quest to understand our world and cure mankind’s most life-threatening diseases.

Although a research organisation with global reach, EMBL-EBI requires local data center resources and Kao Data’s London One facility is situated a short distance away along the M11. This provides easy access for the research institute’s data center engineers, ensuring continuity of in-house support, uptime for data users and a significant saving in operating expenditure (OPEX).

Additionally, the location of the Harlow campus enabled decision makers to visit the site and build relationships with the Kao Data team, who demonstrated the facilities industry-leading design, award-winning CSR aspects and OCP-Ready capabilities. Its ultra-low PUE, reduced carbon footprint and commitment to 100 percent renewable energy sources provide a highly energy efficient environment with a low cost of operation, which played an equally important factor in the selection process.

“The biological data we store and share through our data resources are used by life science researchers all over the world to power new discoveries,” said Steven Newhouse, Head of Technical Services, EMBL-EBI. “As such, data center space, physical security and infrastructure availability were critical in our decision-making. Kao Data provided a thorough, detailed and consultative approach, which satisfied our technical and operational requirements. Its team also demonstrated an in-depth understanding of the needs of the life sciences. Their offer gave us the ability to quickly scale within a single campus, which is another key benefit in this data-driven environment.”

Gerard Thibault, CTO, Kao Data, stated, “EMBL-EBI is an incredibly important customer and marks a significant achievement in our strategic plans, demonstrating that Kao Data has a technically advanced, highly sustainable and energy efficient solution that provides key benefits to the life sciences community. Our ability to exceed expectations and secure the contract against incumbent suppliers further illustrates that Kao Data’s technical abilities, our resource and processes surpass legacy data centers in the market.”

Ends

About Kao Data

Situated in the London-Stansted-Cambridge technology corridor, the £200m+ Kao Data Campus provides around 150,000 sq. ft technical space and 35MW power for IT equipment. The completed site will comprise four 8.8MW data centers, providing a customer product set from a Technology Pod, Technology Cell, Technology Suite and complete Technology Building, tailored to meet the demands of conventional ITE infrastructure, through to specialist HPC and Edge at Scale deployments.

Through technical leadership Kao Data continues to drive innovation increasing reliability supporting 100% availability at reduced total cost of operations. Dynamic load tracking at the campus site ensures high energy-efficiency with ultras-low PUE <1.2., even at 20% ITE utilisation. The company has made the added commitment to 100% renewable energy to power its data centers.

Served by a dedicated and redundant 43,5MVA power supply, the quality of the design, construction and systems installation has helped Kao Data achieve BREEAM excellent certification. The technical capability, hyper-connectivity strategy and secure data resilience of the Kao Data Campus makes it ideally placed to support both cloud and hybrid-cloud solutions for a range of enterprise businesses, including financial services, life sciences, defence and the health sector.

For more details, please visit www.kaodata.com 

About EMBL-EBI

EMBL's European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) is a global leader in the storage, analysis and dissemination of large biological datasets. We help scientists realise the potential of ‘big data’ by enhancing their ability to exploit complex information to make discoveries that benefit humankind.

We are at the forefront of computational biology research, with work spanning sequence analysis methods, multi-dimensional statistical analysis and data-driven biological discovery, from plant biology to mammalian development and disease.

We are part of EMBL and are located on the Wellcome Genome Campus, near Cambridge, UK, one of the world’s largest concentrations of scientific and technical expertise in genomics. www.ebi.ac.uk

Press Contact

Spa Communications for Kao Data Campus
Simon Merrick
Tel.: +44 1892 511413
[email protected] 

Kao Data Increases Commitment to Sustainability, Deploying 100% Renewable Energy at its London Data Centre Campus

  • Kao Data’s commitment to renewable energy at a zero-price premium ensures that customers are not compromised in their requirements for multi-tariff energy options
  • Use of renewable energy at Kao Data Campus will reduce CO2 emissions by +80,000 tons per annum, the equivalent of removing +30,000 vehicles from the road
  • When combined with Kao’s ultra-efficient, mechanical free Indirect Evaporative Cooling (IEC), Kao delivers a highly scalable, more sustainable and lower cost solution for customers over the life cycle

Kao Data, the home of innovation and UK’s leading entrant to the wholesale collocation data center market, has announced it will operate using 100 percent renewable energy and be cost neutral to its customers. When the campus is operating at full load (43.5MVA), this will effectively reduce CO2 emissions by +80,000 tons per annum, the equivalent of removing +30,000 vehicles from the road.

By today’s standards, many legacy data centres and colocation providers are unable to provide the same level of technological advancement, scalability and low cost of operations as those built on innovative hyperscale principles. Kao’s commitment to innovation and continuous improvement, providing renewable energy at a zero-price premium, ensures that customers are not compromised in their requirements for multi-tariff energy options.

Paul Finch, COO, Kao Data, stated, “although the industry can evidence tremendous improvements in operational efficiency over the last decade, data centers will continue to be an increasing consumer of power driven by consumer demand. The EU Commission recently concluded by 2030 annual energy consumption relating to servers and infrastructure is forecast to rise to 75TWh. It is Kao Data’s belief that we need to work closely with our supply-chain to ensure renewable energy remains fully accessible, promoting sustainability and strong industry stewardship.”

The data center market is irrevocably linked to the utility industry. There are very few people in the developed world that are not dependent on the data streaming through these buildings or on the energy coursing through the power lines linking our homes, work and communities together. As such data centers are increasingly becoming more sustainably developed and powered, something that is fundamental to Kao Data’s corporate social responsibility ethos.

Kao Data’s campus is engineered to be highly efficient, utilising 100% ‘free-cooling’ to reduce the complexity of both the mechanical and electrical systems. This results in an ultra-low PUE even at very low customer IT utilisation. Achieving 100% renewable energy use is a long-standing commitment and demonstrates the effectiveness of Kao Data’s business processes and responsibility to improve operational performance, provide increased assurance and reduce the environmental impact of the business.

Ends

About Kao Data

Situated in the London-Stansted-Cambridge technology corridor, the £200m+ Kao Data Campus provides around 150,000 sq. ft. technical space and 35MW power for IT equipment. The completed site will comprise four 8.8MW data centers, each divided into four 2.2MW Technology Suites.

Served by a dedicated and redundant 43,5MVA power supply, the quality of the design, construction and systems installation has helped Kao Data achieve BREEAM excellent certification. The technical capability, hyper-connectivity strategy and secure data resilience of the Kao Data Campus makes it ideally placed to support both cloud and hybrid-cloud solutions for a range of enterprise businesses, including financial services, life sciences, defence and the health sector.

For more details, please visit www.kaodata.com

Press Contact

Spa Communications for Kao Data Campus
Simon Merrick
Tel.: +44 1892 511413
[email protected]