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| Zeinal Bava, chief executive of PT, and Carlos Pinto, mayor of Covilhã |
PT will implement the largest Data Centre in Portugal and one of the largest in Europe, located in Covilhã. The announcement was made today during the session when the memorandum of understanding between Zeinal Bava, chief executive of PT, and Carlos Pinto, mayor of Covilhã, was signed. The new Data Centre will have in excess of 45,000 m2 (equivalent to 200 tennis courts) and an installation capacity of more than 50,000 servers. It is worth highlighting the level of energy efficiency, translated into savings of 93,000 tons of CO2, 40% reduction of energy consumption and the creation of an eolian park with 28 towers.
According to Zeinal Bava, this project ambitions to cross the border by enabling to serve in the future not only Portuguese, but also international customers, and to respond effectively to the demands of the same. It is worth mentioning that the Data Centre will allow exporting data storage capacity for businesses and cloud computing services, a strategic bet on the Corporate and SME segment business. PT thus gathers conditions to position itself as a player in the European market.
For the region of Covilhã, this project has several benefits associated, at different levels, due to the impact on local development that it may generate. Carlos Pinto even says that “it will constitute (…) a powerful anchor (…) aware of the potential that it represents to irradiate very positive consequences”.
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| Zeinal Bava highlights that PT anticipates trends through this project |
PT anticipates trends
According to Zeinal Bava, through this project, PT anticipates trends in terms of data traffic growth and increase of company needs at this level, responding with “more transportation and processing capacity”. This is a bet that, complemented with the investment in the fibre-optic network, will have direct impact on the offer of new IT solutions by PT for the Corporate and SME segments. The development of cloud computing services will allow Portugal’s entrepreneur’s tissue a significant cost reduction, namely in IT investment, more business efficiency and simultaneously the projection of using new technological services.
There are other benefits for external users. A Data Centre with these characteristics will simultaneously allow the development of new multimedia services and info-communication. Internally, it will allow efficiency maximization of PT’s internal IT systems.
A project, a European reference
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The “investment has a truly patriotic nature”, says Carlos Pinto |
This project is already a European reference. The reasons are based on the use of leading edge technology that allows tripling the current capacity in the national market, an investment of European scale that, according to Zeinal Bava, corresponds to circa 2.5% of the capacity built in the last three years worldwide.
International partnerships for last-generation services are also fundamental. Zeinal Bava highlighted the synergies already created with Microsoft and Cisco, for the remote and secure provision of software and leading edge services to business customers.
Committed to sustainability, PT announced simultaneously the creation of an eolian park with 28 towers that will ensure the production of renewable energy for the Data Centre, a free cooling system as well as a control, monitoring and energy efficiency system. This project is a strategic bet on the significant consumption reduction as it is one of the few that aggregates the joint creation of a Data Centre with a park for renewable energy production.
Finally, the Data Centre is also a reference as it provides for modular construction, allowing future capacity addition. There is also significant impact on the local economy due to the development and innovation of the entrepreneurial tissue. Therefore, Carlos Pinto highlighted “the exceptional added value of a company such as PT in the city’s economic and social tissue”.
The impact will be concretely felt in terms of employment: 100 direct and 400 indirect jobs. In parallel, an IT Innovation Centre will also be created. There will be benefits associated with the attraction of business nuclei for the region, to leverage development and synergy creation with the academic and research environment of the Beira Interior University.
Covilhã was selected from 26 locations
The high levels of seismic safety, social, economic and environmental impact as well as accessibility were part of the selection criteria of the study conducted for the selection of the location, which involved international consultancies. The rules and practices set up by the European Commission’s and by the Uptime Institute’s Code of Conduct on Data Centers were simultaneously taken into consideration. The municipality was selected from a group of 26 locations.
According to the mayor of Covilhã, this “investment has a really patriotic nature, in the current situation of the country”. PT expects the new Data Centre to come into operation in the second half of 2012.