The progress of digitalisation requires increasing the capacity for data storage. Tieto is currently expanding Finland's largest data centre by thousands of square metres. The company wants to help its customers take advantage of the possibilities provided by the growing amount of data, as well as respond to tightening security demands.

Tieto opened a data centre in Espoo in 2011. The Data Centre was first provided with a EUR 10 million expansion in 2014. The investment budget of the current expansion project is approximately EUR 17 million. Tieto will get access to its new premises in stages during the 2017 - 2022 period.

"The amount of data is increasing exponentially. Each image taken or sent e-mail is saved to a server in a data centre. Companies are starting to use larger amounts of data for more efficient operations, for example, by introducing predictive analytics-based capabilities. As a result, the demand for local and secure data centre services is on the rise, noted Patrik Ekström, Vice President, Technology and Modernisation Services at Tieto.

Currently, more than 150 large Nordic companies and organisations use Tieto's cloud services. Tieto has several hundred data centre customers. Within the Nordic countries, Tieto has three data centres in Finland. In addition to Finland, the company has data centres in Sweden and Norway.

The growing demands of data security are being recognised
In the coming years, legislation related to the protection of privacy should be quite strict, for example, with that addition of the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Tieto's data centres in Finland are particularly well able to respond to the ever-growing security requirements. Tieto's data centres are already able to offer a service environment with an elevated level of data security for the preservation of sensitive data.

"The companies and organisations are increasingly interested in where and how data is stored. The European Union's General Data Protection Regulation for all companies comes into force in May 2018. Then each operator involved with the data must be able to indicate where the end-user data is stored. In particular, it is important for our governmental agency customers that citizens' data are stored within the borders of Finland", Patrik Ekström added.

Data centres enable environmentally friendly cloud services
The safe location of the data centres, as well as the long-term development of innovative technology have enabled the rapid growth of Tieto's cloud services. In the third quarter of 2016, Tieto's cloud services increased by 29%.

"Tieto is investing in environmentally friendly energy solutions and services, such as virtualisation and cloud services, in all of its data centres. With our services, our customers modernise their applications and IT infrastructure as well as innovate and renew their business in a sustainable way", continued Patrik Ekström, Vice President of Tieto.

Virtualisation means that a single physical server may contain several virtual servers into which data centre resources can be most effectively placed. The cloud services allow customers to reserve the amount of capacity that they need for their respective demand and which can be flexibly increased or decreased.

Tieto's investment in fixed assets is expected to continue to be around 3-4% of net sales. The investments are mainly directed to the data centres.

Appendix: Pictures of Tieto's Espoo data centre and its expansion

Tieto was the first supplier in Finland to receive heightened data security certification from the Finnish Communications Regulatory Authority (FICORA) for its data centre services: https://www.tieto.fi/uutiset/tieto-sai-ensimmaisena-tietoturvasta-suojaustason-iii-todistuksen-viestintavirastolta