Anyone who enters the data center and online services business today as a cloud , XaaS or collocation operator , or who builds their own cloud data centers as a company, must, among other things, clarify the location issue. Several factors play an important role here: price of land, energy price, proximity to users, the availability of fast network connections, political and legal security , and growth potential.
But how to weigh each factor? That the proximity to the user is just one of many reasons for choosing a location, prove Amazon, Apple, Google and Facebook. All these operators built new locations of their hyperscale infrastructures in countries far to the north of Europe, even though they have relatively small populations. The reason: Reliable framework conditions, well-educated workforce, cool air, good networking with the rest of Europe and plenty of renewable energy sources, in Denmark, for example, wind energy. Apple, for example, has just built a large data center for animation and new media in Viborg, Denmark, which produces 200 MW of waste heat. In Viborg, this will be fed into a district heating network, thereby improving the plant's environmental performance. Norway has not really been able to play a role here as a location in recent years - here it lacked the fast connections to the population centers of Europe. This should change with the year 2015.
Look outside the box
Steve Wallage, chief analyst of the consulting arm of the market research firm Broad Group, which has hosted the Datacloud Europe congress for ten years: "One should not always think of Western European metropolises." Nigeria, for example, which today has 180 million inhabitants, is likely to have 400 million inhabitants by 2019 have and have over 12 million Facebook accounts, the largest Facebook density in the world. In many countries, new legislation on digital content is being developed, and once it is in place, it will provide a more reliable environment for service providers.With regard to market growth, however, there is no end in cloud or collocation in Europe. According to Broad Group data, the European market for public cloud and IaaS is expected to grow from around € 1 billion in 2014 to just under € 4.5 billion in 2019. That means a growth rate of 35 to 40 percent. In the collocation market, electricity capacities are expected to increase from around 200 MW in 2014 to around 330 MW in 2019. This corresponds to an average annual growth rate of 10 to 12 percent. The market volume is currently at 4.5 to 5 billion euros. In the regions outside the Western European core markets, it is even 17 percent annually.
