Aruba Hyper Cloud Data Center set to create 'first-ever' ecological network in Italy

The new data center will be built in the Tecnopolo Tiburtino area in Rome and is expected to be completed by Spring 2020. Although it will be similar to the one Aruba opened last year in Milan, it will become the benchmark for Italian companies and others across Europe.  Already in the planning stages, the project for the new data center will receive an investment of around 300 million Euros over the course of five years.

This will be Aruba's fourth data center in Italy, alongside two in Arezzo (IT1 and IT2) ) in the central part of Italy and the Global Cloud Data centre (IT3) in the North, close to Milan. The four sites are part of a larger network spread across Europe and includes Italy, Germany, France, the UK, the Czech Republic, and Poland.

“Our goal has always been to respond to our customers' requirements, and we have already done this by creating the Global Cloud Data Center near Milan, in order to meet the needs of customers which want to address Italian and European markets using our DCs to host their services,” explained Stefano Cecconi, CEO of Aruba S.p.A. “We now want to do the same with the Rome Data Center in response to the demands of the international corporations looking to have their base in Italy. It’s an essential part of the development of our European and national network of data centers.

The IT4 data center will cover a surface area of 74,000m? in order to comply with the highest standards in terms of resilience and infrastructure quality. When complete, along with IT1 and IT3, it will be given rating 4 certification in accordance with the ANSI/TIA 942-A standard, as well as being connected to the main internet backbone. It will also boast multiple interconnections with both the Arezzo campus and global cloud data centers.

Main features of the Hyper Cloud Data Center

·         surface area of 74,000m? fully owned, with 52,000m? dedicated to the data center, more than 30,000m? of which will be data rooms;

·         up to 66 MW power, from 100% renewable energy sources;

·         totally ecological thanks to the use of renewable energy, certified by the European Guarantee of Origin scheme (GO Certification), added to which is the fact that it produces its own photovoltaic energy and uses cooling systems with optimised efficiency (free-cooling);

·         backbone connections to the IT3 data center in Ponte San Pietro (BG)/Milan and the IT1 and IT2 data centers in Arezzo, plus external internet connections to the North and South;

·         maximum levels of logical and physical security with access control and multiple security perimeters;

·         planned and managed to comply with the following certification requirements: ANSI/TIA 942-A Rating 4, ISO 9001, 27001, 14001 and 50001;

·         carrier neutral data center with managed connectivity services, redundant fiber connections and dedicated transport services;

·         plans for approximately 200 new jobs;

·         office and warehouse areas available to clients;

·         easily accessible location from Fiumicino (FCO) and Ciampino (CIA) international airports as well as the main railway stations: Roma Termini and Roma Tiburtina served by highspeed trains.

Purpose of the project

This additional investment completes the Italian network boasted by Aruba, which plans to become the main benchmark when it comes to data center services and solutions - both physical and in the Cloud - for national and international companies, thanks to a range of infrastructure solutions that will make the most of the data centers distribution, now covering the North, Center and South of Italy, as well as connections and redundancy with the rest of the network in other countries.

The whole Aruba data center network will make it possible to plan and launch unique solutions with the highest levels of efficiency and performance. For example, in the field of disaster recovery and business continuity, customers will have the option to decide where to base their primary and/or secondary infrastructure, by choosing between colocation, Cloud or hybrid solutions. The same is true for Colocation, Housing, Dedicated Servers and racks, as well as whole data rooms that will be made available.

Aruba is also a founding member of CISPE - the coalition of Cloud Infrastructure Service Providers in Europe, which created a specific Code of Conduct in order to anticipate the GDPR, helping customers and end users retain control of their data and trust their service providers.  To comply with the requirements of the CISPE Code, Aruba's Private Cloud, Public Cloud, Cloud Backup and Cloud Object Storage services, are identified by a ‘CISPE-declared service' hallmark, which certifies that the provider will not access or use the data of customers for its own purposes, such as data mining, data profiling or direct marketing. This allows Aruba's Data Center customers and citizens to freely store their own data securely within the European Economic Area.