Data centre network cables. Image: asharkyu/Shutterstock
It’s all about the megawatts, with the big four European data hubs expected to deliver their biggest supply growth in history.
According to CBRE’s Europe Data Centres Q2 2017 report, the first six months of this year saw a combined supply growth of 74MW, and another 120MW is predicted to be brought online by the end of this year.
There has been a remarkable increase of 20pc in new colocation supply across Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam and Paris in the past year.
Giant leaps in colocation take-up
CBRE reported: “The levels of new supply show no sign of abating as a number of further schemes are scheduled for the coming quarters.
“This new supply indicates strong confidence towards future take-up.”
The four major markets brought in a combined 173MW of new supply in the past 12 months, quite a leap from a mere 53MW in the previous year.
London was the top-ranking market in Europe, with 15MW of power sold in the city in 2017’s second quarter. The take-up was dominated by wholesalers, with a number of tech companies and smaller enterprises signing transactions of below 1MW each.
For Amsterdam, the 10MW of colocation take-up was mostly from the retail sector, at 70pc. Frankfurt and Paris respectively saw less than 6MW of take-up in the first half of 2017, but the CBRE report noted that the cyclical nature of demand from hyperscale cloud companies would soon see an increase in both cities.
Interxion keeping up with the demand
This report detailing Europe’s continuing data explosion comes hot on the heels of Interxion’s July announcement, which detailed new data centres in Frankfurt and Marseille, with expansion in Vienna also on the cards.
David Ruberg, CEO at Interxion, explained the rationale behind its Frankfurt expansion: “Interxion’s Frankfurt campus is one of the largest internet hubs in Europe. By combining the largest connectivity community, meshed with the network and access nodes for all the major cloud providers, Interxion has created the leading cloud hub for Germany.
“Demand for our services in Frankfurt continues to outpace supply, and we are expanding our campus to meet our customers’ growing needs.”
As the demand for colocation space shows no sign of abating, new trends in Europe and worldwide are sure to emerge in the coming months.
