“LCL perfectly matches the ambition of Black Tiger Belgium”

Black Tiger Belgium opted for LCL due to it offering “a unique servicefor various reasons”, as Christophe De Brabanter puts it. “First of all, it is important for us to have data available locally and not just somewhere in the cloud. Furthermore, we work with personal data that we handle with the same due care as banks, insurance companies, health funds, etc. and this needs to be kept in protected areas, not simply stored together with other data on a server that can easily be accessed by third parties. LCL solves this issue with its client rooms, where you have complete privacy as a client – like having a private hotel room, so to speak. That formula was very close to what we were actually used to.”

Against the backbone of the Internet

There were also other arguments for Black Tiger Belgium to join forces with LCL. “One of the three national Internet hubs (BNIX, Belgian National Internet eXchange) is located in LCL Brussels-North (Diegem). For our growth, it is important to be able to work with a party that is as close as possible to the backbone of the internet, on account of this playing a crucial role for connection latency. Combine that with the strategically interesting location for power supplies (LCL can branch off from two independent electricity grids: the one for Zaventem airport and the one for the city of Brussels). All of these technical benefits count in our SLAs, the service level agreements with our customers.”

“A definite further advantage is that we can use LCL’s numerous data security measures and certificates in our customer files. Among other things, LCL’s data centres are Tier III classified, which represents the highest level of business continuity that a data centre in Belgium can offer. In other words, we benefit from LCL’s efforts. When we decided to seek an outside solution, we didn’t want to take a step backward in any area. It is good to know that we have only progressed, also in terms of sustainability.”

Pioneering role

The fact that LCL not only offers the excellence Black Tiger Belgium was looking for in operational  terms, but also plays a responsible pioneering role with regard to sustainability, is also a major benefit. “You can’t pull the wool over the eyes of clients like international non-profit organisations committed to conservation in this regard, should you even consider it!. I just want to say, just as LCL is challenged by its customers, we are also challenged by our customers. So we like to demonstrate LCL’s efforts to our customers by inviting them to a guided tour of the data centre. So everyone can see for themselves how everything is done in a sustainable way. Given our joint endeavours in this area, LCL’s first sustainability report is also important for us as it enables us to evaluate our cooperation.”

Christophe De Brabanter: “Turning to LCL enables us to enjoy their economies of scale. If you manage your own data centre, you have to master every aspect involved. For the high-voltage cabins, you need specialised personnel (and these are shortage occupations), and you also need to provide environmentally friendly automatic extinguishing systems, and so on. Not only do we applaud LCL’s ambition to become a climate-neutral data centre, we want to actively contribute to this. We know that LCL has a mark-up for electricity, but we also know that this is being invested in sustainability projects such as the expansion of the solar panel park in Gembloux (Wallonia One).”