Romanian cloud services company ClusterPower has started the construction of the biggest data center in Romania. Occupying 25K square meters, the Cluster Power technology park is projected to be the first hyper-scale data center and the largest provider of cloud computing services in Southeast Europe, featuring a direct fiber connection to Frankfurt and Amsterdam and connectivity with around 750 other data centers from all over the world.
“We are building an infrastructure with wide applicability that will consequently bring contributions across a range of sectors, increasing Romania’s competitiveness in research, education, and industry,” Cosmin Georgescu, Founder and CEO of ClusterPower shared with The Recursive.
The initial investment in the first phase of the project amounts to €36M (RON 172M), of which €16.6M (RON 82M) is provided by state aid granted by the Ministry of Finance. The difference is covered by the company’s funds and other sources of financing, the CEO clarified.
The center will be located in Southwestern Romania, in the village of Mischii, Dolj County. The first phase of the construction process, expected to be completed in December 2021, includes building a power plant and the first out of five units of the technological park to support the IT equipment.
The players behind the project
ClusterPower is a private Romanian Information Technology and Services company, founded in 2019 by Cosmin Georgescu (CEO), Vladimir Ester (CTO), and Carmen Ursa Georgescu (CCO – Chief Customer Officer). The three founders are EMBA graduates from Asebuss and Kenesaw State University. Cosmin Georgescu has 20 years of managing experience, including his positions as CEO at Romanian engineering, procurement, and construction company Romib SA, and as managing partner at Actual Connect, a local company that specializes in energy efficiency engineering solutions. Vladimir Ester, CTO at the company, has worked as a data center solution architect at Datanet Systems, one of the main IT integrators in Romania in data networks, and as a network consulting engineer at the American tech company Cisco.
Cosmin Georgescu, CEO and co-founder of ClusterPower, ©ClusterPower
Designing the first hyper-scale data center in the region
The Cluster Power technology park will offer artificial intelligence and cloud computing infrastructure to customers and partners, with the goal to accelerate the pace of digitization in research, education, and industrial operations. The partners of ClusterPower include global IT services providers, such as Nvidia, HP, NetApp, and Cisco Systems. The Romanian company is planning on collaborating with Nvidia for the creation of a designated AI infrastructure center on the premises of the tech complex. “The data center will benefit from the direct connection with 750 data centers worldwide pushing forward the economy’s digitalization process and aligning Romania’s goals of pursuing innovation and performance with EU’s strategic guidelines,” Cosmin Georgescu added.
The Cluster Power park is not the only technological innovation hotspot on the SEE map. For instance, in January 2021, Serbia launched an eGovernment development center with the goal of ensuring the safe storage of data and stimulating e-government efforts. The region is also a corporate R&D hotspot, with tech giants such as Amazon Web Services, Facebook, Uber, and Microsoft opening engineering and innovation centers across its territory.
