In many ways then datacentre industry follows very
closely that of the general economy. The simple logic is that when
times are good businesses will create much more data as they expand
and so will have a pressing need to find somewhere how they can
store , process and mange all the extra data; in addition to all of
the other data that they hold. When times aren’t so good, the
converse should take hold.
It’s not surprising to find out that according to the latest
quarterly report by CB Richard Ellis (CBRE), take-up in the
European datacentre market reduced significantly in the first
quarter of 2009. In fact firms only took up 11,020 sq m across the
five Tier 1 markets, representing an 80% fall compared with the
previous quarter.
Yet despite this statistic, German datacentre provider
e-shelter would certainly take
issue with the notion that it was all doom and gloom. In fact it
says that the current economic circumstances are a key driver for
demand that is leading to the creation of enlarged premises in
particular in the UK.
Founded in 2000, the company is based n Frankfurt am Main and
has other optional bases in five other places—boasting 83,000 sqm
data centre space(with 60,000 sqm alone) and has plans to occupy
approximately 88,000 sqm more of data centre space in four other
locations.
Dr. Bernd Spitz, Managing Director of Investa Holding, the
holding company for e-shelter, expressed real confidence for the
prospects of the datacentre industry. In a presentation to media in
June 2009 he said that economic pressures were actually driving
continued outsourcing trend for IT services throughout all industry
segments. And as a consequence, there would be consolidation of
subscale in-house data centres and increased utilisation of IT
machines through virtualisation.
He predicted a change of computing paradigm through
cloud-computing as a basis for new Internet business models—such as
SaaS – in order to achieve dominance in the cloud massive data
centre construction efforts by companies such as Google, Microsoft,
Amazon, IBM, HP/EDS.
Moreover he saw a massive ongoing growth of Internet data volume
from social network platforms, content delivery networks communing
with regulatory forces with regard to mirroring and separation of
data centres (Bafin, Basel II, Sarbanes Oxley etc) as adding
further fuel to the growth.
But where would this growth be? To Dr Spitz it would be driven
mainly through large corporates sources of data centre space
take-up and expansion ambitions and the fact at due to continued
technological development of IT hardware/server equipment (blade
server, CPU density) where existing corporate data centres were no
longer capable to cover increasing power and cooling requirements
on a long-term basis.
And all of this despite dramatic changes in the economic
climate. Yet Dr Spitz suggested that more European companies were
planning bigger
datacentre projects compared to 2008: he said that more than 4
out of 5 surveyed companies are planning datacentre expansions
within the next 12-24 and that the projected average datacentre
space requirements would be in the region of 1,600 sqm with an
increasing average power capacity requirement per rack of 5.7
kW.
Putting their money where their mouth is, e-shelter announced a
new generation data centre campus in Buckinghamshire, inside the
zone required to support synchronous backup of data but well
outside the still prohibitively priced central London property
region.
The need for more datacentre space has been recognised not just
by industry but also government. Indeed in his Digital Britain
report Lord Carter said, “The current demand for highly-connected
datacentres in the UK points to constraints in supply which is of
concern as these facilities can take up to two years to build from
initial inception.”
The self-contained rural site in Saunderton will offer a total
area of 20.234 ha (50 acres) with space for four datacentre
buildings that offers 37,000m2 of lettable data centre space with
an additional 2,000m2 office space, associated with the use of
technical space.
It will have available TUI/Uptime for Tiers 2 to 4
specifications and a range of redundancies from n+1 to 2(n+1).
Redundant fibre connectivity will run through diverse routes and
there will be an average power density of 1.5kW/m2 with mains power
via diverse routes.
But the important thing is that the company sees growth and
demand from its customers. And in these times that has to be
welcome