We attended the Data Centre World event for the first time which was held in London at the Barbican Centre.
In particular we noted that all the big pan-European operators would be present and several of them presenting.
The exhibition space was impressive, dozens of companies offering all sorts of data centre related products, in fact the five colo operators were totally swamped by rack manufacturers, cabling companies, cooling vendors and so forth. I even became aware of several companies that will clean your data centre for you, something I’d never really thought about! Still impressive to see so many related businesses all benefitting from the data centre boom.
Whilst at the show we met with Equinix, Telecity, Telehouse, Interxion, Blue Square and UK Grid and EBRC from Luxembourg. In terms of news it was good to hear Equinix Slough 2 is on track to open shortly; we expect the initial launch to be of some 40,000 sq ft of net tech space, roughly 1500 cabinets worth. We continue to believe the London market is in much better balance between supply and demand than we saw a few years ago, with all the big players continuing to bring on space and furthermore, with a pipeline of capacity for the future. Recent openings of course include Telecity Park Royal, Telehouse West (phase 1 on 1st April) and now Equinix Slough 2. As for the pipeline we have 3 further floors of Telehouse West to come (30,000 sq ft net tech) and at least the balance of Equinix Slough 2 (120,000 sq ft of net tech).
I thought Eric Schwarz’s presentation, (Eric is President of Equinix Europe) on the challenges’ facing the industry, or Beyond the Space Odyssey as he called it, really reinforced this message of better balance. He said quite openly that “as capacity becomes more manageable performance will become the bigger issue”. In other words, its no longer simply a case of fighting a rearguard action to keep up with demand, he felt their capacity planning programme was now dealing with this, it was more a case of data centres having to perform as expected as they become critical pieces of infrastructure to support cloud, surging financial trading activities and so forth.
In other news Blue Square reported positive progress up at their claimed Tier 4 site in Milton Keynes, with some 50 clients now installed and about a quarter of the site sold.
It was also interesting to catch up with Luxembourg based EBRC who have now opened their fourth data centre in the country, offering some 5000sq m of net tech and brining their total up to 12,000 sq m. The new facility is of Tier4 standard and also offers DR facilities, ie desks.
We will write a greater length about other issues from the conference elsewhere.