CW+ Premium Content/Computer Weekly

The abundant supply of relatively cheap, green energy the Nordic region has at its disposal has seen it repeatedly hyped as an ideal location for enterprises and hyperscale cloud firms to site their datacentres. It has, however, taken these organisations perhaps a little longer to buy into this hype than analysts and operators initially envisaged. “From a sustainability perspective, the Nordics had it all from the start and [the operators] created a good strategy based around the fact they have the energy, and they built a lot of datacentres, but then they realised the customers weren’t coming,” Harald Riise, CEO of Norway-based datacentre service provider Compute Nordic, tells Computer Weekly. “Operators started to realise that just having cheap power doesn’t necessarily bring the clients in.” Steve Wallage, managing director of datacentre market-focused analyst house Danseb Consulting, says part of the problem was how some operators marketed their facilities in the early part of this decade. “The marketing wasn’t always great,...