Amarjit Singh

EVRY has enticed IBM to invest several billion kroners in a super center at Fet. Hence, Norway is connected to the worlds sole global cloud infrastructure. - This is an extremely important partnership for us, says Matt Milton, responsible for the EVRY partnership in IBM. This is the first time IBM builds a data center that is part of the IT giant s global cloud infrastructure together with a partner. IBM has built t he remaining 46 data centers by themselves , and are strategically located in all corners of t he world . The global cloud platform is based on technology from SoftLayer that IBM bought for almost 2 billion dollars in 2013. - To gather we invest several billion dollars, continues Milton. EVRYs contribution is 500 million kroners, the rest of the bill is picked up by IBM. It would probably not be a SoftLayer center on Norwegian or Nordic soil if EVRY had not contributed. In 2012 while EVRYs core customers struggled with unstable IT platforms and the IT corporation struggled to give the shareholders value as sto ck exchange listed companies, t he CEO at the time Terje Mjøs launched the concept Future Proof. Mjøs planned a data centre of the future, built at Fet outside of Oslo with modern, standardised, virtualised and automated infrastructure. The new IT platform should easily be able to connect to the customers data centres and to commercial clou d platforms such as Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services. However, it has taken longer to complete Future Proof than planned. - We do this to more rapidly achieve our goal with Future Proof, says CTO Bjørnar Engebretsen in EVRY. - Why did you choose IBMs technology? - We looked at different models. The determining factor was that we would get all technology and all services that we needed from one service provider if we chose IBM, replies Engebretsen. It is the Digiplex building that is to house the new center. The actual content will gradually be built during the spring, and the data center will be in full production this autumn. Engebretsen says that it will initially be set up 10,000 servers at Fet. The CTO underlines that it is e asy to double the amount if need be. To be able to industrialize and automise the IT deliveries, all SoftLayer centers are identical on the inside. The interior in the data center at Fet has therefore gone through minor modifications in order to become identical to the other 46 data centers. IT operation for 6 billion Engebretsen says that EVRY is in the process to prepare 200 customers for the new SoftLayer platform. With a center on Norwegian soil , EVRY is able to offer cloud ser vices to customers that due to regulatory reasons require that the data is located in Norway. This applies especially to customers in the public sector and in the bank and finance sector, which comprises one half and approximately one third of the revenue respectively. EVRY s total revenue today is 12 billion kroners in Norway, where approximately half of this is operations. When Fet is connected to the global SoftLayer cloud, EVRYs service offerings to companies with a global presence will increase. Now they can store data in centers relatively close to their local offices no matter where it is in the world. - The goal with the new data center is to become a more important IT partner for our customers, says Engebretsen. In addition to delivering operation services from a cloud platform, EVRY has developed its own user portal customized to the individual customer as a part of Future Proof. Now IBM takes over the production of this service, and will develop new services for the cloud platform. EVRYs customers will in addition get access to IBMs services and applications collected under the Bluemix umbrella. This includes access to solutions that builds on the self - learning super - machine Watson. As a par t of the IBM - EVRY contract, IBM acquired 332 employees from EVRY on the 1 st of December last year. The former EVRY employees are gathered in the newly created IBM Services.