FOCUS CHINESE COLOCATION
Issue 15, April/May
BRAVE NEW WORLD
Some colocation players remain hesitant when it comes to entering the Chinese market, despite swelling demand. Penny Jones asks what is holding them back?
F
ive years ago colocation and China may not have been such an obvious mix. Tight government control on data, poor connectivity and a lack of
highly skilled IT companies inside its borders meant getting the right data centers for high- end services in China was a bit tricky.
Today it is a very different story. Demand in China is growing at an extraordinary pace and the data centers being built to cater for this are, in some cases, larger than any others on Earth. Large facilities are being built for government focussed around cloud services. Activity by international colocation players is also picking up. But you will rarely see operations in China bare the names of the international colocation players the rest of the world is familiar with.
China’s rapidly expanding business environment has had a huge influence on demand for
colocation data center space.
As a result, China is trying to break down barriers and encourage companies in.
There is no shortage of international players eyeing the market but the truth is many are still sitting on the sideline, waiting for the right mix of partnerships, infrastructure and demand before entering the market.
Locally, China’s government is also making a large push for cloud computing services to meet the growing needs of an increasingly online
community. A study by CCID
consulting said that the cloud computing market in China is expected to be worth more
A DATA CENTER THE SIZE OF A SMALL CITY
For a look at the size of data center operations being required today in China, you can’t go much further than the recent project announced by IBM and Chinese company Range Technology. IBM Site and Facilities Services VP Steve Sams describes it as a “small city”.
The partners are building the Langfang high-technology center about 50km outside of the center of Beijing, and they expect it to serve a wide range of companies and public-sector organizations. Both companies will work together to provide hosting and operation-related services at the new data centers. The facilities will be attract both private and government organizations, with an emphasis on cloud-based services.
Langfang City development, hosting for smart-transportation systems, e-government services, administration systems and food and drug safety services, among others will be carried out at the site. The site itself is part of the Chinese government’s economic-development activities.
Construction of the first two 170,000-sq-ft data centers on the 6.6m-sq-ft site has already started and the next group of facilities is expected to enter the design phase within the next several months. The rate and timeline
20
www.datacenterdynamics.com
for further development will depend on the pace of space uptake in the initial facilities.
The 6.6m-sq-ft figure is only an estimate of the first series of buildings that will be constructed for the future Langfang Range International Information Hub in the Hebei Province.
More construction may take place in future, again depending on uptake. Construction is due to be complete in 2016 (for the first set of eight data centers) and the first two data centers are slated to come online within the next 12-24 months. Facilities that follow the first two will be built faster.
“We’re designing a new environment that we expect to be replicated many times,” Sams says.
IBM will use its modular “plug-and-play” approach to infrastructure build- out starting power and cooling at low density, gradually expanded based on demand.
Reporting by Yevgeniy Sverdlik international
than US$9.2bn by the end of 2012 – in 2009 it was worth just over US$1.4bn. The country needs data centers, and fast.
MEET THE COMPETITION
China’s colocation environment has been largely dominated by the two government- owned telcos – China Unicom and China Telecom. As a result it is difficult to find carrier-neutral services in China.
China’s telecoms industry is highly regulated, and all companies
international must
go through
communications its
local
companies for internal networking solutions. The CEO of colocation and connectivity player Pacnet (owned by the Chinese government) says he thinks it will be a long time before this competitive landscape changes.
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