The £15.7bn UK data centre market – a festival of big numbers
Fri 2 May 2014
Here’s a host of big numbers that can be used to justify a range of propositions and proposals – not sure I’d base a business plan on them though…
I have read the piece several times and am still a little confused as to what is included and what isn’t – and why. It doesn’t include the facilities side, just the IT but not telecoms or application software but it does include internal staff but not maintenance.
There is a clue as to why it has this slightly erratic approach in the last line: “Try see it my way… there are many different ways to slice and dice the market, so let us know how you’d like to see it for your business planning.”
Some aspects do surprise: it suggests, for example, that external data centre spending has remained consistent at £8bn for each of the last three years.
So, whether it creates a believable and accurate picture of the UK’s data centre market you’ll have to make your own judgement. I’ll go for the top and tail approach – the report says it’s a big and growing market but the growth is not evenly spread across the sectors.
Excerpt
“In our interviews with UK data centres this year we’ve come across a large number who have invested in new hardware for the first time in a number of years and many who see the cost of software increasing as a proportion of their total spending. Hardware spending is significantly less than it might be due to the extensive adoption of advanced virtualisation in the UK. Vendors have failed to persuade customers to invest more in storage systems through their Big Data campaigns, although the wider use of disk drives and Direct Attached Storage is somewhat hidden from this view. We’re not seeing a demand for extra capacity exceed that driven my Moore’s Law in any of the hardware areas.”
Make up your own mind – click here to read the report
