A new report has placed Dublin and London as the leading cities for the development of new data centres in EMEA during Q2 2021, with Tokyo dominating APAC.
The Data Centre Report, published by DC Byte in partnership with property consultancy Knight Frank, indicates that growth has been strong across EMEA in 2021, with expansion into new markets outside of Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris and Dublin expected.
In Dublin, 146MW of capacity was added in Q2 of this year, with London’s growth reaching 122MW, driven by cloud demand from hyperscalers. Dublin’s expansion almost matches its entire total for 2020, while London’s figures are on pace with its second quarter of that year.
The report also suggests that US public cloud operators are looking to London for potential expansion of self-build cloud infrastructure. It suggests a shift in market dynamics, based on both Google and Amazon Web Services’ recent acquisition of sites in the Home Counties.
Meanwhile in the APAC region, growth was around 95MW, similar to quarterly averages from 2020 and the 75MW in the first quarter of this year. Tokyo topped the charts with an increase of 250MW, driven by developments in the area by Princeton Digital Group, Lendlease and Vantage, whilst Shanghai added just over 200MW.
Ed Galvin, Founder and CEO at DC Byte, said, “We expect the trend toward expansion across EMEA, outside of FLAPD, to continue. On the hyperscale horizon, 2021 will see facilities in seven markets come online as Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Spain and Sweden all add capacity, in addition to the core markets of Amsterdam, which is rapidly evolving into both a colocation and enterprise hyperscale location, and Dublin. This is a record for a single year. Istanbul and Warsaw are other ‘edge’ markets to keep an eye on.”
Stephen Beard, Partner and Co-Head of Global Data Centres at Knight Frank, added, “The data centre landscape continues to evolve rapidly as operators compete to secure land, develop new sites and increase market coverage. Investor interest is rising as a result, buoyed by escalating market activity and the predicted future growth trajectory of the sector. Data centres can realise higher returns than traditional real estate classes and as such, are firmly an asset class that is now attracting wider investor recognition.”
