The National Bank of Abu Dhabi (NBAD), which is recreating its public image with a new head office designed by architecture firm Gensler, is also innovating with its new data center design.

It is working with IDC Architects on a ‘Bank in a Box’ concept based on the principals of modularity, flexibility and expandability, and a vision communicated by National Bank of Abu Dhabi SVP and CTO Saher Arar.

Arar said the solution will replace NBAD’s current production data center, and has been designed to meet NBAD’s current and future needs for the Cloud.

“Bank-in-a-Box is a revolutionary concept which provides the bank with the ability of rapid expansion to support our aggressive growth strategy and at the same time improve our customer banking experience,” Arar said.

“Having a modular, flexible and cost-effective data center solution is central to this concept.”

IDC Architects is an international design firm which has a portfolio including high-performance computing and mission-critical facilities.

It has worked with Equinix on its Chicago data center and Standford University on its chiller-less design concept for a new research computing facility.

It designed a patent-pending modular data center solution based around NBAD’s and Arar’s needs and has now been commissioned to provide engineering, project management and oversight for delivery of the modular solution.

“Key to this modular data center approach are modular, pre-assembled data centers which are self-contained mechanical, electrical and IT units that are factory fabricated and transported as a single package for field installation (plug-and-play),” IDC Architects said.

“These modular units allow for maximum scalability, flexibility and fast deployment. MDCs can also be rapidly attached together on site to form PODs which can quickly scale up or down to meet a specific client’s changing data management requirements.”

The bank currently operates in 13 regions around the world but plans to expand its presence by 35 by 2020.

IDC Architects said this approach allows it to deploy at a lower cost and reduced time frame as well as for the facility to be adapted in other parts of the world.