Netia acquires Onet data center to conquer Polish DC market

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It took about a year to find a buyer for Onet data centre in Krakow. Ringier Axel Springer Group has confirmed that the facility was sold to Netia, controlled by the Cyfrowy Polsat Group (CPS).

Consequent strategy

The transaction value has not been revealed publicly. This is another major investment by the CPS Group. A month earlier, the tender offer to purchase shares in Asseco Poland was successfully completed. The center in Kraków is to be the base for increasing the number of customers for B2B services under NetiaNext brand in this part of the country. The fact is that in the south of Poland, the CPS Group has not have a larger facility so far, while there are already three data centers in Warsaw and its surroundings. It is also commenced another large investment in the capital. According to PMR forecasts, the CPS Group’s position on the data center market is constantly growing.

Data center for internal needs

Onet Data Centre was opened in mid-2009 on Bobrzynskiego Street in the Krakowska SEZ. For Onet Group, the data centre was primarily an investment for its own needs. However, due to its scale, the facility also allowed for the provision of commercial services, aimed at a specific group of large customers, among which financial institutions dominated.

The total area of the facility is 3 500 m², of which server rooms account for approx. one third. In 2015 Onet has modernized some of the rooms in the facility for colocation, adding about 200 m² to its existing area and increasing the power accordingly. The power allocation for the facility is over 6 MW.

Facility above market standard

The total value of the investment in the construction of the Onet data centre amounted to PLN 78 million and it was then a facility built definitely “above the market”. According to the information provided by the company, CPD Onet.pl meets 96% of the requirements for Rated 4 according to ANSI/TIA-942 standard.

The data center’s structure consists of three independent, fully autonomous server chambers made in reinforced concrete construction. Each chamber is equipped with its own redundant power, air conditioning and security systems. Power supply is provided by a 2N system on the entire track: from two medium voltage lines, through two transformers, two sets of UPS and batteries to two PDU strips in a rack cabinet in each chamber. The two-track power supply from the UPS additionally includes an air conditioning system. Six busbar systems are installed in the facility. Backup power supply is provided by a system of generators in redundancy N+1 (2 MVA each).

The fuel tank located in the facility has been adapted to provide 36 hours of continuous operation at full occupancy, and in addition, there is a possibility of refueling during the operation of the generators. Each chamber is surrounded by walls with four-hour fire resistance. The object is covered with a double roof with a moisture detection function in the space between the ceilings. The building is also equipped with a comprehensive physical protection system. There are more than 100 cameras under continuous monitoring and CCTV for video recording.

Reason for selling: migration to cloud

Onet has completed a complex project of virtualization and migration of its own resources to private cloud. As a result, it was able to free up space in its data centre and offer it to external tenants. This was only a stage on the way to the migration to the public cloud, which was undertaken by the owner of Onet – Ringier Axel Springer Group. AWS services were chosen. This is one of the reasons why it was also decided to announce the sale of the data center in Kraków.

From our talks with the company’s representatives it appears that the facility was officially put up for sale from January 2019. For Onet, operating on the data center market has never been a core business. Therefore, among other things, it was decided to dispose of the facility, especially in the situation of greater emphasis on using public cloud resources. According to our information, the purchase of a data center was considered by several participants of the data center market in Poland. From the beginning, Onet’s representatives pointed out that they were looking for an industry investor, not a financial one. Moreover, they expected that they would still be able to colocate some of their equipment in the facility.

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