Proximity Data Centres Edge 2 Leeds

Colo-X analysis

Proximity Data Centres is a new provider for the UK data centre market, commencing operations in 2020 and the only specialist ‘edge’ focussed operator. They are aiming to open a string of 20 data centres across the country within 2020 and 2021 – a very short time frame. The company believe that a portfolio of 20 sites can be located to offer less than 15 miles distance from 95% of the population located outside of London, so ultra-low latency and 5G-related deployments will be one of their key selling points, ideal for edge applications.

The scale of Proximity’s ambitions should not be underestimated and they could easily become one of the biggest data centre providers in the UK regional data centre market. For example, if each site is 2MW, they could quickly account for 40–50MW of new supply in a market of that is only 150MW in total at present.

The Proximity sites have generally been built, owned and operated by large systems integrators who now have increasing volumes of spare capacity as legacy enterprise clients shift into cloud services. The Proximity model is that the existing site owner remains in situ but becomes a tenant. Thus all the new Proximity sites will already have decent occupancy from the outset with 2MW or so of spare capacity available (around 500 racks).

While a new operator, the Proximity management team have long-standing industry CVs from the data centre industry, telecoms and enterprise IT sectors.

Proximity Data Centres Edge 2 Leeds facility description

Proximity’s Edge 2 Wakefield data centre is situated just 8 miles south east from Leeds city centre in Normanton, and is about 1 mile south of junction 31 of the M62, so well placed to provide locally based colocation services for the entire West Yorkshire conurbation. It was previously owned by US data analytics giant Acxiom, and operated as their European data centre and technology hub prior to being acquired by Proximity Data Centres in 2020. The facility now provides colocation services to a range of clients who have remained in situ during the change of ownership.

Situated within a secure 4.4 acre perimeter, the Wakefield facility is a two-storey building of brick and steel frame. The ground floor hosts two 1MW data halls with a total floor space of 6,695 sq ft. On the first floor there is space for business recovery services for colocation clients.

The site also has scope within its boundary to deliver a further 2MW of customer power.

Technical stats