Uptime with DCK: Sustainability pays off

Hello there, or shall I say, welcome back? Six months after our last episode with DCK’s illustrious Yevgeniy Sverdlik, we are relaunching the podcast, under the working title ‘Uptime with DCK.’ The mission is the same: find out what industry leaders think of the latest trends in data center design and operation, and share their hard-won industry expertise. In the first episode of the new season, editor Max Smolaks (that’s me) chats with Dominic Ward, CEO of data center operator Verne Global, and Lindsay Smart, head of sustainability at Triple Point – the investment management company working on behalf of Digital 9 Infrastructure, which acquired Verne Global last September. Verne runs an unusual data center campus in Iceland, located on a site previously used as a military base by the US Navy, and then by NATO. It is powered by 100% renewable electricity from hydroelectric and geothermal sources. The business is going well: earlier this year, Verne announced it would more than double the size of the campus to 40MW. We discuss the evolving role of data centers that are located far from the end-users, but close to renewable energy sources. We also find out what Verne learned from that one time they were mining cryptocurrencies. And of course, we talk about the recent acquisition of the company by D9 in a deal worth £231 million (~$313m).