Nordic Nations Pitch For US Data Centers

judgecorp writes "Nordic nations are all pitching for business from data centre owners, based on their countries' excellent network provision, plentiful electricity from renewable sources, and a climate where servers can be kept cool cheaply, using the ambient air temperature, with no need for chillers. A Swedish delegation is visiting California to lure other players to follow Facebook into Sweden. Meanwhile, Iceland now has a new multi-tenant data centre to join the existing Thor site, and Denmark has a container-park data centre for its financial industry."

Comments

Denmark, you must be kidding

[jlar]

Denmark gets most of our electricity from coal based electricity plants and a small percentage from renewable sources (mainly wind). And we have the most expensive electricity (~41 cents per kWh) in Europe and only topped by Tonga in the World. You would have to be literally insane to place an international data center here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_pricing

The financial industry data center is probably placed here because of sensitivity of data or because they have to be placed close to the stock exchange. Or something along that line. It is surely not because we have plentiful cheap and renewable energy.

Re:Denmark, you must be kidding

[jlar]

"How can Denmark have electricity twice the price of Finland?"

Because taxes constitute half of the price. Or to put it differently: electricity is taxed by approximately 100% in Denmark. But I just read that commercial entities are exempt from some of the taxes. But even without any direct taxes we pay twice the price consumers do in the US. And that is probably caused by other types of regulation on electricity production. Our politicians have a nasty habbit of implementing hidden taxes that are subsequently paid by the consumer.

Re:Denmark, you must be kidding

[jlar]

"Denmark got 33% of its electricity from renewable sources (and it was a bad wind year, only 80% of a normal year)."

That is only half true. 33% of the electricity _production_ was from renewable sources. Not the consumption. The problem is that wind energy is fluctuating with the wind speed. We are therefore exporting surplus wind energy at very low prices during peak production periods and importing expensive electricity (which can be renewable, e.g. from Swedish nuclear plants) during calm periods. And even worse: every one of these cheap kWh that we export are subsidized by Danish consumers.

But my main point is: We do not effectively get 33% of the electricity of the electricity that we consume from renewable sources (and implicitly ~20% from wind energy). According to a recent study we actually only consume half of the wind energy in Denmark (i.e. 10%).

Re:Iceland???

[_Shad0w_]

That being the magma they use to generate around 25% of their power requirements via geothermal energy. The majority of the other 75% comes from hydroelectric. Less than 1% of their power comes from fossil fuels. They also use the geothermal energy for heating the vast majority of buildings in Iceland.

The average temperature is also bellow 15C, afaicr, which makes cooling things a doddle.

All things considered, I wouldn't mind living there. If their economy wasn't fucked.

Yup

[upside]

As mentioned, the Swedes have declared all data passing through it free game for its security apparatus. Great for hosting your sensitive data.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance#Sweden

Sweden???!!!

[FriendlyLurker]

I'd be more worried about data breaches and server seizures due to their crazy politicians, crazy justice system! and willingness to bend over for all manner of privacy invading measures to satisfy foreign interests. It will be a hot day in Iceland before we move any servers to Sweden. Go Iceland!

Re:Innovative

[billcopc]

Too late. Sweden sold out years ago, in exchange for quasi-NATO privileges. They are now just as crooked as the U.S. and U.K.

Re:Innovative

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because you trust a network to handle shared military information doesn't mean you can or should trust the same network to handle trade secrets, financial information, or military state secrets.

Shouldn't be a big problem. As far as I know none of the Nordic countries have a history of handing over snooped information to competing companies. The same can't be said for the U.S. (The Wikileaks documents have shown that CIA still practices this behaviour.)

Re:Iceland???

[Dave Whiteside]

the only main sticking point is that Iceland only has 3 data cables - Europe, Scotland and Greenland - though I think another is in the pipeline to the US / Canada

As a swede I welcome this

[mikael_j]

The best part about this initiative from my perspective is that these data centers rarely wind up in Stockholm (where a lot of the other IT and dev jobs are) but rather in smaller cities up north where power and land are cheap. And while a data center itself might not bring all that many jobs (I believe I read somewhere that the estimate for Facebook's data center in Luleå was something like 30 to 50 permanent jobs) it does mean that infrastructure is put in place which makes the region more attractive to other companies looking to build data centers. It is also likely to create jobs in the surrounding area and long-term it prevents "brain drain" in the form of skilled workers moving to Stockholm, Malmö och Göteborg just to find work.

Re:Finland, three new nuke plants coming

[Skal Tura]

The nature of my job makes me research the situation constantly. Problem is high transit costs in Finland. Cheapest i've found is 1.3€/Mbps as a special deal commitment in a small business budget range, above that HE.net was willing to come to Finland for min. 5Gbps commitment at 10k $ which would be currently 1.52€/Mbps.
Goto central Europe and you can get transit at 0.8€/Mbps, and Peering will actually be a huge net benefit. But here in Finland you got to stick mostly with transit.

Transport prices are also high, so you cannot connect to say AMS-IX on the cheap neither because the transport costs takes you to near transit prices.

Still, most Finnish companies are charging around 5-7€/Mbps of transit. Colocation prices are not cheap neither. Many of the DCs i see has huge chillers and do not depend upon outside weather to be cold at all, infact, seems quite to the contrary.

Peering is next to useless in Finland too because of the FICIX peering monopoly, and the only worthwhile peers won't peer with you unless you are ready to pay in total more than transit, ie. Elisa wants you to hook up on all FICIX locations which will bring the cost of exchanged data way too high, seeing that FICIX peering amount is quite low. Also Elisa is nasty to peer with, and the peering will not work properly.

The choice of Transit providers is also very limited compared to Sweden.

Also, if you are on off-net location the costs skyrocket to around 15€/Mbps with 1Gbps commit, even if doesn't require any new fiber to be laid out.

However, new DCs are being build constantly, there was several new majors ones built last year alone, one of which has military spec physical security (old military bunker or something).

The transit prices are not insane high, but they are definitively not competitive. Same goes for electricity.

Re:Except the labor laws will kill them

[Skal Tura]

LOL!
I guess you don't live in Finland.
Wages here are tiny, taxes are insane high.
In Finland you will know what it means to be POOR.
If you have a job you are in worse situation than unemployed people are, and the slightest, smallest, surprise expense can make you efficiently pay for working, unless your salary is VERY high even in capital area terms.
The total tax rate for minimum wage is about 60%, if you are educated skill worker earning well tax rate can be 90%, it's just hidden mostly.

From 3k € gross income (which is good here btw), you will retain about 2200€
Apartments costs 800-900€ a month, unless you go for the cheapest which are 500-600€.
That sounds great, 1300€ left in hand?
Yeah, let's assume you are joe average and have a work travel distance of about 20-25km, so you won't get tax benefits for using your car, but public transportation sucks too bad to use it.
60€ insurance, 150€ a month on gas, and say you do even the minimal maintenance for the car 50€ a mo (Oils, annual inspection, one small repair operation a year, ie. brake pads. Exhaust w/ mufflers will cost more than this budget allows), have an average 7k € car which you are paying 300€ a month. 560€ cost right there just to get to your place of work.
740€ remains.
But food costs a lot, you are having "big salary" so you don't want to stay on macaroni diet: 200€ a month at least (Lunch @ work is 6-7€ if employer subsidized)
540€ remains.
Phone bill: 40€
Home internet: 40€
Electricity: 30€ a mo (that's quite cheap)
450€ remains.

This 450€ is your buying power, to do your hobbies with, have fun, take your vacations etc.
5400€ a year. After a nice couple weeks vacation in the Caribbean you are left with around 2k € annual buying power. ~167€ a month for your clothing, health care and hobbies. Oh yeah, health care isn't free.

There is a reason why for many Finnish guys/girls even a 20€ cost is too much.