A brand-new report has been published and is available immediately via DATACENTRE.ME.

The new report entitled “Data Centres at a time of Pandemic – Weathering the Storm” has been published providing a global comprehensive overview of Data Centres around the globe including Data Centres in the USA, China and Europe and their response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Data Centres at a time of Pandemic – Weathering the Storm report finds that the immediate effects of the Covid-19 pandemic include the following:

• Constant Growth – There is continued growth of Data Centre capacity and Capex despite the pandemic conditions.
• Supply Chain Disruption but short-term capex and IT supply chains were impacted by the pandemic.
• Essential Infrastructure – Data Centres are being classified by authorities globally (sometimes for the first time) as critical infrastructure to be maintained.
• China led the way into lockdown – China was the first country to experience the pandemic and implemented lockdown and social distancing measures in January 2020.
• China was the first country out of lockdown – Chinese Data Centre companies implemented social distancing measures and restrictions on visitors with employee screening & from March 2020 resumed Data Centre construction.
• Automated Data Centre services are becoming more important – as non-essential visits to the facility are banned remote hands services and software automation services are being used instead.

The new report considers the growth in selected Data Centre markets worldwide since the pandemic struck and considers Data Centre responses by region:

• China – The first country to be affected. Data Centres responded with a ban on construction activity, and temperature testing for all employees and a visitor ban. Data Centres were impacted by IT supply chain shortages with a shortage of new servers for installation. Existing power utilisation rates increased as existing servers were run at full capacity.
• North America – Data Centres have introduced their own business continuity plans, with social distancing and non-essential visits to be stopped. Data Centre Providers have sought to encourage the usage of their “smart hands” services as an alternative to manual intervention and remote working via a software fabric and web portal.
• Europe – Data Centres have enforced restrictions based on Government regulations of social mobility, but with Data Centre facilities designated as being “critical” infrastructure.
• Asia Pacific – Data Centres have also complied with Government restrictions such as Singapore’s implementation of a “circuit breaker” approach locking down activity, but with Data Centre’s again being an essential part of Singapore’s “infocommunications” sector.

In almost all countries Data Centres have been certified as being critical to the economy, in recognition of the importance made in providing online services – seen in the explosive growth in Zoom, Google Meets, Microsoft Teams and Facebook Messenger desktop video conferencing applications.

Cloud Service Providers (including Google and Microsoft) have had to suspend their Data Centre expansion, as has Facebook (in Ireland and Alabama) with higher utilisation of servers and power being reported during the pandemic. With the end of the national lockdown in March 2020 Chinese Data Centre construction of new facilities has resumed.

But there continues to be expansion of new facilities worldwide with the completion of Data Centre facilities already in the pipeline and the announcements of new construction projects (some of these include Interxion (Paris), Equinix (Singapore), SUNeVision i-advantage (Hong Kong) & RagingWire (Chicago)).

Acquisitions continue to be made during the pandemic. For example, investment firm ColonyCapital in May acquired Brazilian Data Centre UCL Diveo and its Vantage Data Center subsidiary acquired NGD Centre (Wales) in April and Etix Everywhere (Europe) in February 2020.

The large data centre providers continue to grow their revenues, with Equinix anticipating growth of 6 to 8 per cent revenue growth in 2020 – after seeing revenue growth of 6 per cent in Q1 2020. But it is the Chinese Data Centre Providers who are seeing the most growth – with 21vianet Group reporting a 25 per cent increase in Q1 revenues & GDS Holdings reporting a 34 per cent increase in Q1 2020 revenues year on year.

After the pandemic Data Centres are to maintain their capacity growth despite the lockdowns, with DCP forecasting a slowdown in eight large markets worldwide of just 2 per cent overall during 2020. The Data Centre sector is demonstrating its resilience even in the most intense downturn.

Download table of content here.

Report published: 

9 June 2020

Number of pages in the report:

52

List of figures:

19

Cost: 

The “Data Centres at a time of Pandemic – Weathering the Storm” report cost:

• GBP £395 to purchase on a single user licence.
• GBP £595 for a corporate licence

Special offer:

Receive the “Data Centres at a Time of Pandemic – Weathering the Storm” report free of charge when purchasing any other report mentioned below or here. 

1.       Europe Data Centre Trends Tracker Report 2020
2.       UK Data Centre Trends Tracker Report January 2020
3.       Data Centre Landscape Europe 2020 (17 Countries)
4.       China Data Centre Market Report 2020 – 2025
5.       Caribbean Data Centre Report 2020
6.       Middle East Data Centre Report 2017 – 2020
7.       Africa Data Centre Pricing Report 2015 – 2020
8.       USA Data Centre Pricing Tracker 2019
9.       Asia-Pacific Data Centre Pricing Tracker 2019
10.       Data Centres at a Time of Pandemic – Weathering the Storm Report (PLUS Revised  DC Space Forecast 2020)

For more information or to purchase any of the above-mentioned reports / subscriptions, please contact Caroline Hitchins OWNER & FOUNDER via the Contact Form  / +44 (0) 7544 121900.