 Welcome to JSA TV and JSA Podcasts, the newsroom for telecom and data center professionals. I'm Jean-Marc Sleemer and joining me today is Thomas Volder, Chairman of the Board of the Data Center Industry Association to talk us through the nation's digital infrastructure marketplace. Thomas, welcome to JSA. I hope you've been keeping well for the last two years. Let's jump right in. How would you describe the Danish data center market today? Hello, thanks for inviting me here. Well, if you look at the Danish data center market, it's been a very, very interesting period throughout the last, let's say, five years. It all started off with Apple doing an investment with a hyperscale data center roughly five, six years ago. And then after that, it just came along. We have Facebook operational now. We have Google in Denmark. We have Microsoft looking at building tree data We have Facebook, which very recently just bought an additional 212 acres of land. We have digital reality or interaction building their Copenhagen 3.0 facility. We have Digiplex building. We have bulk. We have SAP who bought land. So there's so much happening in Denmark. So it's a very, very interesting time to be part of the data center space in Denmark. And I'm sure I forgot to mention something in this round of what happened recently, but there's a lot of stuff going on. So it's very interesting times. Every single player, hyperscale are not hyperscale. It's basically building in the country. And the hyperscale developments have really speeded up in the last 12 months. And we've seen, as you mentioned, Google, Facebook and Microsoft investing billions of dollars into Denmark, which some of them actually the largest foreign capital investment you've ever had in the country's history, which is being replicated in some other countries like Ireland, Portugal and other countries across Europe. But if you look deeper into who's coming into Denmark in terms of investors, what investor type is driving the market forward? Well, obviously the hyperscalers were the first one to come, but that's one part of the market. It might be very big projects, but we see a lot of co-location investments going on. So our co-location segment, which is more or less more than 50 percent of the co-location space is driven by hyperscalers. So on the co-location part, we see a lot of private equity coming into this part. And a lot of these international companies moving in and buying or building co-location space, we also see some Nordic players like bulk infrastructure who deploy data centers around the Nordic because they have a fiber infrastructure business. So we see, I believe that on the co-location space, we actually see a lot of interesting stuff going on next to what is happening on the hyperscale. Okay. You've actually mentioned the Nordics as well. How would you kind of place Denmark within the wider Nordic region in the data center space? Because all the Nordic countries are very big in this industry. I mean, it's compared to the rest of Europe, they are some of the biggest countries in the data center markets. But how does Denmark place within this giant of the North? Well, if I have to play Denmark within the Nordic, first of all, I believe that besides from the Danes and Swedes and the region and Finnish people, a lot of the investors coming outside, they see us as a Nordic region. So it's not like a big competition between Denmark, Norway and Sweden, Finland. But if you look at the market right now, Stockholm is, that's the biggest hub of data centers in the Nordic. Sweden was the early mover in this area. So Sweden is definitely number one when it comes to current investments or let's say current capacity. Then you have Denmark, which has been attracting a lot of these hyperscalers for a number of reasons. If you look in Norway, Norway have been very, very good at attracting co-location investments. Finland, it has been a bit of both. But I believe that Sweden is the biggest. It's also, let's say from a population point of view, it's also the biggest country in the Nordic. But having said Sweden, then Denmark and Norway come close, and then I believe Finland is number four. But you can measure this in the installed capacity. You can measure it in, let's say, capacity to be installed the next year. So I think overall, we just see a booming industry and a lot of interesting stuff going on in the Nordic. And my take on it is that a lot of these investors come here because we have a lot of green energy and we have, let's say, an innovative vision on the data centers of how to use the energy in the most energy efficient way. I think that's some of the upsides of the Nordic. I mean, there's certainly been some very interesting use cases around sustainability in the Nordics, around farming lobsters and heat reuse back to the grids. So the Nordics are definitely ahead when it comes to sustainability discussions. But actually, I was just thinking something just came into my mind because we've had some places in Europe, so some things in Ireland, some things in the Netherlands where governments and local councils and everything are kind of pushing back a little bit on data center development. Do you foresee that to become some sort of issue in the Nordics, or are the Nordics quite at peace with data centers? What I see is that obviously in the European region, or if you look in the Flappedi markets, then there is already a lot of data centers and we do see that limitations of land, some place they even close for additional energy purchase for data centers. So there are some obstacles in some of the other markets. Then they move up to the Nordic for some of the reason I just mentioned. And we see ourselves as a tier two region, which will grow significant. We don't have a public opinion against data centers for sure not in Denmark and my belief is not that we have that in Norway or Sweden or Finland. But for sure it's something that we have to do in a clever way because whenever we occupy a very big amount of energy, then we need to be able from an industry to tell why we do that and how we do that. But I believe one of the ways to keep a good public opinion about that is to tell that when you put a certain amount of energy through a data center, you want to get the best use out of it. And that's something that that we really try to grow as a region. We see a potential for export, for consultancy, for work into this area. So it's also kind of something that will bring investment and work into our region. And then sometimes the discussion is that if it's not placed here, it will be placed somewhere else because I still haven't met people who are ready to give up the digital development. So the data has to be processed somewhere. So that's how it is right now. But for sure it's something that we have to keep in mind that if we occupy energy for other critical infrastructure, then it can be a problem. But I haven't seen it yet, at least not to a far extent. Okay, that's good to know, not as extreme as other countries. But so now that we are coming to the end of 2021 as well and firstly moving into 2022. And I guess a lot of people will be very happy to leave this year behind. What kind of one or two things do you really expect to see happening in the Danish citizen to marketplace? What, I mean, two trends or two events, something they're really looking forward to next year? Well, I have seen a bit of slowdown during the COVID here. So a lot of the planned investments has been put on hold. But I see now and for sure in 2022 that there will be a lot of builds in our region, Denmark and then in the other countries in the Nordic. So we will be very busy with that. And the other very important thing I see is that we have there's a lot of things going on on the sustainability. So we have the climate neutral days in the pact. We have the EU Green Deal. We have the fit for 55 goals. There's a lot of scope tree discussions, you know, let's move outside the data center and discuss scope tree. So for sure, personally, I'm going to spend a lot of time on contributing into these. Hopefully, it will not be too much regulations, it will be recommendations. And then we can collectively in the industry, you know, raise the bar and be even better of what we do. Because data is, you know, it's doubling every second year or how often it is. So we need to come up with new ways to to process this data in the most efficient way. So that's two of the things I see from, let's say, from our regional point of view. That is very interesting because I mean, it is doubling, as you said, every two years and we only use about two to five percent of the data that we generate. So there's so much data that's probably being wasted with so many good ideas and probably innovations are being missed out. But so but on top of also running the data center, the Danish data center industry, you also run your own business on the side. Do you want to talk a bit about more of that and like what you're doing, what you're going to be doing next year as well? Excuse an overview of like the behind the scenes. Yeah. Yes, it's true that to be the president of the data center industry, that's that's a volunteer job that I do next to running my own company. I get a lot of knowledge and a lot of network. So I really enjoy that. But but to pay the bills, I have my own company, which is called Balder Consult. I have a background in the data center industry and with some global players. And for the last year, I have my own company. I'm working with basically everything we discussed in this interview here today. So it's everything about, you know, from from side selection, investor relations, infrastructure. I'm very, very interested in in all these sustainable innovations that that are coming into the data centers. So I work very much across the segment on different jobs in the data center space. So that's that's for sure something I will be hopefully I will be busy on that for the coming year. But it, you know, it doesn't look too bad if I look at the expected investment. So yeah, so that's how I see 2022. Yeah, I mean, the pipeline is definitely very healthy across the continent, not even just Denmark, but especially Denmark, but across the continent is very healthy. But Thomas, that sounds very good. But so if people want to learn more, get in touch about the Danish data center industry or for the consult, where can people go to? But the Danish data center industry, we have a we have a web page where you can go and look and see, you know, see our members, our projects, our our events. We have a lot of stuff going on every year. And our 2022 program is already on the web page, I believe. So that's the part of the data center industry. Boulder Consult is I have a web page called www.boulderconsult.dk. Maybe you can share the text here. That's where you can can read and learn about my background and who I am and if somebody wants to have a call or discuss further, then I'm open to that. Yeah, amazing. And I'm sure you're going to get a lot of calls next year, because as I said, I mean, this is not going to stop. This is going to speed up. Hopefully not. At least for the next 10 years, I think it's safe to be in the data center space. But Thomas, thank you so much for your time. 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