First Modular Data Center

China’s information and communication technology (ICT) giant Huawei and Dubai Airports, the governmentcontrolled holding company of the Dubai International Airport, said on October 17 that they had agreed to build the world’s first “Tier III certified Modular Data Center Complex (MDCC)” at the biggest civil aviation hub in the Middle East.

The design-and-construct contract was signed earlier on October 17 during the Gitex Technology Week, one of the world’s biggest annual ICT trade shows.

The project will serve the world’s busiest international airport, which served around 78 million passengers in 2015.

“The Dubai International Airport data center will be the first of two planned modular facilities that Huawei will build for Dubai Airports,” they added.

In contrast to a traditional data center, a modular data center can be flexibly deployed where data storage capacity is in need and customers can scale the existing center by adding data storage modules, according to Huawei.

They will provide a “stable and reliable environment for Dubai Airports to host its private cloud.” The MDCC will be the world’s first modular data center certified by the Uptime Institute to Tier III for design and construction.

The first facility will be constructed at the Dubai International Airport in 2017. The time schedules for the other data center have yet to be confirmed.