Keppel Data Centres has invested approximately €14 million in the Series C funding of Etix Group S.A. (Etix), giving it a minority stake in Etix. Etix is a Luxembourg-based data centre developer and provider of data centre colocation services. It leverages prefabricated data centre modules for quick data centre deployment and has built up a network of edge and high-performance computing data centres across Europe, Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia. To date, the company has deployed more than 50 MW of colocation capacity through 12 data centres, and has a strong development pipeline for expansion.
Etix also has a unit that carries out research and development for the Etix group of companies. It has an innovative portfolio that includes patented solutions to help partners and customers optimise energy efficiency, security, and IT workloads in their data centres.
Keppel Data Centres’ investment in Etix comes at a time when the importance of edge data centres is coming to the fore. Through the deployment of smaller and decentralised servers away from the network source, enterprises are increasingly looking to bring data processing closer to where the data is actually consumed, driven by latency, data security, and data sovereignty considerations. Gartner predicts that by 2022, 50% of all data would be processed in an edge environment, up from 10% in 2017.
Mr Wong Wai Meng, CEO of Keppel Data Centres, said: “Keppel Data Centres has built up an enviable track record of developing high quality wholesale colocation and hyperscale data centres that serve the mission-critical needs of blue-chip customers. We are plugged into their needs and understand that IT-workload requirements can either scale very large, or sometimes necessitate small and agile deployments at the edge.
“Our investment into Etix allows Keppel Data Centres to tap the growing demand for edge facilities and opens new possibilities for potential synergies to be explored between our complementary businesses, such as tapping Etix’s cutting edge research technologies. This will give Keppel Data Centres the opportunity to deploy some of these new technologies in our data centres and deliver tangible benefits for our data centre customers,” he added.
Keppel Data Centre’s investment forms part of a capital increase of €56 million for Exit Everywhere. Other investors include STOA, a new investment vehicle mainly owned by the French CDC (Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations) and SBI Crypto Investment, an existing shareholder of Etix Everywhere.
