Classroom Companion: Business

Box 20.2 The Lefdal Mine Datacenter
Handling the enormous amount of data 
generated in the Zettabyte Era requires 
huge installations of processors, storage 
devices, and communication equipment, 
sometimes covering several football 
fields. These datacenters consume mas-
sive amounts of electricity, especially for 
cooling of equipment to avoid overheat-
ing. Public awareness, environmental 
impact, cost efficiency, and social poli-
cies require that such datacenters oper-
ate with high energy efficiency and at the 
lowest cost possible.
The Lefdal Mine Datacenter is a 
company offering storage capacity and 
space for installation of data equip-
ment in an abandoned mine deep into 
the mountains in the western part of 
Norway. The mine offers a cool envi-
ronment reducing the requirement for 
artificial cooling. Additional cooling is 
supplied by cold seawater from the 
fjord nearby. Moreover, the center is 
powered only by renewable hydroelec-
tric power from the Norwegian power 
grid. Lefdal Mine Datacenter claims to 
be the “greenest” datacenter in Europe 
(Homepage Lefdal Mine Datacenter).
High-speed Internet communica-
tion with mainland Europe and the UK 
is by fiber cables from the Norwegian 
coast to the UK and the Netherlands.
The Lefdal Mine Datacenter is not 
the only cave or mine that has been used 
as datacenter. Similar centers exist in, 
for example, Finland (Sverdlik, 
2015
) 
and the USA (Abandoned mines have a 
future as data centres, 
2014
).
20.2 · Characteristics of Big Data

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20
20.3
 Use of Big Data
Data abundance refers to the huge amount of data available today. Data has become 
abundant and widespread to such a degree that it opens up for completely new 
ways of doing business, including development of new products, building up mar-
kets for these products, and finding new ways to earn money. Several enterprises 
and organizations must realize that their business models must be organized in 
radically new ways to keep up with the evolution. Data management and analytics 
have also become completely new industries, offering huge computer resources for 
data management and specialized expertise in big data technologies.
Some of the new opportunities offered by big data are described next. In 
7
Sect. 
20.4
, we will come back to questions concerning ethics, governmental control, and 
violation of personal integrity and privacy.