Turnkey Data Centers: SERBAN Sets Course for the UK and Germany
Dünya Gazetesi / October 2024
We spoke with Yüksel Açık, Chairman of the Board and CEO of Açık Holding, about the goals of SERBAN, the holding's globally active company. Açık Holding operates in six critical areas: telecommunications and information technologies, aerospace and defense, construction, operational technologies, health and healthcare technologies, and tourism. Yüksel Açık, who is also a civil engineer, said that they laid the foundations of today's Açık Holding when they began working in the telecommunications sector in 2000, and that SERBAN is one of the holding's driving-force companies. He also noted that SERBAN delivers solutions in the construction, energy, tourism and real estate sectors.
“Construction accounts for 17–20 percent of the work”
Yüksel Açık pointed out that the need for data centers became apparent with the enactment of Turkey's Personal Data Protection Law and the obligation to retain data in the financial sector. He explained that they entered the data center sector in 2016 by combining their experience in telecommunications and construction. Stressing that this calls for a distinct area of expertise, Açık noted that construction accounts for roughly 17–20 percent of a data center, depending on the project, while around 80 percent of the work is based on telecommunications and technology and requires high-end engineering solutions.
“We Deliver Turkcell's Data Center Projects on a Turnkey Basis”
At this point, we started out with Turkcell, Turkey's largest technology company, which acts as an important catalyst in the digitalization of both individuals and businesses thanks to its strong technological infrastructure and comprehensive range of services. Leading the country's digital transformation, Turkcell takes on a leadership role in this field by implementing high-capacity data center projects that keep data stored within Turkey.
Noting that they entered the data center sector through Turkcell's data center infrastructure projects, Açık continued: “We then delivered projects for leading companies such as Ziraat Bank and Vodafone. We are an engineering and contracting company that provides turnkey services, so we offer end-to-end solutions to data center investors. We are the only company capable of building turnkey data centers, from site selection and design to feasibility studies, construction and technology integration. To date, we have completed data center projects totaling more than 100 megawatts of IT load. Our goal is to be the first company data center investors think of, first in our own country and then worldwide. We have already taken important steps in this direction: we established SERBAN UK in the United Kingdom and SERBAN Germany in Germany to manage our activities in Europe. We are expanding our organization in these regions, and in 2025 we will be more active in these countries. We are preparing to undertake turnkey data center projects worldwide, including in Europe.”
“The global data center market is expected to reach $622.4 billion by 2030” Turning to data center investment in Turkey and worldwide, Yüksel Açık continued: “The data center market is projected to reach $622.4 billion over the 2024–2030 forecast period. Given this enormous market potential, we see how essential our R&D and human resources investments in the data center sector are. We are growing within a strategic structure by closely following developments in the industry, and we are involved in major data center projects. For example, we will soon be working on the data center project that Vodafone is about to start building in Izmir.”
There is a shortage of qualified personnel
Underlining that it is difficult to find trained personnel in Turkey's data center sector, Yüksel Açık said: “To close this gap, we have partnered with Kocaeli University, one of Turkey's leading educational institutions, through Açık Akademi, which offers training and development opportunities within Açık Holding. As part of the project, our instructors with extensive data center experience will teach a ‘Data Center Systems’ course to students of the Department of Electrical Engineering. Over the 14-week course, we plan to cover every discipline of data center projects, from data center standards and energy management to integrated white space management and data center design. By combining practical and theoretical knowledge, we aim to provide our country with qualified graduates who are experts in their fields.”
Source: Dünya Gazetesi