NTC Services AS(NTC) has from 2005 designed, delivered, built and operated turnkey data centers in the SME segment in Norway. We provide 24/7/365 services for these business-critical installations. From the first installations, the focus has been on sustainability, i.e. the most energy-efficient combinations of products to deliver the lowest possible Power Usage Efficiency (PUE). Early adopters such as Statoil and EMGS were the first customers in Norway to adopt InRow cooling with encapsulated hot zones, which helped to reduce the PUE down to approx. 1.25 – more than halving what was normal at the time.

Today, with simple measures, we can build data centers that deliver a PUE below 1.2. With newer technology, such as Rear Door Heat Exchangers (USystems), direct ice water cooling (Cloud&Heat) and immersion cooling Submer), it will be possible to achieve PUEs below 1.1 – which in turn means huge savings on the energy bill. The most energy-efficient facilities have a holistic approach. We use the most efficient UPSs in the market with 97% (Centiel), which are built modularly to achieve rightsizing at all times and thus reduce CAPEX as you always build in relation to the actual load and do not fire for the crow. On this type of product, you can today achieve a Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) of a whopping 9 nines, i.e. 9.99999999, i.e. milliseconds of downtime within 1 year, combined with an extremely low Mean Time To Repair (MTTR). These properties then result in lower ownership costs over time (OPEX), which should always be taken into account when choosing equipment suppliers.

Many of our customers in the SME segment choose to build in existing buildings. We build everything from former shelters, to warehouses and all possible variants that you wouldn’t think would be suitable for the purpose. In this context, it is important at an early stage to choose an area with short-distance electricity, i.e. not too far from the nearest transformer station, so that you avoid construction contributions and large costs with babbling in a ditch up to the location. A very nice contribution by building in an existing building is that you save the environment and the CO2 account with the emissions that the production of concrete and steel contributes in connection with new construction. If you are going to build a new building, you can consider container-based solutions or prefabricated solutions that can reduce the construction time from order date to completion. RZ-Products, for example, has a portfolio right down to simple rack format and up to Hyperscale solutions, with built-in properties for EMP damping, burglary protection, water protection and whatever properties are required.

An element that has become relevant in connection with sustainability is the introduction of the circular economy in smaller data centres. We see an increasing proportion of used equipment in the data centres, reuse of racks, PDUs, cooling and other equipment. Over the years, far too much equipment has ended up straight into recycling, even though much could have had great reuse value. This should also be included in future accounting on each individual data center’s CO2 accounting. Lower purchase prices are of course a great motivator, but the sustainability gains should receive much more and deserved focus.

NTC uses a large assortment of suppliers to stitch together solutions that satisfy the customer’s requirements and specifications. Nobody has everything and the big manufacturers are not necessarily the best or the cheapest. The most important thing is that you build in relation to what the data centers are actually supposed to deliver, and then there will very often be hybrid solutions from a complex group of manufacturers that do this in an optimal way.

Our assignments begin with an inspection of relevant locations. There we seek to uncover conditions ahead of the assignment, which potential problem areas must be overcome in order to build an optimal facility. These problem areas can often be costly and it will be important to be aware of these in advance.

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