Data hosts ramp up capacity despite Olympics

Datacentre hosting companies are building out their facilities to cope with surging demand for services, but London could become less central to their plans.

Digital Realty said this week that it had acquired Foxboro Business Park, a three-building complex in Redhill, Surrey, with almost 150,000 square feet.

The deal comes on top of another recent Digital Realty purchase near London in High Wycombe and other datacentre operators are also buying up more space, power and telecoms access. Interxion is currently developing new and extended datacentres in London, Frankfurt, Brussels, Madrid and Amsterdam. Telecity will in the first half of this year open new datacentres in Acton in west London and Amsterdam, having last year added capacity in London, Manchester, Dublin, Paris and Amsterdam through the acquisition of Globix.

Digital Realty senior vice president Chris Crosby argued that the huge power infrastructure needed for the 2012 Olympic Games in London is not helping matters.

“With the Olympics coming, EDF is so busy providing power and infrastructure,” he said Chris Crosby, Digital Realty senior vice president. “There’s a lot on their slate.”

Crosby believes that the cost and complexity of building datacentres in the capital will lead to a march outside of London.

“There will be an eventual migration, without a doubt,” he said. “There’s really no benefit to being in the city and datacentres shouldn’t be resident next to the capital assets of people.”

Crosby added that potential new rules on carbon dioxide emissions had also raised concerns.

However, some experts said that connectivity requirements will mandate central locations for many firms.

Telecity director of strategy Rob Coupland said, “It’s true for some applications such as corporate disaster recovery [using remote locations] may be acceptable but for internet-centric businesses with low latency-dependent applications, having as few hops as possible is key.”

“We still see strong growth at 12 per cent in Europe, Middle East and Africa in 2008,” said Frank Ridder, Gartner research director. “There is increased demand from service providers and for outsourcing. After the internet hype [of the late 1990s] there was an oversupply but now demand is increasing.”

Interxion, which just before Christmas disclosed it is considering a floatation, did not respond to requests for comment.

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