Pandemic drives expansion of European Data Centre Market
Whether we home-schooled, worked from home, kept ourselves connected, fit or active, internet access has been vital for us as we’ve navigated the devasting impact of the pandemic.
With some providers reporting data traffic increases of 60% on their networks since early 2020, it is not difficult to see that how our reliance on technology in helping us adapt to the crisis has driven demand. PwC recently issued a report that stated that video has been the main driving force behind the increased demand.
A fact that has been back up by data from Ofcom released earlier this month that stated that the average UK resident spent five hours and 40 minutes a day watching video content.
Ecommerce has also witnessed an explosion, with consumer spending patterns being turned upside down. Prior to the pandemic who would have predicted that jigsaw puzzle sales would climb by 370%? or that sales of yeast would grow by more than 400% as we became a nation of Mary Berrys?
TikTok and Zoom now roll off the tongue as easily as Google, Facebook and eBay, with ‘You’re on mute’ entering the pandemic’s lexicon. For service only launched in 2016, TikTok now boasts 100 million monthly active U.S. users alone (690 million globally).
One thing that we do during times of uncertainty is seek things that calm and reassure us. Research by Google found that digital video can be a wellspring of positivity”.
79% of U.S. video consumers surveyed by Google found that streaming platforms make them happy and bring them joy and relief. The average U.S. consumer now pays for four different streaming video subscriptions. Nearly one-quarter of U.S. consumers (23%) have added at least one new paid streaming video service since the pandemic began.
And most analysts predict that these trends will continue as we bed down into ‘the new norm’.
A beneficiary of this explosion in internet traffic growth is the data centre supply market. According to analysts Data Centre Pricing, the European data center market is growing rapidly as companies expand their reliance on cloud computing and consumers demand online services.
The four largest data centre markets – the UK, Germany, France and the Netherlands – account for 70% of all total data centre space across Europe, but it’s in other countries such as Switzerland, Portugal, Ireland and Italy that growth is fastest.
Indeed, the scale of the expansion is revealed via the sheer number of new projects planned – a total of 109 – amounting to roughly 1.5 million square meters of space, and approximately 2,250 megawatts of power.
“Not only is demand for new data centre facilities set to continue to grow, but the supply of new data centre capacity in new markets indicates that cloud & content services are set to be distributed widely across more European markets in the future as well as in the traditional FLAP (Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam and Paris) cities,” the report concludes.
Distributed computing is key. Companies with multinational data centres locations are seeking suppliers that can provide hosting, storage and connectivity in a number of regions to provide effectively a ‘single controllable system – be it private or hybrid cloud.
Service providers such as vXtream have a physical presence in global locations ensuring that clients have the benefit of ‘computing without boundaries’ but the security of having total control.
Elastic demand is not a problem. You simply scale compute resources up or down on demand, without worrying about capacity planning or engineering for peak usage. Thus eliminating the need for cluster-level management servers, providing the flexibility and agility to meet the most demanding of workloads at the point of need.
So, whether its binge watching the Sopranos in Zurich or attempting to create the perfect sour dough in Manhattan, your end users receive a guaranteed quality service.
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