By Grace Chng

NO WINDOWS grace this building. Ten-foot walls surround the block and a wrought iron gate clearly discourages visitors.

This is, after all, a highly secure site used by companies to house their data centres.

Called The Fort, there are at least four security levels that make it hard for intruders to break in.

To get into the four-level building, located in the eastern part of Singapore, an intruder would have to get past the guards at the gate and reception area. There are also electronically controlled doors.

Even if a person manages to sneak past these control points to get to the lift, he will still need a pass to activate it.

The Fort's two backup power generators.

"If the pass is not authenticated, the lift doors will not open," says Kevin Wee, acting general manager of PM-B, the company which built The Fort.

At night, invisible electronic sensors bordering the compound are turned on. Anyone who crosses this line of security will trigger an alarm, alerting the security guard in the control room of a possible intruder.

If that is not enough, Fujitsu, which leases 7,500sq feet (about six five-room HDB flats) from PM-B, has biometric sensors at the entrance of its facility too.

Fujitsu's facility here is one of three data centres the company has worldwide providing services for a global news information network.

Authorised staff must have their palms scanned by the biometric sensor before entering. The sensor recognises the pattern of the veins in the palm.

"A retina scan can be compromised," says Joseph Chan, vice-president of regional managed services at Fujitsu Asia.

Gross as it may sound, "an eyeball can be removed and used to open a secured door. With the palm, the sensor will recognise it only if blood is flowing through its veins. If it is not, as when the hand has been cut off, the sensor will not recognise the palm".

He is happy with the high level of security, a prerequisite for his global clients.

What is also necessary is power backup. There are two independent electricity sources backed up by power generators. So the centre is highly unlikely to suffer a power outage.

Keeping its cool

Other redundancies include duplicate air-conditioning systems to ensure that the data centre temperatures stay at about 22 deg C.

The Fort's features helped Joseph to convince his bosses to locate a data centre there.

The pillar-less space and the high ceiling let Fujitsu lay electrical cables overhead, leaving the space beneath the raised flooring vacant for improved air circulation. The absence of pillars also allowed the company to stack its computers and plan how the air would flow.

Joseph explains the company's green air-conditioning system: "Cold air will eventually become warm and rise to the top of the room. The air-conditioning system draws out the warm air, cools it and sends it back into the room. This recycling process uses less energy."

A forecast by research firm Gartner says that the data centre outsourcing market in Asia-Pacific will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 9.3per cent from 2006 to 2011.

Singapore is ideal for data centre hosting because it is free from natural calamities and has a stable political and economic environment.

The absence of pillars and high ceiling let client Fujitsu lay electrical cables overhead, leaving the space beneath the flooring vacant for better air flow.

Industry observers point out that the upcoming high-speed next-generation broadband network will also be a catalyst for data centre hosting activities.

For example, SingTel, which provides data centre hosting services, will open its fifth data centre next year at Kim Chuan Road. It will occupy 150,000sqft, an area equivalent to 125 five-room HDB flats.

Growth potential in this sector led to ST Electronics acquiring a controlling share in PM-B in 2006. The latter has been designing and building data centres for the last 19 years.

Chang Yew Kong, ST Electronics' president of Info-Software Systems, says the company's search for a good location for its own data centre took 12 months.

The centre had to be situated "away from flight paths to reduce the chances of an air crash", among other things, he says.

"We wanted to build from the ground up so that we could put in all the specifications for a world-class data centre," adds Yew Kong.

chngkeg@sph.com.sg

This story was first published in The Straits Times Digital Life.

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