DCD is very pleased to announce the winners of the 2021 edition of the annual DCD Awards , celebrating the best data center projects and most talented people in the industry.
The finalists were selected by an independent panel of data center experts from hundreds of entries, submitted by contestants from across the world - and this year marks the return of our gala ceremony to celebrate the winners.
Click here to see the names of all the finalists .
Data Center Architecture Award.
Winner: Ashton Old Baths (United Kingdom) by Tameside Council
In collaboration with Sudlows and MCAU Architects
With data center construction booming, architects are raising the stakes and setting a new standard for beautiful data centers.
This category was decided by a public vote, in which more than 4,000 people expressed their preference from a highly competitive shortlist.
The winner turned an abandoned Victorian bath house in Greater Manchester, into a data center which holds local council and NHS infrastructure, along with a cooperative offering commercial space. Tameside Council said this data center was about providing the digital infrastructure needed to enable and keep digital businesses in the local area. See more in our profile of the data center .
Edge Data Center Project of the Year
Winner: Edge Centre's EC1 Grafton: The Sustainable Edge
The Edge is moving from the era of promise to the era of delivery. This award category shows how Edge is evolving and diversifying while redefining the opportunities that technology can represent.
The Grafton facility in New South Wales, is Edge Centre's regional test case data center. The site has never been connected to a utility grid and is run on 100 percent solar power.
Category sponsor: VIAVI Solutions
Enterprise Data Center Evolution Award
Winner: Intertek-PSI ERP System Migration
In collaboration with Skytap & Meridian IT
This Award recognizes the increasingly complex enterprise data center journey (which may include new builds, extensions, modernisation, outsourcing, cloud and hybrid IT) . Enterprise is far more than just a consumer in this landscape.
The project involved the migration of a business critical and complex financial ERP system into the cloud within a six month window.
Category sponsor: Honeywell
Mission-Critical Tech Innovation Award
Winner: Microsoft Cloud-Production Two-Phase Immersion Cooling Deployment
This award is all about tech. It recognizes cutting-edge technology solutions from the worlds of: critical power, cooling tech, monitoring and operational management systems.
Microsoft has deployed the world's first public cloud production environment using two-phase immersion cooling. The cooling system lowers energy consumption and can cool small footprints as well as enhancing lifecycle and improving sustainability.
Category sponsor: CBRE
Carbon Champion Award
Winner: Digital Realty River Cooling Project in Marseille
This award focuses on the industry's path towards net-zero, recognizing the world’s most energy-aware and innovative approaches to building and fitting-out sustainable digital infrastructure.
Digital Realty's investment into three data centers in Marseille has made the city a leading Internet Hub. Two of the data centers are cooled with water from the local river system and the IT is cooled via Heat Exchange. 22 MW is cooled in this way saving an estimated 18,400 MWh and 795 tons of CO2 at full load.
Category sponsor: Schneider Electric.
Data Center Design Innovation Award
Winner: CSC LUMI Super-computer, Kajaani, Finland
In collaboration with Granlund & Synopsis
This award recognizes facilities that have pushed the boundaries in terms of design and construction to deliver a building which overcame a unique challenge and met (or exceeded) the original project objectives.
The design and construction of the CSC 'state of the art' supercomputer illustrates how a project needs to factor in modifications mid-project. The HPC hardware and its specifications were only available midway through the design process meaning design and construction were conducted side by side. The resulting data center has a negative CO2 footprint as it is powered by renewables and its waste heat is used to heat local buildings.
Category sponsor: Node Pole
Middle East & Africa Data Center Development Award
Winner: Rack Centre LGS 1, Nigeria
This award showcases data center development which has pushed the boundaries of design and construction in the context of specific local requirements and challenges.
With this project, Rack Centre doubled the capacity of the largest carrier-neutral data center in West Africa. It took 80 weeks from February 2020 and updated the base configuration from N+2 to 3N2, achieving major CAPEX savings and a PUE of 1.45 (in tropical climate conditions).
Category sponsor: DCD
Latin America Data Center Development Award
Winner: Scala Data Centres Carbon-Neutral Colocation Data Center, Brazil
This award showcases data center development which has pushed the boundaries of design and construction in the context of specific local requirements and challenges.
Scala is the first colo in Latin America to move to 100 percent renewables. This has been achieved largely via PPAs and a process of scoping, advanced procurement practices and carbon offset. The company is successfully reducing OPEX whilst demonstrating ESG leadership in the region.
Category sponsor: DCD
Emerging Asia Pacific Data Center Development Award
Winner: SUPERNAP Thailand GWS Cloud and SD-WAN implementations
This award showcases data center development which has pushed the boundaries of design and construction in the context of specific local requirements and challenges.
Supernap Thailand’s data center operations team demonstrated their outstanding capabilities keeping an important Cisco SD-WAN and Cloud platform deployment on time, whilst facing numerous supply chain challenges exacerbated by the pandemic.
Category sponsor: DCD
Data Center Construction Team of the Year
Winner: Bouygues E&S VIRTUS LONDON7 Data Center Delivery Team
The delivery of a data center is a race against the clock. This award recognizes teams who have shown commitment and initiative in their building projects, and who have delivered data centers which far exceeded expectations.
This was a technically challenging project involving the delivery of both a 9MW liquid cooled HPC center and a 28MW IT build. As the projects progressed through 2021, they faced limitations imposed by Covid but needed also to cope with the flexibility of changing designs.
Category sponsor: Legrand
Data Center Operations Team of the Year
Winner: NVIDIA & Kao Data - Cambridge-1 Super-computer Deployment Team
No one runs a data center in isolation, and teamwork is a crucial skill alongside the technical know-how the job requires. This award recognizes the operations teams who make sure the operation runs reliably and effectively, as well as responding to the unforeseen.
This team was formed for the installation of a 400 petaflops supercomputer at their Cambridge facility - the UK's most powerful. Travel was severely restricted by Covid so the whole process was coordinated remotely across the Atlantic using advanced technologies like digital twin and AI robotics.
Category sponsor: Caterpillar
Young Mission-Critical Engineer of the Year
Winner: Chris Hayward, PhillipsPage Associates
The data center community needs a new generation, ready to pick up the baton and take the sector on towards undreamt-of achievements. This award recognizes individuals with a track record of achievement in project leadership and delivery and who have a higher profile in our industry than their tender years would suggest.
Chris is a lead mechanical engineer that has worked on numerous data center projects across Europe. He regularly goes above and beyond what is expected of an engineer of his grade, and is showing a great propensity to nurture other engineers within his team. Well done on this achievement Chris and best of luck with your future endeavors.
Category sponsor: Kirby Group Engineering
Sustainability Pioneer
Winner: Aidin Aghamiri, CEO of ITRenew
Sustainability has moved the industry away from the belief that all that mattered was efficiency inside the four walls of the data center towards an awareness of the many ways carbon is generated throughout the life of the data center. Sustainability has also drawn the industry's focus to its responsibility in terms of resources, water and materials used in construction and equipment - as well as its social and ethical responsibilities.
This year’s winner personifies not only the entrepreneurial approach to doing business but also the strong sense of social responsibility and environmental stewardship that we need to see more of. A pioneer of circularity even when it wasn’t cool, he’s built a global business out of it. His strategy can be summed up in his personal motto “refuse to settle for a world that pits economic success against social good,” which has become the company’s mission statement.
For more than two decades his company, ITRenew, has been maximizing the lifetime value of data center technology through innovative circular economic models and a comprehensive portfolio of decommissioning and data security services, edge and component products, and rack-scale compute and storage solutions.
Category sponsor: Eaton
Outstanding Contribution to the Data Center Industry
Winner: Lex Coors, Chief Data Center Technology and Engineering Officer for Interxion | A Digital Realty Company
Every industry has its champions, thought leaders and pioneers who will be revered for their achievements for years to come. The previous winners of this Award are all distinguished by their extensive service to the data center industry through publication, education, developing innovation and active involvement with the data center community globally.
"Lex has been around since I can remember and since the industry as we know it began," says DCD CEO George Rockett. "The business he represents has grown from an acorn into a multi-billion euro entity over that time. He is a discussion fire starter, an innovator, and an educator (now with associate professor in front of his name), a communicator, and a major voice of the industry to the likes of the European Commission. Maybe more importantly, he’s a great friend to many of us."
Category sponsor: Mercury
A full breakdown of the awards will be in the next issue of DCD Magazine.
