Daimler transitions to sustainable mobility

Infosys will transfer Daimler’s High Performance Computing (HPC) workloads used to design vehicles and automated driving technologies to one of Europe’s greenest data centers, Lefdal Mine Datacenter in Norway. The shift to Green Data Center as a Service is an important milestone in supporting Daimler deliver on its sustainability mission “Ambition 2039” to become CO2 neutral by 2039.

Data centers currently account for around 1% of total global energy use and service demand is expected to increase 60% by 2022. As next generation technologies continue to develop, engineering and other high-performance workloads that run complex algorithms such as those required for simulating sensors and journeys for autonomous vehicles will be increasingly critical to automakers’ competitiveness in the mobility industry. Yet, these workloads are extremely energy consuming and contribute considerably to the carbon footprint of enterprises worldwide.

Building on its strategic partnership with Daimler to drive hybrid cloud-powered innovation and transform IT infrastructure, Infosys offered a solution to facilitate Daimler shift HPC’s to green infrastructure using Infosys’ Data Center as a Service (DCaaS) offering in the Nordics region. Through the initiative, Infosys will manage the IT infrastructure in its entirety and Lefdal Mine Datacenter will provide the facility, a world leading sustainable and energy efficient data center.

Norway is becoming a “superpower” for green data centers given that 100% of the power production in the region is renewable, and transmission loss reduced to a minimum. Lefdal Mine Datacenter offers one of Europe’s greenest data center solutions, supplying capacity that is both air-cooled and water-cooled.

The data center is situated in a mine next to a deep, cold fjord with a stable and low temperature for effective cooling. Compared to air cooled data centers, Lefdal Mine Datacenter is not affected by warm days, and doesn’t require evaporative systems for cooling, with water usage effectiveness also rated zero. This system leads to a PUE ranging from 1.10 to 1.15 depending on UPS configuration and scale of capacity. The data center offers a world leading location for HPC environments.

The Green Data Center is the latest addition to Infosys Cobalt Hybrid Cloud portfolio, a blueprint consisting of a combination of Regional Private Data Centers covering all major continents, Edge Data Centers and Hyperscalers. For Daimler, partnering with Infosys to reimagine its data center operations in Lefdal Mine Datacenter will have a significant impact in delivering on its sustainability goals, and demonstrates the huge opportunity for other organizations to benefit from the industry-leading offering.

Jan Brecht, Chief Information Officer, Daimler and Mercedes-Benz, said: “A large proportion of our IT energy consumption comes from our data centers which require significant power for computing and cooling. That's why we're transforming our data centers with the support of our partner Infosys, bringing particularly the high-performance computing into one energy efficient solution at Lefdal Mine Datacenter. Not only will we benefit from natural cooling thanks to the cold weather, our operations will also be run on 100% green energy. This initiative marks another important milestone on our journey to becoming Co2 neutral”.

Salil Parekh, Chief Executive Officer, Infosys, commented: “Infosys is a strategic partner to organizations navigating decarbonization and we are well positioned to deliver sustainable green transformation leveraging expertise gained from decade long efforts in environment stewardship. We pioneer projects around the world across every industry to facilitate climate change actions, developing solutions and services to help clients in their low-carbon transition. In delivering this transformation for Daimler we’ve shown how Green Infrastructure as a Service can radically reduce organizations’ impact on the environment and the vast potential for other organizations running high compute enterprise workloads to benefit from this industry-leading sustainability offering.”

Jørn Skaane, Chief Executive Officer, Lefdal Mine Datacenter AS, added: “We have built and operate a leading sustainable, secure and cost-effective data center – The Norwegian Solution. With short travelled renewable power and cooling from the nearby fjord, sustainability is in the core of our mission and values. Our ambition is to be the greenest data center in the world, with the ability to offer tailor-made and scalable data center solutions. We are inspired to have been chosen to host Daimler HPC workloads and will contribute for Daimler to become CO2 neutral.”

Jan Christian Vestre, Minister of Trade and Industry in the Norwegian Government, said: “I wish to congratulate the parties on reaching this important milestone. Lefdal Mine Datacenter, based on the reuse of industrial infrastructure and locally produced energy, is an excellent example of how Norwegian data centers and industrial knowhow can help industries of the future achieve their goals of decarbonization.”