FOCUS LONDON
Issue 18, October/November
THE UK THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS
Penny Jones takes a look at some of the key trends that can be seen in the UK data center industry — from monitoring to outsourcing — as highlighted in the DatacenterDynamics 2011 Global Industry Census.
ou only have to be in London for a day to realize just how dense the city is. You can cross most of it in a few hours. There may be little room to grow out, but London has grown up — new skyscrapers line the sky in most directions. Commercial real estate across the UK is in demand thanks to growing business needs, and the growing density of the data center is behind some of this drive. This was one of the key findings from the DatacenterDynamics Global Industry Census.
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In the most comprehensive industry survey yet, the sample offered a profile similar to that seen with other developed nations and identifies the UK — centered on London — as a truly global data center market, with global reach and influence (for more on this see our box on how our UK sample measured up below).
THE UK TAKES TO OUTSOURCING
London was always well ahead in data center development, but when it came to outsourcing it has historically fallen behind. This year, however, our results showed that about 105,000 racks were outsourced by our sample, costing close to US$600m — a figure projected to grow by US$148m in 2012.
“This is enormous growth. The UK has largely depended on the financial sector, which has historically seen outsourcing as a disadvantage,” DatacenterDynamics research director Nick Parfitt says.
“These figures, however, indicate that the UK is now catching up with the other markets in the adoption of outsourcing.” The recession is partly behind this. It has driven many companies to go back to grassroots-thinking within the business and to outsource data center operations.
THE REAL DIFFERENTIATORS
Overall, our UK respondents said they spent US$1,050m on IT optimization last year, and they expect this figure to grow by US$130m in 2012 across their data center operations. A majority of UK respondents also said they
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Number of data centers Total sample aggregate shown
14600 14700 14800 14900 15000 15100 15200 15300
2011 2012
Number of racks (millions) Total sample aggregate shown
0.985 0.990 0.995 1.000 1.005 1.010 1.015 1.020 1.025 1.030 1.035
2011 2012
Total facility power (GW) Total sample aggregate shown
4.45 4.5
4.35 4.4
4.25 4.3
4.15 4.2
4.05 4.1
4 2011 2012
2.7% Next 12 months = +400 DCs
3.0% Next 12 months = +30000 Racks
6.7% Next 12 months = +0.28 GW
How data center infrastructure will change, according to our UK data center respondents, many of which operate with a global footprint
*From the DatacenterDynamics Industry Census
continuously monitored most aspects of the data center, and about 40% said they planned on investing in measuring and monitoring tools,
while 30% said they planned on
spending on systems in the next 12 months across their portfolio.
Parfitt says this is largely because of the increasing legislative environment that surrounds data center operations in the UK — from the EU Code of Conduct to the Carbon
Reduction Commitment. “The UK and China like measuring urban emissions more than anywhere else. For China, it is mostly because they like the latest in technology. For the UK, it is very much about legislation,” Parfitt says.
Other technologies that UK data center operators are looking to invest in include blade servers (37%), server virtualization (35%) and cloud architectures (39%). n
UK CENSUS RESPONDENTS HIGHILGHT THE INCREASINGLY GLOBAL NATURE OF THE UK’S DATA CENTER INDUSTRY
A total of 397 respondents to our DatacenterDynamics Industry Census told us they operated 14,800 data centers, covering 2.91million sq m. This fi gure, however, was not just for the UK.
Many respondants said they work for companies with a global footprint. Ten percent of these respondents said they have data centers spanning more than 25,000 sq m, and 15% 5,001-25,000 sq m, while 20% are already catering for 10MW.
To drill down further, 21% of respondents said they represented banking and fi nancial services, 18% ICT, 13% the public sector, 10% telecommunications, 9% education and research, and the remainder the Internet and online industry, professional services,
industrial and manufacturing industries,
energy and utilities, healthcare and others. The city of London made up 21% of the actual resondents to our UK sample. Another 16% were from the UK’s south east and home counties, and 14% were from London, outside of the M25 ring road that circles the central London metropolitan area.
What was interesting was that 26% of respondents were from the operations side of the data center, 19% facilities management, 20% IT and applications management, 16% engineering and support, and 9% networks. The remainder were in property and real estate, fi nance and administration, and sales and marketing roles.
(Data collected June and July 2011)
Number of DCs
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