15 March 2017
By Greg McCulloch, CEO, Aegis Data
Third-party data centre customer power grew to 713MW in 2016, despite concerns of Brexit and the rising cost of London data centres.
The growth was due in part to the development of facilities outside the capital. And with more than seven million square foot of data centre space now being taken on by third-party providers, growth beyond the M25 is only set to continue.
While London still holds 47 per cent of data centre raised floor space, secondary cities like Manchester, Birmingham, Slough and Edinburgh became strong contenders in 2016 for data centre locations.
London is the go-to location for those looking for a data centre, but there are several considerations that must be accounted for before connecting in the capital.
In Tariff Consultancy’s UK Data Centre Trends report, the city was shown to have the most expensive rack-space with an average of £1,000 per month – that’s nearly double the monthly price of other third-party centres located in the UK.
The second most pressing issue with a London-based facility is the restriction on flexibility and growth. Space is at a premium and many of the older, established data centres don’t have the capacity or scalability to support increasingly power-hungry technologies.
With the growth in online technologies and rising use of virtual and augmented reality, the IoT and AI, the appeal of being in the heart of London is also its downfall.
High power technologies require greater cooling, something that established data centres can’t retrofit into their facilities. This in turn hinders the future-proofing and growth of a business.
Larger organisations are always going to look to base themselves in Tier 1 locations, whether it be London, Paris, Frankfurt or New York. They might have secondary data centres throughout the country, but the central hub will usually be London.
This is unlikely to change soon as the international connectivity options are simply much greater. However, smaller enterprises, Tier 2 financials, and SMBs are much better looking at the flexibility options outside of London.
