Data Centers & Digital Business

Kainuu – Nordic Supercomputing Hotbed

Kainuu’s most significant growth industry is the data centre ecosystem, centered on the Renforsin Ranta Business Park, formerly a UPM paper mill until its closure in 2008.

Kajaani’s first anchor case was the Finnish government’s CSC – IT Centre for Science, who have built a high technology, low carbon footprint data centre to house its two supercomputers. Followed by, Herman IT (colocation and capacity service provider) who operate a highperformance and cost-effective modular data centre. Both data centres have followed Google’s Hamina example by reusing existing brownfield infrastructure for their needs.

HPC becomes the specialisation of the data centre industry in Kainuu

In june 2019 EuroHPC JU decided to place one of the pre-exascale supercomputers (LUMI) to CSC’s data centre in Kajaani. The agreement seals the collaboration of the LUMI (large united modern infrastructure) consortium. The participating countries include Finland, Belgium, Czech republic, Denmark, Estonia, Norway, Holland, Sweden and Switzerland. LUMI will start its operations in the beginning of 2021.

Continuous development of Data Centre Business

UPM continues to invest in the refurbishment of key brownfield spaces, ready for further data centre companies, and are working with Invest in Kainuu to secure new tenants for their brownfield and greenfield spaces. What sets this site apart from alternative data centre sites in the Nordics is its absolute readiness for business in terms of brownfield space, pre-zoned greenfield land and “green” power. Availability lead times are as low as three months.

Multiple hydro electric and biomass power stations provide a significant supply of environmentally and economically attractive power (120MW on site renewable & 400MW diverse grid connectivity), which is suitable for heavy industrial use and data centres. While the vast majority of data in Finland and the rest of Scandinavia travels through the Helsinki & Espoo exchanges into Russia, there is a diverse route directly between Kajaani and neighbouring Russia. Kajaani, is also ideally placed to take advantage of the Finland-Germany underwater fiber connection and linking to the ROTACS Russian National Fiber Optic Ring that is under development, will further decrease the latency and turn the site into a real hub of global data flows with more than enough capacity.

Global infrastructure today has not been purpose built to support the growth in IT services. The future lies in something more fundamental to the data centre and the application ecosystem itself: automatically transforming today’s hardware-centric data centres into software-driven environments where applications and service delivery can be seen, measured and controlled based on workload. The region of Kainuu has played a significant part in the growth of this sector in Finland.

Kainuu region has invested heavily in the development of the data centre industry ecosystem through its educational organizations and the Renforsin Ranta business park. The Kajaani ecosystem is attracting both global and national players from a variety of sectors.

The decision by CSC to relocate the now redundant BULL hybrid system into Kajaani university of applied sciences provides unique educational resource for teaching and studying purposes. CSC cooperates closely with universities and supports their activities. During the spring semester of 2017, KAMK’s datacenter was connected to the national university and research network Funet, which is maintained by CSC. In addition, CSC and KAMK have together organized data analytics and artificial intelligence training in the form of Hackathon events, among others. CSC is also offering specialist and platform services through Herman IT’s AI Academy, which focuses on artificial intelligence.

Corporate Highlights

UPM – Renforsin Ranta Business Park

NASDAQ listed. Landlord and energy provider to Data Centre companies and heavy industry – 200 Hectares and 120MW of spade ready/available renewable energy infrastructure.

CSC – IT Center for Science Ltd.

IT Center for Science has formally launched its new data centre in Kajaani, in the former premises of UPM’s paper warehouse. It has cost-efficient data centre solution in line with sustainable development.

Herman IT Ltd.

Data Centre service provider in Finland, providing capacity services and collocation service in Renforsin Ranta business park, Kajaani.

IBM Corporation

Global technology and consultancy. IBM has chosen Kajaani as a prime location to provide their mid-market customers data centre services through Herman IT.

Loiste Ltd.

One of Finland’s top energy companies, based in Kajaani.  Loiste has approx. 200,000 customers throughout Finland. The company had a turnover of EUR 121 million in 2018.

Eltel Group

Eltel is a leading European provider of technical services for the critical infrastructure networks – Infranets. With close to 9,000 employees in nine countries and net sales of more than €1 billion annually.

Kajaani University of Applied Sciences

Kajaani University of Applied Sciences (KAMK) is an international learning community which operates in its own compact campus area. KAMK has achieved great success in Finland in Ministry of Education and Culture outcome barometers. In particular the quality of teaching and counseling has been considered the best in Finland for several years running.

Opportunities – Renforsin Ranta Business Park

Renforsin Ranta is a business park that was founded by UPM in 2008 on the site of its former paper mill. The existing diversified infrastructure makes Renforsin Ranta an attractive option for new companies seeking to grow. The business park houses 25 companies that employ more than 500 employees. Also, within the next few years Renforsin Ranta business park is expected to be home to about 900 jobs (Kainuun sanomat, on 9.2.2013). One of the strategic growth areas of Renforsin Ranta is measurement and information technology.