Digital Realty has opened the first demo data center at MBO College Zuidoost in Amsterdam. 

The demo data center is part of the Cloud & Infrastructure Technician course and provides students with a ‘unique way’ of getting acquainted with work in the data center sector. In this way, the demo data center prepares students for the job market and is expected to reduce the gap between schools and the business world. For Digital Realty, it provides it a pool of possible candidates to staff its growing operations globally. 

The demo data center stems from the current collaboration between Digital Realty and the MBO College Zuidoost (ROC van Amsterdam). Four students have been doing internships with Digital Realty since September 1, 2023 to gain practical experience at more than ten colocation data centers in the Amsterdam region.

The fully functioning demo data center meets the needs of the school and the data center industry to teach students basic skills that come in handy within a data center. For example, students can practice installing servers, laying cables and setting up servers on a daily basis.

In consultation with the ROC of Amsterdam, a vacant data center space from Digital Realty was moved to the training room within MBO College Zuidoost where the relatively new components are given a second life. With this demo data center as a training location, students already have basic skills before entering the data center sector. This increases the chance that they will successfully complete their internship and training and that they will be able to find their place within the sector more quickly.