Northpower unveils region's first portable data centre

Northpower Chair Nikki Davies-Colley with the new data centre. Photo / Supplied

Northpower has unveiled the first pre-fabricated, portable data centre in the Asia Pacific region.

The 20-foot data centre, an engineering and technology collaboration with Schneider Electric, was revealed at Northpower's Whangarei headquarters this week.

The data centre has been designed to increase availability and redundancy of internal IT systems for the power company.

The pre-fabricated version cost hundreds of thousands of dollars less than traditional data banks. Using the template created with Northpower, Schneider Electric has already been commissioned to construct a similar design in Australia.

Northpower Chair Nikki Davies-Colley said the data centre added greater energy efficiency, security and lower operational costs for the company.

"The complexity of this design and build created numerous challenges but the success of the project meant that when the container landed at Northpower's Whangarei head office, it was plugged in and instantly operational," Davies-Colley said.

There is a possibility that in the future the servers of other companies could be stored at the new data centre, Davies-Colley said.

Schneider Electric's Ray Dunn said the pre-fabricated portable data centre had set a benchmark for the future and generated widespread industry interest for other entities seeking such solutions.