Wikimedia Selects Green Data Center EvoSwitch as Internet HUB for Europe

June 22, 2009

Amsterdam and San Francisco, CA -- The Wikimedia Foundation, the operator of Wikipedia, one of the world’s five most-visited websites, has signed a contract with EvoSwitch, the carrier-neutral data center in Amsterdam that operates fully CO2-neutral. As part of the contract, Evoswitch is providing over 300,000 euros of in-kind support in the form of bandwidth and hosting services. Wikimedia will use the Amsterdam site as its HUB for Europe.

The Wikimedia Foundation manages eight distinct, open, wiki based free knowledge projects, including the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia. Wikipedia is consistently ranked one of the top five most visited websites in the world by comScore MediaMetrix, serving billions of page views every month. All of Wikimedia’s projects are hosted on a central data infrastructure based in Florida, USA. The complementary part of the infrastructure is now based in Amsterdam at the EvoSwitch data center.

Hosting Europe

“We're very pleased with EvoSwitch's professional and well secured data center environment, which includes a highly cost-efficient infrastructure in a location that is of great strategic importance to us,” explains Brooke Vibber, Chief Technology Officer for the Foundation. “We are using the Amsterdam site for caching in particular, aiming to reduce the response time of our project websites in Europe. EvoSwitch will also be a good location for backing up content that is stored at our Florida data center. We will also be relocating European free knowledge projects to EvoSwitch, such as Toolserver.org – a project of the German Wikimedia chapter.”

Vibber considers the environmentally friendly nature of EvoSwitch another advantage. “As operators of one of the most heavily accessed web property on the web, we are aware of the impact that the Internet and its energy consumption have on the environment,” explains Vibber. “EvoSwitch’s energy-saving measures, combined with their use of green energy and CO2 compensation are very attractive to us.”

Amsterdam Hosting

The Wikimedia Foundation's hosting infrastructure in Florida encompasses over 300 servers. The Foundation will install about 50 servers at the EvoSwitch site in Amsterdam.

According to Vibber, “the Amsterdam servers both retrieve the content from the servers in Florida, as well as store it. Web pages can then be displayed to Internet users directly from Amsterdam, which improves the speed and accessibility of the web pages in Europe significantly. I expect that we will further increase our capacity at EvoSwitch in the near future due to the required storage capacity and new European publishing projects.”

Open Internet

The Wikimedia Foundation is a nonprofit organization with idealistic objectives that are in line with EvoSwitch’s corporate objectives. “We are strong supporters of Wikimedia and their Wikipedia free knowledge project in particular,” confirms Eric Boonstra, EvoSwitch’s Commercial Director. “The Foundation's operations coincide with the objectives of our own organization, to keep the Internet 'open' and stimulate freedom of expression and the transmission of knowledge via the Internet. This partnership is all the more special to us because of Wikimedia’s faith in EvoSwitch.”

About the Wikimedia Foundation

The Wikimedia Foundation is the non-profit organization which operates Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. According to comScore Media Metrix, Wikipedia and the other projects operated by the Wikimedia Foundation receive more than 300 million unique visitors per month, making them the 4th most popular web property world-wide. Available in more than 265 languages, Wikipedia contains more than 12 million articles contributed by a global volunteer community of more than 100,000 people. Based in San Francisco, California, the Wikimedia Foundation is an audited, 501(c)(3) charity that is funded primarily through donations and grants.

About EvoSwitch

EvoSwitch is a carrier-neutral, green data center (CO2-neutral). The data center is very energy efficient and has a PUE of 1.6 with a near-term goal of 1.2. EvoSwitch is located in the Amsterdam region, has good connections and a spacious floor area of more than 9,000 m2. EvoSwitch is ISO 9001 and ISO 27001 certified. To customers this means that their IT infrastructure within EvoSwitch is protected according to the highest standards. The data center has a total capacity of 20 Megawatt.

This power capacity enables EvoSwitch to guarantee customers that there is always enough energy available. EvoSwitch operates fully climate-neutral. In cooperation with the Climate Neutral Group the data center invests in worldwide projects to restore the CO2 balance in the atmosphere. Companies that install their equipment in the EvoSwitch data center can use the logos of the The Green Fan Partner Programme on their web sites to show that they use a climate-neutral data center.

Press contacts:

Koen Stegeman, Evoswitch

+31 (0)6 – 30491407

press.nl

evoswitch.com

Jay Walsh

Wikimedia Foundation

+1 415-839-6885, ext 609

jwalsh

wikimedia.org