Yandex renamed its subsidiary in Finland from Yandex Oy to Global DC Oy. According to the Finnish state television and radio company YLE, at the moment, close attention of the Finnish authorities is riveted to the company’s activities.
The legal entity Global DC Oy operates a data center in the Finnish city of Mäntsälä. This is one of the five data centers of Yandex, which was built in 2014 and is used to work with foreign markets.
Jussi Halla-aho , chairman of the parliament’s foreign affairs committee, sees Yandex’s work in Finland as problematic because the company can spread “propaganda information,” but notes that it cannot be immediately blocked even if it is deemed inappropriate.
Halla-Aho suggested that the company’s activities could also be subject to restrictions. At the same time, Finland advocates “comprehensive” sanctions, and not against individual companies.
Earlier, the data center had a problem with electricity – on April 25, it was disconnected from the main source of electricity and was powered by diesel generators. Yandex’s electricity supplier in Finland was Nivos Energia Oy, whose president stated that it would cooperate with Yandex Oy only if Yandex did not fall under sanctions.
Alexei Zhumykin, Yandex Data Center Operations Director, said that Yandex is not yet considering the possibility of transferring the data center to Russia. According to him, diesel generators will still be able to meet the needs of the center for some time, and later the company hopes for a new contract with the energy company.
Last Summer (2021) Yandex and the Finnish company Ilmatar Energy, which operates a network of wind farms, signed a five-year agreement under which the Mäntsälä data center was to be completely converted to energy from renewable sources. The transition was supposed to start in 2022.
