The data center designed by Schneider Electric in Tunisia has reduced energy costs by 35%, increased asset utilization and availability by 20%, and cut operating costs by 20%.
Tunis, Tunisia September 16, 2020: Schneider Electric’s technology and engineering have helped make DataXion’s data center the most energy-efficient and sustainable in the North African region. The data center, which is based in Tunisia, is the largest co-location data center in North Africa, and is aimed at financial, Internet services and technology companies. The data center, which opened in 2016, has reduced its energy requirements by 35%, increased asset availability by 20% and cut operating costs by 20% over the past four years.
Created by Unipack in 2013, a subsidiary of Tunisian holding company Poulina Groupe, DataXion was inaugurated in 2016 to meet the needs of companies throughout North Africa. The installation has been designed to international Tier 4 standards, and includes redundant and dual-powered servers, storage and connectivity. DataXion uses multiple, active and independent power and cooling sources for the site.
Given the region’s climate – temperatures often reach 34 degrees Celsius in summer – the site’s biggest challenge was how to reduce energy consumption while maintaining the highest levels of availability and safety. The Schneider Electric team designed and implemented a complete end-to-end data center that would fully automate and digitize the site’s equipment, enabling the operations team to ensure 99.9% availability for customers, while monitoring and optimizing the data center’s energy consumption and cooling.
“DataXion has been designed to the highest standards of energy efficiency,” said Lassaad Belhiba, DataXion Site Director.” By making the site as efficient as possible and optimizing the site’s power consumption for equipment and cooling, we are able to reduce energy costs while offering superior hosting services to our customers. The site is the most energy-efficient and environmentally-friendly data center in the region, and that’s thanks to Schneider Electric.”
The site was designed and commissioned by Schneider Electric, and the equipment was supplied and installed by the Schneider team in the region. The site uses EcoStruxure IT Expert, which enables the operations team to monitor, manage and optimize the energy consumption of the site’s servers, cooling and electrical equipment. All preventive, curative and predictive maintenance operations are carried out by Schneider Electric’s service and digitization teams.
“This site is not only at the cutting edge of data hosting services, but is also a regional leader in terms of energy efficiency,” said Edgard Bou-Chahine, Managing Director of Schneider Electric Tunisia. “We have worked hand in hand with DataXion to optimize the way energy is used on site, to reduce inefficiencies and costs, while ensuring that the quality of service offered by the data center is of the highest possible standard. DataXion has demonstrated that the region can accommodate environmentally-friendly and sustainable data centers that offer businesses reliable and secure data hosting. We were proud to support their vision and make this data center not only sustainable, but also the provider of choice for businesses in North Africa”.
