She came and immediately decided to stay.
It didn't take a week to turn Anna Klaft, a northerner who grew up in Bremen, into a convinced Frankfurt resident: "I love it, there's nothing better," enthuses Klaft, who has also been the chairwoman of the German Data Center Association based in Frankfurt for a year works publicly in her favorite city.
The data centers have contributed nothing to this love.
In the year of their move, 2013, Klaft was still working for Wisag, selling and coordinating their facility management services for shopping centers.
"All I knew about data centers was that they existed."
Inga Janovic
Editor in the regional section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and responsible editor of the business magazine Metropol.
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That was only to change in 2018, when the service specialist Wisag also became aware of this new type of building, which is being built particularly frequently in the Frankfurt area - and for which, like other large properties, maintenance technicians, security and cleaning staff, winter services and the like are needed.
Klaft, previously the specialist in the world of shopping centers, was commissioned to rebuild this business segment.
Klaft already dedicated himself to facility management during his studies: "From the perspective of the industry, both are buildings with technical infrastructure, but data centers are a new industry. I needed a new network for that."
Uninvolved Managers
Klaft quickly found the key people and by 2021 at the latest, with the move to CBRE, one of the world's largest providers of services for commercial real estate, he immersed himself deeply in this branch of the economy, which likes to describe itself as the backbone of digitization.
Klaft coordinates the facility management specialized in data centers throughout Europe for CBRE.
"I wanted to be successful and I've already achieved most of my goals," she comments on her own career.
While setting up their new network, Klaft came across the German Data Center Association (GDA) in Frankfurt.
The lobby group was founded in spring 2018 with a clear program: "GDA's declared goal is to increase the attractiveness of investments in German locations, to improve the framework conditions for the operation of data centers in Germany in the long term and to stimulate the growth of the industry and its perception in Germany to strengthen the economy, society and politics", says the founding declaration of the association.
The dissatisfaction with too many bureaucratic requirements and particularly high energy prices in international comparison, which speaks from these sentences, can be heard everywhere in the industry.
Nevertheless, the representatives of the large, mostly international companies that dominate the market in Frankfurt were initially hardly interested in the new lobby association.
The GDA was in danger of faring little better than the "Digital Hub Frankfurt Rhein-Main" association, which was founded almost ten years earlier and which has all but fallen asleep after a few initial activities.
The managers of Interxion, NTT, Equinix and Co. seem to have little interest in association work.
Completely different Anna Klaft.
She has already been a member of the board of the "Women in the Real Estate Industry" association, and she enjoys working in the association.
As a newcomer to the circle of data center managers, technology service providers and outfitters, she recognizes that it is high time for the industry not just to simply build one high-tech property after the other and report on high-yield sales figures.
But that the industry would have to explain to the public why these huge buildings, which consume a lot of space and energy, absolutely have to exist in a metropolitan area like Frankfurt.
"I questioned the meaning of the GDA, recognized that there was a gap and said: I'll build it up now."
Sport as a source of energy
Klaft brings a few younger people to her side, organizes round tables, conferences, and sometimes a meal, and she puts topics such as resource consumption, sustainable building, air conditioning technology and, of course, dialogue with politicians on the agenda.
In order to show that they are serious about their striving for innovation, the GDA is now announcing a sponsorship prize, which this year is intended to use for the first time to honor scientific work on improving data center operations.
The association is becoming noticeable and now has a good 70 member companies, including the industry giants.
"It's a full-time job," says Klaft.
How does she accommodate that in a life in which there is still a demanding job, a baby, a three-year-old and a husband?
Anna Klaft gets up early, every morning at 5 a.m.
She doesn't go to work, she goes to sports, burns off energy and gets the strength for her tasks and projects.
With diligence and effort, she has learned, you can go far.
"Part of the solution" for climate protection
Klaft and her comrades-in-arms are almost too late to speak up.
The discussion about cubatures, energy consumption, surface sealing and heat emission has taken on a negative undertone.
The modern world calculates on the servers inside, while the external construction seems to have fallen out of time.
The city of Frankfurt therefore wants to restrict the data centers with the help of the building permit. Klaft commented on the plans on behalf of the GDA and bluntly signaled to the people of Frankfurt that neighboring cities also have beautiful plots of land and fast internet connections.
But at the same time she made an offer to talk to the city: the industry wanted to get involved constructively in the development of climate and heating concepts.
Because, of this, Klaft and the GDA are convinced that data centers are not a problem for climate protection,