ATNORTH
“ Our partner ecosystem is essential to us ,” says Kristinsson , “ since we are not a big organisation . We have a supply chain of key partners that we work with , and we would not be able to build our DCs , nor service our customers , without it .”
Another one of atNorth ’ s key partners is Systemair , who they have been working with since 2019 and who provide their DCs with cooling systems and solutions in Iceland ’ s very cold climate .
Kristinsson is an engineer and has been working in IT since the beginning of his career . Back then , he was a part of Advania - the company that eventually acquired atNorth in 2011 . At the time , atNorth was a very small data centre , started by some pioneers that had already realised that DCs in remote locations such as Iceland - where the cold climate could be utilised and there was an abundance of renewable energy - was a great idea , but the business model was just not working .
“ We then turned it around and made it into a very successful data company ,” says Kristinsson . “ At the time , I ran it as a business unit within Advania . But in 2018 , I stepped in as full-time CEO , and the growth journey of atNorth really took off . Although I ’ m the CEO of atNorth , based out of Reykjavik , I spend a lot of time in Stockholm , where we ’ re building our first DataCentre outside of Iceland .
The first atNorth site , which they acquired back in 2011 , is built in an old printing facility .
Given the size of the data and the footprint that they have today , it was a very small site with a capacity of approximately 3MW . Very soon after that , in 2014 , they expanded into a new ’ Megasite ’ where they have access to 80MW running at 100 % renewable energy , built on approximately 18,000 SQM of DC space . In 2020 , atNorth
started the construction of their first data centre outside of Iceland , in Stockholm . The inauguration ceremony of the DC was held in the first week of March , this year . atNorth has been and will continue to expand into areas outside of Iceland , providing ‘ more compute for a better world ’, as its slogan goes . Its ambitions are recognised throughout the global DC industry , and it occupies a strategic position
186 June 2022