KAUST opens new commercial tier-III data center in partnership with Global Data Hub

The opening of a new commercial tier-III data center was announced by King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) on Thursday. This is in partnership with Global Data Hub (GDH), a Dubai-based data center space provider.

The opening ceremony took place at the KAUST Research and Technology Park. The state-of-the-art facility will solve regional data center needs in the Kingdom and provide cloud services. It also symbolizes the continued growth of KAUST as a destination for scientific and technological research as they continue to attract other forward-thinking corporate partners.

High availability of IT is often required for businesses to keep running; however, on-prem IT teams are not always a viable option. The current solution is co-location or the cloud which has resulted in increasing demand for data centers.

The Middle East data center market is growing, driven by a need for robust IT environments along with secure cloud services as necessitated by government entities issuing regulations requiring local data to stay within a country - and within that country's cloud.

GDH is best known for the development of the Dubai Silicon Oasis data center, a world-class facility completed in 2014. At KAUST, GDH will be implementing a similar model to provide a flexible co-location purpose-built data center that serves the diverse needs of KAUST, its research park tenants, and other interested external customers such as global corporations.

The 27,600m2 structure will house 8,000 m2 of white space, with a minimum capacity for its future customers of 14.4 MW IT load.

KAUST will be the first university in the region to have a commercial tier III data center on premise.

The GDH/KAUST partnership is significant both because it will solve KAUST data center needs as well as attract other multinational corporations who are looking to store and keep their most critical and valuable data and equipment safe.

The data center will also help to foster international collaborations, contributing to the cultivation of knowledge in an innovation-driven economy. The project with GDH supports KAUST’s ongoing mission of tackling pressing issues such as sustainability for energy and environment — key elements of the Kingdom’s Vision for 2030.