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One of four government data centers in the Netherlands, Overheidsdatacenter Noord (ODC-Noord), the northernmost facility of its kind in The Netherlands, is located in the picturesque city of Groningen. With nearly 140 employees, the high-performance data center provides government agencies with mission-critical compute, storage, and networking solutions needed to provide important services to citizens.

Offering Housing-as-a-Service, Platform-as-a-Service, and Infrastructure-as-a-Service featuring ODC-Noord currently serves around 40 customers. These include numerous government ministries and agencies that serve citizens of the Netherlands. One of the provided services is the high availability and performance of the VMware based vCloud platform.

“We provide scalable ICT services in accordance with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) cloud computing reference architecture for business applications,” says Jaap Jansma, manager at ODC-Noord. “This includes not only HaaS, PaaS, and IaaS, but also the supporting facilities for development of custom software, as well as solutions for DevOps teams—among them Kubernetes test and production environments and applications for specific use cases, including data science and deep analytics.”

ODC-Noord’s agile teams are comprised of skilled personnel. These experts not only develop, but also manage and maintain all of the organization’s services.

“Our teams are driven, enterprising and a bit headstrong,” adds Jansma. “These are qualities that serve us well in our dedicated work to provide high-quality and innovative services to our customers.”

Those services also reflect ODC-Noord’s commitment to reduce its carbon emissions to net zero by 2030 and to serve as a partner who can help government agencies further their own sustainability goals. Jansma notes that’s why the decision to embrace the VMware Zero Carbon Committed initiative was a natural one.

“As a public-sector organization, we are included in the Dutch government’s diligent efforts to create a carbon-free energy system, but at ODC-Noord, we also feel strongly that it is our responsibility as a service provider to do everything we can to reduce the impact of ICT on the environment,” says Jansma. “The migration to software-defined data centers was an important step in the right direction, but it’s just the beginning. The VMware Zero Carbon Committed initiative builds on that momentum and is a natural next step.”

Notably, ODC-Noord already runs on 100% renewable energy sources, among them hydro, wind and solar power. Servers are also controlled with advanced power management solutions to maximize their efficiency. There are also plans to use residual heat to heat 10,000 homes and buildings in Groningen.

Outside air is also used to cool the data center—radically reducing the need for traditional air conditioning systems. Even the basic design of the facility uses natural airflows in which colder air sinks and warmer air rises to minimize the use of heating and cooling systems. In 2022, the average Energy Usage Effectiveness, or EUE, of ODC-Noord was an impressive 1.25.

Other steps, including ODC-Noord’s goal to transition to hydrogen are far reaching and ambitious, but Jansma notes that every step, large and small, is important.

“We’ve already stitched to a hydrogen-powered backup utility offered by one of our suppliers, NorthC, which is big step forward, and our innovations in power management enabled us to reduce the power usage of 40% of our assets, including servers, by 90%,” he says. “We’re also working with our suppliers to institute sustainability rating certifications and to reduce the amount of packaging—for example we recently eliminated the packaging of individual items with one of our cable vendors—and we are recycling hardware in-house to ensure it’s done right. And of course, there are myriad small steps we take each day, from recycling in our offices to promoting public transportation. It’s all important.”

Jansma believes the VMware Zero Carbon Committed initiative is a powerful way not only to support these efforts, but to make them part of the conversation with customers. It’s a conversation he believes must occur.

“We are living in a world where it seems that the sky is the limit, but we are realizing that we have to be careful with everything our planet gives us,” he says. “For a sustainable future, and for the future of our children, it is our duty to invest in a zero carbon footprint.”

Learn more about ODC-Noord and its partnership with VMware here.

Cloud Computing, Green IT

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Eindhoven-based Copaco is well-known for the cloud services and solutions it offers for managed service providers – including managed security service providers – independent software vendors and systems integrators throughout Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. Delivered from the company’s highly advanced data centers, the Copaco Cloud, powered by VMware technologies, provides the core of the company’s Infrastructure-as-a-Service Offering (IaaS).

We recently connected with Pascal Saul, Senior Cloud Architect of Copaco, to learn why the company elected to embrace the VMware Zero Carbon Committed initiative. We also took the opportunity to learn how he sees a more sustainable approach to IT benefiting customers and the enterprises they serve.

“We offer a variety of cloud services, including those that address productivity, security, backup, disaster recovery, and IaaS-related needs,” said Saul. “We also offer online self-service portals managed service providers can in turn provide to their customers to perfect the user experience. This includes APIs that make it easy for providers to manage all of their subscriptions online within a Copaco platform that provisions and manages all billing processes with ease. We are essentially enabling providers of bespoke IT services to offer a best-in-class private cloud platform that can also be used for public cloud and multi-cloud deployments – all while relying on VMware technologies beloved by system and network engineers.”

Notably, Copaco also provides fast and easy access to hardware, including everything from servers to enterprise-grade mobile devices and professional services. This multi-faceted nature of the company’s business is reflected in its approach to sustainability.

“As part of our commitment and decision to join the VMware Zero Carbon Committed initiative, we are initially focusing on three key areas: incorporating sustainability into our purchasing policy, reducing energy usage while simultaneously increasing energy efficiency, and reducing the waste associated with packaging materials,” adds Saul. “Our data centers are powered with renewable energy and with our commitment to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2030, we are likewise committed to ensuring that sustainability is constantly top-of-mind not only among our own employees, but also our existing customers and prospective ones.”

It’s an endeavor he believes is not only the right thing to do for the planet, but is also good business.

“As a cloud services provider, distributor, and partner who manages the logistics required to ensure that enterprises’ IT needs are met, we believe sustainability and our company goals go hand-in-hand,” Saul says. “Increasingly your energy efficiency helps you reduce costs and CO2 emissions, and reducing packaging materials, combining orders as efficiently as possible has the same result. Every step forward helps the planet, contributes to our profits, and sends a positive message to our employees, customers, and vendors.”

He also notes that efforts to be more environmentally friendly help to attract new, young IT talent to the company. In addition, sustainability is increasingly more important for customers, both as a “soft ask” and as a formal requirement in requests for proposals.

“Awareness is increasing, and customers want the organizations they work with to be transparent about their sustainability policies, carbon emissions, purchasing standards, vendor selection, waste reduction, and management,” he adds. “There is so much to win, and we have to win.”

On this last point, Saul stresses that the outcomes extend far beyond the confines of the business landscape or even the IT ecosystem.

“We must all act for environment, for future generations, and for parts of the world that already face the negative efforts of global warming and climate change,” he says. “We need to raise awareness and fight the human tendency to lose sight of long-term effects, underestimate the scope of big problems, or fail to appreciate the urgency of the situation. That is why it is so important to combine efforts to increase sustainability and profits.”

Learn more about Copaco and its partnership with VMware here.

Cloud Computing, Green IT

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With seven high-performance and high-security data centers located throughout the Netherlands and full array of cloud services and solutions, including Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) that enables customers to harness the strengths of the private, public and hybrid cloud with ease, Fundaments is trusted by enterprises in numerous industries. The company is equally well-known among independent software vendors for its cloud platform and mission-critical business and e-commerce applications.

Recently, Fundaments became the first provider of VMware Cloud Verified solutions and services to earn the VMware Sovereign Cloud distinction. Now the company has joined the elite rank of partners to join VMware’s Zero Carbon committed initiative. This effort is one that Fundaments’ Chief Technology Officer Larik-Jan Verschuren says is important to him personally.

“The changing climate is clearly visible in our day-to-day lives,” he says. “We must make a collective effort to get energy consumption down.” He stresses the need to view this effort not just as it relates to the impact of global warming on people and businesses today, but on future generations. For Verschuren, who has two young kids, that’s a significant motivator.

“I want them to have a promising future, to enjoy our beautiful world, and to enjoy the simple pleasure of skiing,” he says. “We must set the stage to lower emissions, set the right example and educate others. The more we do now, the more future generations can do to improve these kinds of initiatives.”

Verschuren is quick to note that being environmentally friendly and genuinely dedicated to efforts that minimize reliance on fossil fuels is also good business. Enterprises, he says, increasingly want to partner with organizations that make it easy for them to immediately decrease their carbon footprints.

It made good sense to partner with VMware in the effort to achieve net zero carbon emissions. Not only is the Fundaments IaaS based on VMware technologies, but the company’s wide array of cloud offerings such as Backup-as-a-Service, Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service, and Security-as-a-Service draw on many VMware innovations, for example Kubernetes clusters based on VMware Tanzu.

“Fundaments’ own Carbon footprint is in the datacenters, so we make sure that everything we do within them is done in the most efficient way,” explains Verschuren. “Joining the VMware Zero Carbon Committed Initiative provides a clear statement about our commitment to the environment in a concrete format.”

Not only has Fundaments committed to run all of its data centers off of renewable sources of energy for a net Zero Carbon footprint by 2030, but it also has a number of initiatives on tap for 2023.

These include steering all of its data centers to an even great PUE level, completing the energy use labeling of its services, mapping the power used per gigabyte of RAM and decreasing it, reducing the percentage use of spinning disks in the terabytes of storage it sells, using only the most efficient hardware and creating more cold and hot corridors in data centers to decrease heating and cooling requirements.

Fundaments employees are also committed to dramatically decreasing the use of paper in the company’s offices, encouraging the use of electric vehicles, implementing car-free working days, decreasing the use of shipping and freight services, and minimizing corporate travel.

Learn more about Fundaments and its partnership with VMware here.

Cloud Management, Green IT, IT Leadership

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Fundaments, A VMware Cloud Verified partner operating from seven data centers located throughout the Netherlands, and a team of more than 50 vetted and experienced experts – all of whom are Dutch nationals – is growing rapidly. With an expanding customer base that includes public and private-sector leaders, demand for the company’s solutions is being driven by enterprises that must monitor their data and ensure that it remains on Dutch soil at all times.

We recently connected with Larik-Jan Verschuren, chief technology officer at Fundaments, to learn more about the company’s recently announced honor of being the first to earn the VMware Sovereign Cloud distinction in the Netherlands, find out what’s driving the demand for sovereign approaches to data management, and get his thoughts on future demand.

“One of the unique things about Fundaments is that we offer a mission-critical, sovereign cloud and Infrastructure-as-a-Service for managed service providers and independent software companies as well as other private-sector businesses and government agencies,” says Verschuren. “Sovereignty means having true control from A to Z – from the physical hardware and services that are located here in the Netherlands, to the engineers operating workloads, and everything that is under their orchestration and management. At Fundaments, all data is stored in the Netherlands and we have a completely Dutch organization. Customers’ data is not exposed to any foreign input in any way.”

Verschuren notes that Fundaments, which operates a network of seven tier-3 datacenters across the nation, chose to achieve the VMware Sovereign Cloud distinction after seeing a significant increase in demand for data to be stored in the Netherlands. Just as importantly, these same enterprises had to be able to demonstrate certification and compliance with sovereignty requirements.

“Due to the increase in globalization and digitization more and more data is being used in the cloud, and more and more companies find it important to know that this data, their most important asset, is accessible and safe on a Dutch cloud platform,” adds Verschuren. “The introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) also prompted companies to think carefully about where their data is stored and the sovereignty issues that must be considered to be compliant.”

Verschuren also notes that compliance officers and chief information security officers are increasingly mindful of data integrity and demand the strongest levels of protection. Simultaneously, the pandemic accelerated digitization and contributed to the growing demand for innovation, analytics, and the capabilities the cloud delivers. Both factors directed organizations to Fundaments.

“By virtue of our VMware Sovereign Cloud status and the innovation and focus on compliance inherent in our work, Fundaments fulfills all of these needs,” he says. “Our customers know that their data sovereignty requirements will be met and that they are compliant with all relevant regulations here in the Netherlands – all on a platform that enables them to transform their businesses with the power of the cloud.”

Notably, Fundaments has worked extensively with VMware for years while serving its customers.

“We of course aren’t new at offering sovereign cloud services,” says Verschuren. “For two decades we’ve built our hosting operation around geographically dispersed, high security data centers in the Netherlands,” says Verschuren. “We wanted our cloud offerings to be a fully certified, all Dutch answer to the large hyperscalers, and we wanted them to be utterly stable, reliable, and scalable – qualities that differently reflect the VMware technologies we use in our platform and services.”

Verschuren believes that the demand for sovereign cloud services will only grow in light of geopolitical events and efforts to protect personal information. He also predicts that Fundaments’ ability to provide highly personalized service 24/7 will remain a significant differentiator for organizations that need to manage sensitive workloads that demand sovereignty.

“Our customers can consult with one of our engineers within minutes on any day and at any time,” he says. “With our focus on technology, processes, and people we are able to embrace and address the constantly evolving IT needs of our customers and our partners in an environment that is purpose-built to meet and exceed the most demanding sovereignty requirements.”

Learn more about Fundaments and its partnership with VMware, here.

Cloud Computing, IT Leadership