Switzerland’s most innovative data center to be built in the SGBA
At around 3000 feet above sea level, the small St.GallenBodenseeArea town of Gais is currently witnessing a flurry of construction activities. Following a substantial financial commitment by the developer SAK (the St. Gallisch-Appenzellischen Kraftwerke AG or the Utility Corporation of the Cantons of St.Gallen and Appenzell), Switzerland’s most innovative data center, the «Rechenzentrum Ostschweiz», is being built right here.
The new data center in Eastern Switzerland will further strengthen the Information and Communications Technology Cluster in the St.GallenBodenseeArea (SGBA). Companies and organizations will be provided a new array of services and products to meet their requirements of racks and data center footage in a highly reliable and energy efficient manner.
The new data center serves as a shining example of SGBA’s strengths in innovation and sustainability. The heat generated by the data center, for example, is fed and reused in a combined heat supply; and a photovoltaic system covering the building’s facades and roof is generating electricity, which is used by local businesses, like the Gais cheese dairy, for instance.
Anticipating an energy efficiency rate of 1.15, Gais will also be the site of Switzerland’s most energy efficient data center, made possible by an advanced cooling system. A gauge for the efficient use of energy, this value means that a mere 15% of the data center’s total energy consumption is used for cooling and heat exchange.
In addition to the outstanding energy efficiency rate, the new data center will boast an availability of 99,998%. This value is equivalent to the highest availability level for any data center and is called TIER 4 in technical terms.
Lukas Mäder, Deputy Managing Director of SAK, considers the unique location of the town of Gais as the key factor for the project’s success: «Gais just turned out to be the ideal location. Its specific altitude allows for the data center’s outstanding energy efficiency rate. Given Gais’ geographic spot in the region and beyond, we furthermore expect a very high degree of capacity utilization, because in addition to SAK, every sizeable national provider will offer their services through their proprietary optical fibers coming from our new data center in Eastern Switzerland. Finally, even the services of large international providers will be made available in Eastern Switzerland through two data centers in the Zurich area and through geo-redundant optical fiber connections offered by us, the SAK.»
With its ambitious and innovative new data center, Eastern Switzerland’s leading utility company SAK is upgrading the already excellent IT infrastructure of the St.GallenBodenseeArea’s ICT cluster, and thus further improving the business location SGBA.
