– Davide Ortisi, marketing director at datacenter firm AST Modular (www.astmodular.com), says:

Major Russian telco operator Vimpelcom has released details for the delivey of a large scale modular cloud data center in the Yaroslavl region, Russia. The new data center will feature technology from Spanish datacenter firm AST Modular. The large-scale data center – whose first module’s delivery is set for early 2013 – consists of 6 modular customized rooms covering 3000 m2, with modules accommodating up to 1200 racks of equipment.

The datacenter will use AST Modular’s Natural Free Cooling technology with an expected cooling PUE of 1.09. NFC will allow Vimpelcom to dramatically reduce energy consumption and achieve great levels of security and reliability by avoiding airflow contamination.

The modular design by AST offers certified protection from fire, water, thermal effects, unauthorized intrusion and complies with all critical parameters in accordance with European and world standards. Each module can be quickly filled with IT equipment and comissioned indipendently without the need of waiting for completion of the entire facility. The datacenter has indeed been designed in order to scale along with Vimpelcom’s future business needs, thus minimizing upfront Capex.

This is the first Vimpelcom’s modular datacenter and will complement a portfolio of 16 bricks & mortar facilities which cover a total area of 17000 m2 split across Moscow, the Far East, Siberia, the Urals and the Volga region.

Part of Beeline’s group, Vimpelcom is one of the largest telecommunication and cloud operator in Russia. VimpelCom’s representative Anna Slastennikova declared: “The new data center is a key asset which will allow us to continue the technological development, optimize the existing network architecture and develop a line of cloud services according to our regional growth plan. We see demand for these services in the Russian market and Vimpelcom is actively working on the development of cloud solutions in Russia.”

“The modular data center construction model offered by AST Modular is very flexible and meets our objectives of improving opex whilst reducing construction time and datacenter power consumption” – added Vitaly Zadorozhnyi, director of operational risk at VimpelCom.

AST Modular is working together with its Russian partner LANIT to deliver the project. Valery Şincariuc, vice president of LANIT and Henry Daunert, CEO AST Modular jointly stated: “We are pioneering a new era in building data centers in Russia. Our modular datacenter solution is scalable, environmentally friendly and it reduces time-to-market. Modularity looks like one of the most promising approach in the field of high-tech data centers in Russia today.”