Global market research institute GfK will be transferring all of its IT infrastructure from three data centers in Nuremberg to a single, recently opened Equinix facility in Frankfurt. The move will consolidate the company’s entire EMEA data traffic, it states, for the sake of efficiency and cost-effectiveness.

When three become one

Frankfurt's skyline
Frankfurt’s skyline – Wikimedia Commons/Nicolas Scheuer

GfK specializes in market research in technology, media and retail, supplying its reports to agencies worldwide.

The company plans to house its 3,000+ servers, spanning 5,400 square feet, in one of Equinix’ seven Frankfurt facilties, enabling it to use modern cloud computing technologies.

Equinix enjoys an existing partnership with the world’s largest Internet exchange point, DE-CIX (as well as Kleyrex and DataIX), which GfK hopes will improve its connectivity and give the company’s digital infrastructure the boost it needs.

Burkhard Kehrbusch, Head of IT at GfK, stated that “our new data center in Frankfurt is an important building block in our digitalization strategy and will provide a state-of-the-art server infrastructure with the latest storage hardware that we can intelligently complement with cloud services. At the same time, we continue to ensure the highest degree of data security.”

In view of ensuring that data remains available to customers throughout the transition, the necessary hardware has been installed at the new location, and the transfer will occur incrementally. It is expected that the move will be complete by the end of 2018.

Frankfurt is a European center for business, commerce and manufacturing, and one of the world’s most carrier-dense cities. Plus, Germany has some of Europe’s most stringent data security laws, which means that GfK has no choice but to provide a secure hub for all its EMEA clients’ data (although that would have also been the case in its Nuremberg facilities).