Nico Schottelius fell in love with the industrial fallows of Glarus. With his crazy idea for data storage, he wants to earn money for further projects in Glarnerland.
The trial version of Nico Schottelius’ project is installed and works flawlessly. But there are bigger plans ahead. He wants to build up a huge business in Glarus.
Nico Schottelius: In traditional data centers there are up to 40 computers stacked on each other in one square meter. They need a lot of cooling, because they produce extreme amounts of waste heat. In Glarus we have a lot of very affordable spaces, in which we can put only one computer ever five square meters. This will need lots of space, but due to their cheap price we can still be competitive.
The target group of the project is web agencies, but also private clients.
Nico Schottelius: Imagine it like this: If you want to have a website, you will hire a web agency for the creation. But your website has to run somewhere on the Internet. And that is in our data center. We offer the servers for web agencies to upload the website and we will maintain it afterwards.
Do they need a data center for that?
Nico Schottelius: Technically they could do it by themselves, but the maintenance and the scaling would be too expensive for a web agency.
Finding an investor is quite difficult. In the first year the company would need around one million. The total cost of the project would be 3 million Swiss francs. Is the idea too crazy for the investors?
Nico Schottelius: No, I don’t think so! Not at all! But first it is our job to work on it and present the idea in the best way possible.
The perfect space for the new data center is already found. Nico Schottelius wants to use the old industry fallow of the Legler area in Diesbach. The building will cool itself and is already empty. There are enough demands for a project like this.
Nico Schottelius: There is a big demand for what we are doing. You can see it at Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, who are making billions of dollars in the same business sector. We expect a much smaller profit, so basically we are just a small project.
A small project compared to the international market. But his visions are much bigger.
Nico Schottelius: My vision is to build one or more data centers in Glarnerland and become successful on the national market and later on also internationally. When the data centers are profitable, we will use that money to start many other projects in Glarnerland.
But first he needs an investor. And Nico Schottelius is hoping to find one from the canton Glarus.
To see the German TV interview, click here: TV Interview