Telia Lietuva to construct largest data centre in Lithuania
IT and telecommunications company, Telia Lietuva, purchased a 2-hectare land plot near Vilnius, where it will build a new data centre (DC). According to the plans, this will be the largest data centre in the country, and the company will invest EUR 10mn (US$11.3mn) in its construction.
At the beginning of 2022, Telia Lietuva took over the rights of ownership to the purchased 2-hectare land plot and plans to announce tenders for design and construction contractor works shortly.
The data centre in Raisteniškės, which is located next to the Vilnius-Panevėžys highway, will be directly connected to the other two Telia Lietuva data centres in Vilnius, thus creating the largest data centre infrastructure in the Baltic States. Growth in sales of Telia Lietuva IT services by more than 20% for several consecutive years dictated the need for such a decision.
“A significant increase in the need for IT services for businesses and public sector organizations during the pandemic has become a part of a new, digital economy, which in turn led to our decision to build a new, modern and sustainable data centre. Having connected three data centres located in different parts of Vilnius into a single infrastructure, we will gain an even greater competitive advantage and will be able to offer our customers unique IT solutions and even more security.
Other features of Telia’s Raisteniškės data centre
Moreover, the Raisteniškės data centre will be modular, so we will be able to expand its capacity in the future, thus balancing the activities of other data centres,” says Daniel Karpovič, Head of Enterprise at Telia Lietuva.
He says that an important advantage for the company making a greenfield investment is the fact that it does not have to adapt to existing conditions, so it will be able to decide for itself on the best methods for ensuring both the physical security of data and equipment, the reliability of the services provided and the sustainability of the data centre.
The fact that there are no physical obstacles to future expansion of the data centre also played an important role in choosing the land plot. Increasing the capacity of the modular data centre easily by a few times will be possible as necessary.
The new data centre, just like other data centres of Telia Lietuva, will be connected by fiber-optic cable ring, connecting it to all major backbone Internet networks using two independent fiber-optic connections laid in different routes. This will allow the company to offer DC services distributed through two remote certified Uptime Institute Tier III or equivalent data centres.
In 2021, Telia Lietuva renovated its Žirmūnai data centre for almost EUR 1 million (US$1.1mn) and invested EUR 2 million (US$2mn) into expansion and modernization of the Naujoji Vilnia data centre. Renovations and expansion of the existing data centres are also planned in 2022.
