Data centre report offers insight into UK expansion

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Telehouse-North-Two-webThe third edition of DataCentrePricing.Com’s UK Data Centre Trends service finds that UK Data Centre expansion for the six month period from the end of June 2016 to the end of December 2016 has levelled off when compared with the previous period.

  • Total 3rd party UK Data Centre Customer Power (DCCP) has increased by 12MW to 713MW over the six month period to the end of December, and Data Centre raised floor space has increased by 8,000 m2 to 665,000 m2.
  • The 2nd half of 2016 contrasts with the stronger increase of new Data Centre capacity in the first half of 2016, which saw an increase of 32MW of DCCP and 22,000 of UK Data Centre raised floor space.

In the 2nd half of 2016, most new UK Data Centre capacity has been added outside the London/M25 area, in Manchester (LDeX 2), Birmingham (6DG) and Slough (Equinix LDN6). But the London/M25 area still accounts for 47% of all UK Data Centre raised floor space & DCCP.

The survey highlights the rapid Data Centre growth taking place in Slough, with 15 Data Centre Provider facilities identified, with another Data Centre facility to open in January 2017 with the introduction of the Zentrum facility. Slough is the 2nd largest Data Centre cluster in the UK behind the London/M25 area – but pricing in Slough is only 5% less than the London/M25 area.

Greater value is to be found in other UK geographical clusters, with Data Centre facilities in the Manchester area for example having an average price discount of almost 40% less than in the London/M25 area. Outside London, standard UK Data Centre rack space can be as low as GBP £599 per month rising up to GBP £750 per month – with London/M25 area rack space typically over GBP £1,000 per month.

During the first half of 2016 UK Data Centre capacity has been added in Slough (Equinix), London (Telehouse North 2, Volta and Infinity SDC (Stratford)) and Hemel (with NTT/Gyron). For the first time there has been new large-scale Data Centre development in Scotland, with DataVita launching a new facility between Glasgow and Edinburgh, a trend that will continue into 2017 with other Scottish Data Centre facilities in the planning stage.

A key trend for the end of 2016 – continuing into 2017 – is the use of 3rd party Data Centre space for cloud customers. Both NGD (Cardiff) and Ark Data Centres (Wiltshire & Farnborough) announced new space sold to cloud providers with Ark announcing that it was to host four new Data Centre facilities for IBM.

As of the end of 2016 there has also the introduction of dedicated Cloud Providers facilities in the UK opened by AWS and Microsoft Cloud, with UK cloud facilities to be opened later in 2017 by Google Cloud and OVH. The expansion underlines the importance of Cloud services as a key demand segment for the UK Data Centre provider.

 

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