NTC Services AS(NTC) is a small and Norwegian-owned player in the Norwegian data center industry. We deliver turnkey, complete data centers to small and medium-sized customers. We use combinations of the best and most modern technology so that the data centers we build are the market’s most energy- and space-efficient. This provides both a good CAPEX over time, but also a lower OPEX, because an optimized solution will require less service.
Our services are short-distance, whether it is installation, service or consulting assignments. Therefore, we see an increasing number of foreign companies using our services locally as it is cost-effective and environmentally best. The perception that Norwegian labor is too expensive is demonstrably wrong.
NTC has been in the market since the turn of the millennium and luckily has some customers with us from that time, which can be considered a good sign. In connection with these older facilities, there may be a need for remediation of older equipment. If there is a reuse value for the equipment, we use it in existing or new facilities, as part of the circular economy. Sustainability in practice. Some equipment cannot be reused, this is recycled at Batteritur and similar companies, so that none of the materials go to waste.
We see and hear a lot about sustainability in the media and there is unfortunately a lot of misdirected criticism associated with the data center industry. The majority of Norwegian data centers deal with the most necessary use of energy, for research purposes, data storage, use of the most used applications such as word processing, spreadsheets, video meetings, shop systems, internet, AI and much more.
There are huge savings to be made in large parts of existing data centres. The very simplest thing is to ensure separation between hot and cold zones between the intake side and the exhaust side in the data racks. This alone will reduce the energy consumption for cooling by 35-45%, provided that the openings between the equipment in the rack have been blinded. This type of assignment is often carried out by NTC as a result of inspections we have carried out in other contexts or that the customer has seen a sharp increase in electricity bills which they would like to have analysed. There are a number of retrofit products that make it possible to retrofit this type of separation of heat and cold air flows, which immediately results in greatly reduced power consumption.
HyperScale or small data centre, there is little difference in the quality of the solutions. A normal colocation center still has loads below 7kW per rack, which are easily solved with InRow technology with an enclosed hot zone or back-door coolers. If the need is up to 100kW per rack, we solve that too, we have the technology and the space. Most small and medium-sized data centers have the advantage that they can mostly be built in existing empty buildings. This reduces the CO2 footprint considerably by consuming significantly less concrete and steel. A distributed solution of smaller data centers that work together, such as e.g. NHDC, where you can have applications in one data center, backup and disaster recovery in another, can have its advantages, rather than having everything concentrated at one address. Our own small colocation center with 60 rack spaces, which has never had downtime, has a flexibility, quality, service and security level that is good enough for the most demanding enterprise customers. Our own customers often use a mix of small and large suppliers of colocation services, to spread risk, for convenience reasons such as close distance to the workplace and not least that we are able to deliver acceptable SLAs.
In conclusion, we would like to make a claim. It is that, despite our size, we deliver services, flexibility, quality, safety and sustainability completely on par with the best and largest on the market.
