My last visit to the vast NTT LON1 data centre in east London was pre-pandemic, when the site was still under construction and only the shell of Building One was complete. The transformation of not only the NTT data centre over the past five years but also the adjacent Eastbrook Studios on this former Sanofi site has been more than impressive.
The excuse for my visit at the start of September was to accompany a client seeking a new 50kW AI-related deployment. They are based in Canary Wharf and were looking for a good-quality data centre in the east of London to add to their existing deployments in Docklands. While value and location were their two key drivers, speed to deployment was also critical as they wanted to go live in four weeks.
Update on the NTT LON1 Dagenham data centre
In some respects I was surprised that NTT could accommodate our client, as my impression had been the 64MW site was fully sold. In fact, it is from a large-scale wholesale point of view. Building 1 is fully leased to a handful of large users and is now almost fully commissioned. Meanwhile, Building 2 is still under fit-out (and, I believe, fully let to a single user).
Fortunately for Colo-X, NTT has a single 4MW suite for smaller, retail-sized users in Building 1. And in one of the suite’s 1MW sub-halls NTT could offer our client either open colocation racks or a dedicated caged space. Our client’s 10kW per rack density can easily be accommodated using three-phase power delivery (something that is more problematic in some of the older Docklands data centres).
From a commercial perspective, our client has been offered pricing that I believe will be hard to beat. This is perhaps one of the benefits of finding a way to work with one of the new breed of 100MW+ operators we are now seeing in the UK data centre market.
Colo-X and NTT successes
Colo-X was also pleased to see that a new 300kW deployment into LON1 had just gone live for a customer we introduced to NTT in 2024. The same client also installed a similar-sized deployment in NTT’s Hemel Hempstead 2 (HH2) data centre late last year. Our client on this occasion was a large enterprise servicing the healthcare sector. I estimate our client has reduced their data centre costs by around 40% compared with their previous solution, demonstrating the great value offered by NTT’s London data centre footprint.
This transaction is the second substantial dual-site deployment we’ve worked on with NTT, as we closed a similar-sized deal for a financial services customer (into both Hemel Hempstead and Slough) some time ago.
NTT in London: 100MW across three locations
64MW is either live or about to be in NTT’s LON1 data centre. Their Hemel Hempstead campus comprises three data centres (with HH1 now closed) offering 40MW. And two smaller Slough data centres provide 6MW. This adds up to just over 100MW of customer power across the three sites around London, making NTT of the largest UK operators. No doubt we’ll be hearing about further expansion plans in due course.
Colo-X has long felt that NTT, as one of the top three global data centre operators, is an often-overlooked provider in the UK market. This is especially the case for the smaller, retail-colocation clients that Colo-X focuses on.
Our track record of successes with this vendor is significantly enhanced by our long-standing relationship with the NTT team. This enables us to quickly provide pricing and availability details in response to any suitable enquiry. Hopefully, after last week’s visit, we’ll soon be adding another client to the list!
View more details about NTT’s data centres in Dagenham, Hemel Hempstead and Slough in the Colo-X Data Centre Database. Or contact Colo-X to discuss these and other colocation options in outer London and around the M25.
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