The Evolution of Colocation in the Modern Digital Economy
One-to-one with Davide Suppia, Country Manager of DATA4 Italy
Today, the vast majority of companies operating in Europe are facing the challenge of Digital Transformation, a process that is essential to ensuring competitiveness in the marketplace, made even more necessary by the increase in data traffic caused by the outbreak of the pandemic. Every day a company doesn’t invest in digital transformation, it loses ground to those who are already doing it. But that’s not all: a lack of investment now means the potential inability to adopt new technologies in the future.
What is the role of Colocation Data Centers in the increasingly digital Italian economy? Davide Suppia, Country Manager of DATA4 Italy, tells us about it.
The exceptional circumstances of the crisis have forced us to urgently review our working methods and the IT infrastructure implemented to support them, highlighting the key role of data centers as the foundation of the digital economy. The Italian government was, in fact, one of the first in Europe to recognise data centers as ‘critical infrastructures’, paying particular attention to them within the recovery plan, as they are essential to ensuring the economic functioning of the country. It is within this context that DATA4 operates, financing and managing its own Data Centers and offering flexible colocation services (space, power, cooling, security) that can be adapted to the needs of different types of companies, from small-medium enterprises to larger ones. As a 100% carrier-neutral operator connected to more than 220 cloud destinations and telecom operators, we are able to offer our customers access to a rich partner ecosystem, which includes IBM, Retelit, VAR Group and TI Sparkle, and to independently manage their preferred type of connectivity. During this period of great uncertainty at a global level, DATA4 has worked hard on business continuity and security, preparing a plan to ensure business continuity in compliance with government regulations, and strengthen the infrastructures to withstand any spikes in connection requests from major providers at the Cornaredo Campus.
Mr. Suppia, after Digital Transformation, sustainability is the next pillar on which the government’s recovery plan is based. What initiatives is DATA4 implementing?
The economy of the future is based on the digital ecosystem, in which data centers with a high environmental impact form the foundation for interconnecting our country’s companies and driving continuous growth. Our Data Centers are designed in an eco-responsible way to reduce the energy consumption related to cooling and ensure compliance with energy standards. DATA4’s commitment to the environment goes hand in hand with a concern for the health of the people working at the Campus. We believe that underlying the functioning of a complex machine such as our Data Center, where no interruptions are allowed, is the protection of the people who work there every day, putting them in a position to work according to the highest safety and prevention measures in force. What we are trying to build with our initiatives, is an interconnected digital supply chain where digitalisation and communication between stakeholders in the sector become the strengths of our business model, without neglecting the environment and the value of individuals.
