Data Centre Colocation Activity Hits Record High In Europe

A record amount of data centre colocation activity was recorded across Europe in 2016, with 155MW of take-up throughout Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam and Paris.

This number doubles the previous record for annual take-up, according to global real estate adviser CBRE, with the four major European data centre markets seeing “unprecedented” activity as companies continue to ride the cloud wave.

Amsterdam became the first market ever to pass the 50 Megawatt (MW) mark for colocation take-up in a single year with 54MW, followed by London (49MW) and Frankfurt (34MW) who both recorded more activity than any individual market had before 2016.

Record growth

The largest year-on-year increase came in Paris, with the market beating the 2.5MW recorded in 2015 to hit the 17.6MW mark in 2016

“The record level of take-up in 2016 was totally unprecedented,” said Andrew Jay, executive director for Data Centre Solutions at CBRE. “Q4 alone saw almost as much activity as any other full year. Over the course of 2016 all four markets saw more take-up than they each did in the previous two years combined. The numbers are quite astounding.

“Cloud continues to dominate the landscape, with 70 percent of deals coming from this sector. These hyperscale cloud deals that once would have been unusual became the norm. We predict that cloud take-up will continue to increase in size as more hyperscale providers turn to large-scale build-to-suit facilities as an effective speed to-market option.”

The colocation market is expected to be worth $33.2 billion (£23bn) by 2018 and the last couple of years has seen a large amount of activity in the industry as businesses look to cash in on cloud’s prominence.

For example, Equinix recently acquired IO UK’s data centre operating business in Slough, following on from Digital Bridge’s rumoured $1 billion (£800m) purchase of Vantage Data Centers and HPE’s acquisition of data centre ‘unicorn’ SimpliVity for £527m.

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