Iceland to be next ideal data center management location

The Asbru Enterprise Park in Iceland is set to become the next ideal location for data center management and services, due to the country’s renewable green energy sources.

Verne Holdings, the partnering group of wholesale data developer Verne Global has recently signed a contract with the Wellcome Trust to aid the completion of a 44-acre data center campus at the Asbru Enterprise Park in order to create a powerful solution giving users the opportunity to go green without paying higher rates.

“What makes Verne Global unique is that it is able to offer its customers a cost effective, yet truly green solution to their data center needs by providing the benefits of Iceland’s 100 percent free cooling, renewable energy resources and predictable forecasting of energy pricing,” stated Jeff Monroe, CEO of Verne Global.

Furthermore, the Icelandic project Greenqloud is in discussions with Verne Global about data center construction. Eirikur Hrafnsson, CEO of Greenqloud, says that there has been a recent “gold rush” as a result of the devaluation of the Icelandic Krona, the IT history of the country and the emission-free power grid.

The idea behind Greenqloud is to rent out spaces within data centers located in Iceland, then to sell cloud computing services to web companies and individuals across the world. However, what makes this project unique is that it embraces the use of clean power and manages company carbon footprint levels. The cloud computing services include virtual server hosting, data storage, scientific data processing and software as a service infrastructure.

The Greenqloud project is set to launch a small-scale beta service by the fourth quarter of 2010. After that, Greenqloud wants to launch on a much larger, public scale in 2011.

A number of other high-profile customers are also using data centers across Iceland, including web browsing developer Opera Software. The company has been announced as the first customer of the Thor Data Center in Hafnarfjordur.

“The reason Opera Software came to sign an agreement with Thor Data Center is that the company can offer us energy from 100 percent renewable sources,” commented Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner, founder of Opera Software.

For further information about data centers in Iceland visit http://asbru.is/English/Energy/