AUSTIN, TX – August 27, 2024 – The Open Compute Project Foundation (OCP), the nonprofit organization bringing hyperscale innovations to all, is proud to announce Aligned Data Centers as the first data center provider to earn OCP Ready™ for Hyperscale certification. This recognition marks a significant milestone for the leading technology infrastructure company, with its ORD-02 facility in Chicagoland becoming the first certified data center under this rigorous program.
Aligned Data Centers, an OCP Community member, is renowned for its industry-leading innovation, efficiency, scalability, and commitment to sustainability. The company’s ORD-02 facility earned near-optimum results across its OCP Ready site assessment, exceeding standards across all key areas ranging from site access and logistics, to structural, cooling, connectivity, service, efficiency, and certifications. The data center also recently received Green Globes® for New Construction certification from the Green Building Initiative (GBI), earning a rating of three Green Globes® for its design and construction, demonstrating outstanding success in resource efficiency, environmental impact reduction, and occupant well-being. Aligned’s standardized, award-winning methodologies are utilized across its data center portfolio.
Aligned Data Centers’ ORD-02 certification coincides with the launch of the new OCP Ready™ for Hyperscale program from the OCP.
This certification was co-led by OCP Project Leads Mark Dansie and Scott Sharp, working within the Data Center Facilities Project at the OCP, and was created to focus on hyperscale requirements relating to logistics, site access, base building infrastructure, and more.
By adhering to a community-led checklist and completing the approval process, data center operators who achieve OCP Ready™ for Hyperscale certification demonstrate their readiness to accommodate hyperscale wholesale deployments across a wide range of criteria.
A primary goal of the program is to help hyperscalers identify data center locations where they can reserve space, power and cooling earlier in the cycle (e.g. core and shell, ready for fit-out, build-in-progress, and capacity available). For data center operators, this certification not only proves hyperscale capabilities, it also avoids un-usable critical infrastructure due to basic building constraints and reduces redundancies in the requirements gathering phase of customer engagements.
"Aligned is proud to receive the first-ever OCP Ready™ for Hyperscale Certification for our ORD-02 data center, validating our longstanding capabilities in hyperscale deployments. The program streamlines the data center selection process for hyperscale companies, reducing potential risk and time-to-market,” says Andrew Schaap, CEO of Aligned Data Centers. “Aligned’s data centers prioritize scalability and flexibility to meet our customers’ specific IT infrastructure requirements. From our flexible, sustainable designs to our industry-leading, high-density cooling technologies – including air, liquid, and hybrid configurations – we unlock seamless scaling for hyperscale businesses, maximizing efficiency and effectiveness.”
“The New OCP Ready™ for Hyperscale certification aims to standardize facility criteria that are compatible with all hyperscalers. Establishing a standard for base-building infrastructure reduces the time required to select a suitable data center for deployments. The data center industry is growing rapidly and ensuring new facilities are compatible with the customer requirements is extremely important,” says Scott Sharp, OCP Ready™ Facilities Program Co-Lead.
"Aligned Data Centers’ Chicago OCP Ready™ for Hyperscale certification marks a new era for identifying colocation data centers optimized for hyperscale wholesale deployments. This collaborative effort among hyperscalers within the OCP Community not only validates Aligned's readiness to accommodate hyperscale needs but also underscores the impact that the OCP is having on the colocation industry to drive efficiency and innovation in the data center sector," says Mark Dansie, OCP Ready™ Facilities Program Lead.
Aligned Data Center’s ORD-02 data center is now listed on the OCP Marketplace here. For more information about the OCP Ready™ for Hyperscale Data Center program please contact Mark Dansie (mark.dansie@opencompute.org).
About Aligned Data Centers
Aligned Data Centers is a leading technology infrastructure company offering innovative, sustainable, and adaptive Scale Data Centers and Build-to-Scale solutions for global hyperscale and enterprise customers. Our intelligent infrastructure allows densification and vertical growth within the same footprint, enabling customers to scale up without disruption, all while maintaining industry-leading Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE). By reducing the energy, water and space needed to operate, our data center solutions, combined with our patented cooling technology, offer businesses a competitive advantage by improving sustainability, reliability, and their bottom line. For more information, visit www.aligneddc.com and connect with us on X, LinkedIn and Facebook.