Datasource February 2018

DATASOURCE DATA CENTRE MARKET NEWS

ISSUE 168 FEBRUARY 2018

DATA CENTRES WILL CONSUME 20% OF WORLD’S POWER BY 2025

NEWS GLOBAL EVENTS

DATASOURCE

ISSUE 168

2

FEBRUARY 2018

DATASOURCE 02/2018 Chris Jones Head of Data Centres GVA

NEWS

Every month Datasource reports the news and trends that matter to data centre occupiers around the world.

3 World 10

GVAÂ is a leading expert in the UK data centre market.

We specialise in analysing, acquiring and marketing technical space from development land right through to shell & core, operational facilities and colocation suites.

Since 2000 we have transacted 500,000 m2 of technical space and a gigawatt of energy.

Europe, Middle East and Africa

24 Americas 32

Asia Pacific

EVENTS 37 Americas

We work for a full spectrum of public and private sector clients from government entities to investment banks and from data centre providers to property developers.

38 Asia Pacific

How can we help you?

36 Europe, Middle East and Africa

ABOUT US 39 About GVA Data Centres

Our core services

170 offices 27 countries Transacted over

500,000m2 (1 gigawatt) of IT space and power

WORLD

EMEA

AMERICAS

ASIA PACIFIC

EVENTS

DATASOURCE

ISSUE 168

3

FEBRUARY 2018

WORLD Data centres of the world will consume 1/5 of Earth’s power by 2025 41.6% of the world’s PoPs were in North America, 40.4% in EMEA, 9.5% in Asia and 8.5% in Oceania. Operators battled for the top places in each region.

The rapid adoption of data-hungry machines and services is driving the need for more power to keep the lights on in the data centres of the world.

As analysts estimate as many as 50 billion devices to be connected by 2020, with some statistics pointing to more than 100 billion a further five years down the line, new alarming research suggests that data centres will be one of the biggest energy consumers on the planet, beating many countries’ energy consumption levels.

According to a paper to be published by US researchers before the end of the year, the ICT industry is posed to be responsible for up to 3.5% of global emissions by 2020, with this value potentially escalating to 14% by 2040, according to Climate Change News.

The figures meet those published by Swedish researcher and Senior Expert Life Cycle Assessment at Huawei, Anders Andrae in 2016 in his “Total Consumer Power Consumption Forecast”. Andrae predicts that by 2025, data centres will amount to ICT’s largest share of global electricity production at 33%, followed by smartphones (15%) networks (10%) and TV (9%).

EMEA

The exponential utilisation of energy by data centres is not new, with the amount of power consumed increasing 9% between 2010 and 2015, according to KPN Integrated.

On the global scale, data centres are poised to be the largest global energy users by 2025 at 4.5%, an increase from just 0.9% in 2015, according to Andrae’s report.

In comparison, consumer devices, fixed access wired services, wireless networks and production are all set to lag behind data centres in terms of energy usage.

Researchers say this will be directly related to the fact that the data centre sector could be using 20% of all available electricity in the world by 2025 on the back of the large amounts of data being created at a fastest speed than ever before seen.

WORLD

As for the wider global usage, Andrae also expects data centres to use 20% of the world’s energy, however, he places their carbon footprint at 5.5% of the global value, should adoption of more efficient energy sources not evolve at speed.

Globally, data centres were in 2014 responsible for around 1.62% of the world’s utilised energy that year, according to Yole Développement.

That has increased today to more than 3% of the world’s energy (around 420 terawatts) and data centres are also responsible for 2% of total greenhouse gas emissions.

AMERICAS

ASIA PACIFIC

EVENTS

DATASOURCE

ISSUE 168

4

FEBRUARY 2018

London data centre construction costs up 4.1% despite Brexit, but where are the most expensive places to build a hub?

Construction is gaining pace across the world and CAPEX is increasing as existing and emerging markets force new builds..

London continues to be Europe’s most expensive hot spot to build a data centre and even the UK’s decision to leave the EU has not driven costs down as it has in other sectors such as the housing market.

Construction costs in the British capital are in fact 4.1% higher despite a rising number of projects outside the boundaries of the 8.5 million people region, according to the Data Centre Cost Index 2017 from Turner & Townsend.

The Index analyses input costs – including labour and materials – and compares the cost of both new build and technical fit out projects across 18 established data centre markets worldwide.

Researchers believe costs are up in London as demand for data centres is outstripping supply from contractors.

Foreign investment and the growth of cloud services providers are key factors fuelling the growth of data centres in London.

In comparison, Amsterdam, Paris and Stockholm have new build data centre construction costs which are up to 10% lower than London.

The close-by Dublin market has also seen costs increasing, with construction cost inflation forecast for 2018 placed at 8% giving the Irish capital the title of one of the fastest growing data centre markets in EMEA and in the world.

However, Frankfurt has also witnessed a growth in interest following Brexit, with the market being described as “overheating” by researchers due to a high number of projects and intense competition for physical resources and labour driving prices up.

“As well as being a major financial hub, Frankfurt benefits from a high density of network service providers, is home to the world’s largest internet exchange and is considered a gateway to eastern and central Europe,” reads in the report.

WORLD

EMEA

According to the index, ahead of Brexit, the city is seeing increased demand for data centre space.

A key construction trend throughout Europe – and one set to continue in 2018 – is the prominence of UK and Ireland-based contractors securing projects across mainland Europe, particularly where local data centre expertise is not available on a large scale.

Contractors delivering new build facilities in Frankfurt can expect to command margins of up to 15%, while average margins for new build in London are 6.5%.

Dan Ayley, Director, Hi-technology and manufacturing at Turner & Townsend said: “Despite Brexit headwinds, London retains its title as Europe’s leading data centre hub with approximately double the space and usage requirements of rival Frankfurt.

“This is set to continue in 2018 as high construction costs for new build facilities in both cities reflect the buoyancy of these markets and growing labour shortages.

“Data is one of the world’s most valuable commodities and in European hubs, data centre demand is being driven by the rapid adoption of cloud services and the emergence of business models based around the Internet of Things.

“This in turn is increasing competition to provide space at a lower cost and investors, developers and operators need certainty that they are building at the most competitive price. Against this backdrop they must proactively review and benchmark cost trends to be able to assess opportunities at a regional and global level.”

Although London is an expensive market to build a data centre, the capital is still far behind the two most expensive hot spots of New York and San Francisco classified as the most expensive places to build data centres in the world with construction costs in these cities as much as 25% higher than other established data centre markets.

AMERICAS

ASIA PACIFIC

EVENTS

DATASOURCE

ISSUE 168

5

FEBRUARY 2018

60% Of global colocation revenues come from JUST 20 data centre destinations

Data centre M&As top $20bn in dramatic twist with consolidation expected to last at least until 2022 Digital Realty and Equinix have spent a combined $19bn in acquiring new assets in the period between 2015-17.

Data centre M&As have in 2017 seen a record $20bn in deals with some of the largest ever industry blockbuster transactions taking place.

The value is only comparable to the combined figures invested amount in 2015 and 2016, according to Synergy Research Group.

26% of revenues come from the world’s top five metro areas alone.

Data centres are being built all over the world, however, 59% of global revenues from wholesale and retail colocation come from just 20 metro areas in North America, Europe and APAC. According to Synergy Research Group, of those 59%, 26% come from the world’s top five metro areas alone including Washington, New York, Tokyo, London, and Shanghai. The think tank ranked the cities by revenue generated in Q3 2017.

The next 15 largest metro markets account for another third of the worldwide market. Those top 20 metros include ten in North America, four in the EMEA region and six in the APAC region.

Across the 20 largest metros, retail colocation accounted for 72% of Q3 revenues and wholesale 28%. In Q3 Equinix was the market leader by revenue in eight of the top 20 metros and Digital Realty would be the leader in five more if a full quarter of the acquired DuPont Fabros operations were included in its numbers.

Other colocation operators that featured heavily in the top 20 metros include 21Vianet, @Tokyo, China Telecom, CoreSite, CyrusOne, Global Switch, Interxion, KDDI, NTT, SingTel and QTS. Over the last four quarters, colocation revenue growth in the top five metros outstripped growth in the rest of the world by two percentage points, which according to Synergy, translates into the worldwide market being slowly concentrated more in those metro areas.

The Top 20 metros with annualised growth rates of 15% or more (measured in local currencies) were Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong and Washington/Northern Virginia. All four saw strong growth in both the retail and wholesale segments of the market, though growth in wholesale tended to be higher. Synergy also highlighted Chicago, which has seen very strong growth in wholesale revenues, though in this metro retail colocation growth was relatively weak.

2017 has also not only set the record for M&As. It has also laid the foundations to four additional major deals that have been agreed but not yet closed, with a total value of over $2.6bn.

On average through 2017, there was almost one significant M&A deal closed every week. The largest transaction in the year was Digital Realty’s $7.6bn acquisition of DuPont Fabros, but there were four other deals that were valued at a billion dollars or more, involving acquisitions by Equinix, Cyxtera, Peak 10 and Digital Bridge.

There were another 12 deals that were valued in the $100m to $1bn range, and 31 smaller deals that were each valued at up to $100m.

John Dinsdale, a Chief Analyst and Research Director at Synergy Research Group, said: “Above all else, what is driving the data centre M&A activity is enterprises focusing more on improving IT capabilities and less on owning data centre assets.

“That shift is driving huge growth in outsourcing, whether it is via cloud services, or use of colocation facilities, or sale and leaseback of data centres.

“The dramatic growth of cloud providers is also driving changes in the data centre industry, as data centre operators strive to help them rapidly increase scale and global footprint.

“We expect to see much more data centre M&A over the next five years.”

Synergy has also pointed that over the 2015-2017 period, by far the largest investors have been Digital Realty and Equinix, the world’s two leading colocation providers. In aggregate they spent $19bn on acquisitions of data centre operators, which excludes the pending acquisition of Metronode by Equinix.

Equinix has made major acquisitions in all four regions of the world, while Digital Realty has focused on the United States and Europe. Other notable acquirers included CyrusOne, Peak 10, Digital Bridge, NTT, Carter Validus, Iron Mountain, Cyxtera and Elegant Jubilee.

John Dinsdale, a Chief Analyst and Research Director at Synergy Research Group, said: “While we are seeing reasonably robust growth across all major metros and market segments, one number that jumps out is the wholesale growth rate in the Washington/Northern Virginia metro area.

“It is by far the largest wholesale market in the world and for it to be growing at 20% is particularly noteworthy. The broader picture is that data centre outsourcing and cloud services continue to drive the colocation market, and the geographic distribution of the world’s corporations is focusing the colocation market on a small number of major metro areas.”

WORLD

EMEA

AMERICAS

ASIA PACIFIC

EVENTS

DATASOURCE

ISSUE 168

6

FEBRUARY 2018

Data centres unfit for hybrid cloud deployments Operators who fail to meet SLAs face damaging their reputation as well as their own finances and the end user’s revenues.

However, the report warns there are currently very few data centres with such capabilities, potentially exposing organisations to facilities that are purely points of presence (PoP) along the ExpressRoute.

Businesses are being warned that although a hybrid cloud approach is important in the digital economy, not all data centres are ready to provide such service.

A report commissioned by data centre operator Next Generation Data (NGD) alerts user organisations about the growing performance risks of using the public internet for providing essential wide area (WAN) connectivity between their private, public and legacy environments.

Speaking to Data Economy, Simon Bearne, Commercial Director at NGD, said: “Relying on a hotchpotch of wide area network connections could be the downfall of any hybrid cloud implementation. Choosing a fit for purpose colocation facility will ensure user organisations enjoy a seamless, reliable fully-functional experience.

At the same time, the ‘Moving to an Azure Hybrid Cloud’ paper carried out for NGD by Quocirca, suggests the alternative of using dedicated WAN links will prove cost prohibitive for many.

“For maximum flexibility, look for colocation providers which offer direct connectivity into the main public clouds and have dedicated high performance networks underpinning connectivity between their own and other facilities.”

Clive Longbottom, Quocirca’s Principal Research Analyst, told Data Economy: “Based on the specific need for low latency high speed data interconnects within the hybrid cloud, choosing the right hybrid-capable colocation provider and moving away from an owned facility completely means there is no need for the company to worry about the WAN links – apart from the ones to the end user device.

“When a company attempts to run their own owned facility or uses a non-hybrid suitable colocation facility as part of a hybrid cloud that is where the issue of WAN links come to the fore. “Here, even with dedicated WAN connections, performance will not be the same as a hybrid-ready colocation centre plugged into dedicated connections – such as Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute.

The report uses the recently launched Microsoft Azure Stack hybrid cloud solution as an example, to highlight the need for colocation data centres with sufficiently dense power availability and direct gateway connections into Microsoft’s dedicated ExpressRoute WAN. The NGD Cloud Gateway platform connects customers’ IT equipment to Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute, which allows users to create private connections to Azure data centres without going over the public internet by using private connections.

EMEA

Longbottom also cautioned operators that if they fail to provide the necessary capabilities, they risk falling victims to the widespread of negative feedback between customers and potential future customers.

However, Longbottom said that colocation facilities that are not fit for a hybrid cloud model also have a place, “but it should only be done as a tactical step”.

“In the vast majority of cases where apps are suitably architected for the cloud or are using client push technologies from the datacentre to the device, the demands on bandwidth and latency are pretty low, so public internet will suffice.“

WORLD

Bearne has also warned of the “potentially enormous” financial downfall for an un-fit hybrid colocation operator. He said: “Colocation providers who cannot properly support hybrid run huge risks in taking on this type of business. Breaching SLA’s damage the reputation as well as the finances of the colo operator and the end user.”

He said: “Colocation is invariably becoming a better bet than an owned facility, as it provides better flexibility along with better capabilities, particularly around cooling and power availability.

“However, the cloud is happening – and any company that decides to make a strategic move to a colocation model that does not cater well for a hybrid cloud model will find themselves either constrained by the lack of capability or facing a need to install dedicated WAN links (which will still not provide anywhere near the overall capabilities that a hybrid-capable colocation facility will) or reversing out and having to move to a new colocation facility – with all the hard and soft costs associated with such a move.”

AMERICAS

ASIA PACIFIC

EVENTS

DATASOURCE

ISSUE 168

7

FEBRUARY 2018

Google announces large scale data centre, subsea cable deployments across the globe Company says it has spent over $30bn in IT infrastructure over three years, but warns it’s “not done yet” as its now seen as a communications brand instead of IT. Google has announced the opening of several cloud regions and data centres across the world, as well as the commission of three subsea cables. The company is to open regions in the Netherlands and Montreal, Canada, before the end of March this year.

The two new regions will be followed by Los Angeles (US), Finland and Hong Kong, “with more to come”. Additionally, Google will also commission three subsea cables to be laid in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The underwater infrastructure is to be commissioned in 2019.

Which cable has been named by the public cloud and content delivery giant. Curie will be a private cable connecting Chile to Los Angeles; Havfrue will be a consortium cable connecting the US to Denmark and Ireland; and the Hong Kong-Guam Cable system (HK-G) will be a consortium cable interconnecting major subsea communication hubs in Asia. Google claims to be the first major non-telecom company to build a private intercontinental cable with Curie. In fact, Google’s

claim comes just days after S&P Global Inc. positioned Google – and Facebook – under the category of communications, exiting the information technology vertical.

The communications category is also expected to take over telecoms as the merger of telecommunications companies is expected with several internet and media stocks, Bloomberg reports. Google’s VP Ben Treynor Sloss, said: “By deploying our own private subsea cable, we help improve global connectivity while providing value to our customers. Owning the cable ourselves has some distinct benefits.

“Since we control the design and construction process, we can fully define the cable’s technical specifications, streamline deployment and deliver service to users and customers faster. Also, once the cable is deployed, we can make routing decisions that optimize for latency and availability.”

Intel, ARM, AMD working together to solve one of history’s largest chip flaws that could impact thousands of data centres worldwide Intel CEO Brian Krzanich has sold millions of Dollars worth of shares once the company was told of the security vulnerabilities and before these were made public.

purposes, have the potential to improperly gather sensitive data from computing devices that are operating as designed. Intel believes these exploits do not have the potential to corrupt, modify or delete data.

A secret decade-long security vulnerability in Intel and other vendors’ CPUs deployed potentially across millions of devices and IT hardware has been exposed by researchers.

“Recent reports that these exploits are caused by a “bug” or a “flaw” and are unique to Intel products are incorrect. Based on the analysis to date, many types of computing devices — with many different vendors’ processors and operating systems — are susceptible to these exploits.”

The flaws, found by Google “months ago”, go under the name of Meltdown and Spectre, which exploit critical vulnerabilities in modern processors opening the doors for data to be stolen, including stored passwords and other personal and business data.

The company has now joined forces with “many other technology companies, including AMD, ARM Holdings and several operating system vendors”, to develop an industry-wide approach to resolve this issue.

According to Meltdown Attack, which has put together a comprehensive guide to the flaws supported in part by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, Meltdown and Spectre work on personal computers, mobile devices, and in the cloud.

Intel also said it has begun providing software and firmware updates to mitigate these exploits. Intel’s share price fell 3.39% at the end of trading day on Wednesday, after reaching one of the company’s highest stock prices early in the week since the early 2000s.

“Depending on the cloud provider’s infrastructure, it might be possible to steal data from other customers,” it reads. The vulnerabilities will require operating systems including Windows and Linux to be updated. Apple and Google are also working on updates for their systems and devices.

Intel originally planed to publicly speak about the flaws next week, with several security researchers having said they had made a secrecy pact with the company on the issue. Data Economy understands that some sort of leak has been the origin of the embargoed information.

In a company statement, Intel said: “Intel and other technology companies have been made aware of new security research describing software analysis methods that, when used for malicious

WORLD

EMEA

According to multiple reports, the company’s CEO Brian Krzanich has also sold shares after the company was internally informed about the security bugs. Intel has said the sale was unrelated to the security flaws.

An US Securities and Exchange Commission filling dated from November 2017, shows that Krzanich acquired and sold 644,135 shares at a weighted average price of $44.05. The executive also sold an extra 245,743 shares at a weighted average of $44.55.

According to Motley Fool, the sale returned $39m in value, with Krzanich cashing in $25m. He owns now the minimum number of shares an Intel CEO is required to own at 250,000. Speaking to CNBC this Wednesday, Krzanich said: “We were notified by Google a while back ago [about the Meltdown and Spectre], a couple months ago.”

AMERICAS

ASIA PACIFIC

EVENTS

DATASOURCE

ISSUE 168

8

FEBRUARY 2018

2018 public cloud capital expenditures set to top $160bn (before nearly doubling by 2021) US to spend the most over the year with China set to leap ahead of the UK, Germany, and Japan into the number 2 position by 2021.

Adoption of public cloud architectures shows no signs of slowing down as the latest market forecasts suggest the sector is set to grow 23.2% in 2018 from 2017, reaching $160bn in revenues.

According to International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Semiannual Public Cloud Services Spending Guide, expenditures are, however, expected to slow somewhat over the 2016-2021 forecast period, with the market forecast to achieve a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 21.9% with public cloud services spending totalling $277bn in 2021.

During 2018, the discrete manufacturing sector is expected to cash out the largest percentage of the global $160bn forecast at $19.7bn.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) will be the second largest category of public cloud spending in 2018, followed by Platform as a Service (PaaS).

This is followed by the professional services sector ($18.bn), and banking ($16.7bn). The process manufacturing and retail industries are also expected to spend more than $10bn each on public cloud services in 2018.

“IaaS spending will be fairly balanced throughout the forecast with server spending trending slightly ahead of storage spending,” analysts wrote.

Analysts expect these five industries to remain at the top in 2021 due to their continued investment in public cloud solutions.

The industries that will see the fastest spending growth over the five-year forecast period are professional services (24.4% CAGR), telecommunications (23.3% CAGR), and banking (23.0% CAGR).

Eileen Smith, program director, Customer Insights and Analysis, IDC, said: “The industries that are spending the most are the ones that have come to recognise the tremendous benefits that can be gained from public cloud services.

“Organisations within these industries are leveraging public cloud services to quickly develop and launch 3rd Platform solutions, such as big data and analytics and the Internet of Things (IoT), that will enhance and optimize the customer’s journey and lower operational costs.”

With the world’s largest industries heavily investing in their public cloud networks, the largest portion of that capital expenditure is forecast to be put towards Software as a Service (SaaS), capturing nearly two thirds of all public cloud spending in 2018.

SaaS spending, which is comprised of applications and system infrastructure software (SIS), will be dominated by applications purchases, which will make up more than half of all public cloud services spending through 2019.

Enterprise resource management (ERM) applications and customer relationship management (CRM) applications will see the most spending in 2018, followed by collaborative applications and content applications.

EMEA

In terms of geography, the United States will be the largest country market for public cloud services in 2018 with its $97bn accounting for more than 60% of worldwide spending.

The United Kingdom and Germany will lead public cloud spending in Western Europe at $7.9bn and $7.4bn respectively, while Japan and China will round out the top 5 countries in 2018 with spending of $5.8bn and $5.bn, respectively.

IDC predicts China to experience the fastest growth in public cloud services spending over the five-year forecast period (43.2% CAGR), “enabling it to leap ahead of the UK, Germany, and Japan into the number 2 position in 2021”.

Tech & Geo spend

WORLD

PaaS spending will be led by data management software, which will see the fastest spending growth (38.1% CAGR) over the forecast period. Application platforms, integration and orchestration middleware, and data access, analysis and delivery applications will also see healthy spending levels in 2018 and beyond.

Argentina (39.4% CAGR), India (38.9% CAGR), and Brazil (37.1% CAGR) will also experience particularly strong spending growth.

Ashutosh Bisht, research manager, Customer Insights and Analysis, IDC, said: “Digital transformation is driving multi-cloud and hybrid environments for enterprises to create a more agile and costeffective IT environment in Asia/Pacific.

“Even heavily regulated industries like banking and finance are using SaaS for non-core functionality, platform as a service (PaaS) for app development and testing, and IaaS for workload trial runs and testing for their new service offerings.

“Drivers of IaaS growth in the region include the increasing demand for more rapid processing infrastructure, as well as better data backup and disaster recovery.”

AMERICAS

ASIA PACIFIC

EVENTS

DATASOURCE

ISSUE 168

9

FEBRUARY 2018

EMEA Ireland approves contested €1bn AWS data centre Project G for granted. Apple data centre objector loses fight against AWS campus in the Irish capital.

Once completed, the new Dublin data centre sitting next to Facebook’s Clonee facility will take Amazon’s footprint in the Irish capital alone to close to ten buildings.

Irish authorities have put an end to a nearly 10-month dispute which has delayed the breaking ground ceremony of a €1bn AWS data centre campus in Dublin.

Amazon operates data centres in Tallaght and Clonshaugh. Also in Dublin, the company employees 1,400 people at his European headquarters and has announced plans to expand the workforce by 500 in the coming months, adding to more than 2,500 across Ireland as a whole.

The An Bord Pleanála has given planning permission to the world’s largest public cloud provider in a defeat to local objector Allan Daly who has also objected against Apple’s €850m centre in Co Galway.

According to the Irish Independent, permission was giving to Amazon’s Irish unit, Amazon Data Services Ireland Limited (ADSIL).

The company is to build a 223,000 sqf building on a 26-acre piece of land owned by the Irish Industrial Development Authority (IDA) in Mulhuddart, north-west Dublin.

The multi-million Dollar project has also been opposed by Daly together with local resident Sinead Fitzpatrick.

The building is estimated to cost around €200m, however, Amazon has admitted it could expand the campus with seven extra buildings set to be smaller than the first one, and amounting to an investment of €700m.

The development, code-named Project G, was originally expected to break ground at some point in 2017.

The data centre is predicted to be turned online 18 months after construction works start. Despite the granted planning permission, no dates have been announced for the beginning of the works.

WORLD

EMEA

The news surrounding AWS’ win will also spark as much interest at Cupertino-based Apple which is still to be given a final decision by the Irish Supreme Court regarding its announced data centre campus in Athenry.

After nearly two years of court attendances, Apple was given in October 2017 the green light by the High Court to build the facility.

However, Daly and Fitzpatrick appealed to the court which in November that year rejected that same appeal and refused to allow the two residents to appeal to the Court of Appeal, clearing a major hurdle for Apple to break ground.

However, objectors – which have not been confirmed to be Daly and/or Fitzpatrick – have raised their concerns with the Supreme Court, putting the whole project on old once more. A decision is expected anytime up to May or June 2018 should the Courts Service admit the application for court hearings.

AMERICAS

ASIA PACIFIC

EVENTS

DATASOURCE

ISSUE 168

10

FEBRUARY 2018

Global energy powerhouse Schneider Electric commits to 100% renewable electricity by 2030

Ireland expected to attract €8bn in data centre investments by 2021 As new data centre planning permission laws are discussed, CAPEX could increase in the years ahead.

Ireland is the new hot spot for data centre investments in Europe with researchers expecting the country to ramp up €8bn in aggregate data centre constructions between 2009 and 2021.

“There has been an uptick in investment in data centres in Ireland in recent years,” according to Host in Ireland’s “Ireland’s Data Hosting Industry 2017” report.

According to the document, every year since 2012 and up to 2021 is set to beat the previous, with 2017 construction investments – which does not include servers, storage and racks – amounting to nearly $4.2bn up from just over $3.5bn in 2016.

Green move to be taken in three levers with the corporation aiming for 80% renewable electricity already by 2020.

Energy management and automation company Schneider Electric has vowed to double its energy productivity from renewable sources with the goal to be 100% carbon neutral in 12 years. In order to achieve that, the organisation has joined two global, collaborative initiatives, led by The Climate Group.

These include RE100, put in place to use 100% renewable electricity by 2030 with an intermediary objective of 80% by 2020, and EP100, designed to double energy productivity by 2030, against a 2005 baseline, setting a target to doubling the economic output from every unit of energy consumed.

The provider’s commitments to renewable energy will cover more than 1,000 electricity consuming sites around the globe, including 200 factories. Schneider Electric will leverage a range of renewable energy sources, including but not limited to solar, wind, geothermal and biomass.

Emmanuel Lagarrigue, Chief Strategy Officer and Executive Vice President at Schneider Electric, said: “We are in a new world of energy that is becoming more electric, more decarbonised, more decentralised, and more digital. Our mission at Schneider Electric is to supply the technologies that permit, drive and catalyse the transition to a new world of energy.

“The commitments we have made today in joining RE100 and EP100 to source 100 per cent renewable electricity and reflect on the doubling of our energy productivity are a demonstration of how consumers and business can be empowered to ensure the affordability, resilience, sustainability, and security of the energy that they consume.”

For 2018, CAPEX is expected to nearly reach $6bn with 2019 posed to top $6.2bn.

By 2020, the country is expected to have drawn in more than $7.1bn and in 2021, the $8bn mark is projected to be reached.

David McAuley, Founder & CEO, Bitpower, Host in Ireland Advisory Council, said: “Investment in data centres is significant, and the data industry supports many jobs across the economy.

There are also opportunities in the content of the data. We are only at the beginning of the digital age, and Ireland needs to be ready to leverage future trends in data.

“Collaboration between the data centre operators, the state utilities, renewable developers, researchers, state agencies, and local authorities will be key to unlocking future opportunities.”

Host in Ireland explained that to calculate the cost of each facility, it applied a metric of €m per MW of data centre capacity to their model.

It continued: “We varied the value depending on the type and age of the data centre.

“We compared the results to the investment numbers provided by survey respondents and to other reports of investment.

“The aggregated results indicate that by 2016, €3 Billion had been invested in data centres. There are €1.1bn facilities under construction in 2017.

“A further €1.6bn have secured planning permission, and there are approximately €2bn indicated in various masterplans. We, therefore, expect to see investments averaging €1 Billion per annum for the next 3-4 years.”

Helen Clarkson, Chief Executive Officer at The Climate Group, said: “Already a leader in the energy space, joining RE100 and EP100 represents a smart business decision for Schneider Electric.

These commitments will help the company to deliver on its wider climate ambition to become carbon neutral by 2030.

“Doubling energy productivity will help it to use energy as economically as possible while making the transition to renewables, which are themselves cost-competitive in many markets. I welcome the powerful signal Schneider Electric is sending to peers, investors and governments, to accelerate the transition to a zero-emissions economy.”

WORLD

EMEA

AMERICAS

ASIA PACIFIC

EVENTS

DATASOURCE

ISSUE 168

11

FEBRUARY 2018

Interxion pledges €230m into pan-continental data centre expansion Madrid, Brussels, Amsterdam, Paris, Copenhagen, Stockholm, and Vienna all lined up for new builds or expansion of current sites.

Interxion has announced new expansion projects in seven cities across Europe including the construction of its third data centre in Madrid (“MAD3”), a second data centre in Brussels (“BRU2”), and the expansion of existing data centres in Amsterdam, Paris, Copenhagen, Stockholm, and Vienna.

The operator has also added to its land bank in Amsterdam and exercised its option to acquire the MAD3 property. The company said it will fund these expansion projects through a combination of existing and internally generated cash together with committed credit facilities.

David Ruberg, Interxion’s Chief Executive Officer, said: “The increased pace of cloud adoption combined with an improving economy in Europe continues to drive broad-based demand for our colocation services across our entire footprint. “With continuing demand from multiple communities of interest, these investments will allow us to meet the needs of our expanding customer base by adding approximately 15,500 square metres of equipped space.

“When combined with previously announced expansion projects, Interxion now has active expansion projects across its entire 11 country footprint totalling over 33,000 square metres which will increase the Company’s equipped space by over 25% compared to the end of 3Q 2017.”

Expansion detailed In Amsterdam, Interxion will complete the remaining four phases of AMS8, totalling approximately 5,300 square metres (“sqm”) of equipped space and 10 megawatts (“MW”) of customer-available power when fully built out.

The first two phases are scheduled to open in 4Q 2018 and the final two phases are scheduled to open in 1Q 2019. The capital expenditure associated with the remaining phases of AMS8 is expected to be approximately €63 million. In addition, Interxion has added to its land bank by acquiring approximately 22,000 sqm of land adjacent to AMS8 together with the associated power.

WORLD

EMEA

In Paris, Interxion will complete the remainder of PAR7.2 by adding an additional 2,000 sqm of equipped space and 4 MW of customer available power as well as upgrading the existing PAR7 power infrastructure. The new space is scheduled to open in 1Q 2019. The capital expenditure associated with the incremental Paris expansion is expected to be approximately €44 million.

In Vienna, in addition to the 1,600 sqm currently under construction and scheduled to be delivered by 3Q 2018, Interxion will add a further approximately 2,000 sqm scheduled for delivery by 3Q 2019. The capital expenditure associated with the incremental capacity is expected to be approximately €40 million.

In Madrid, Interxion will construct its third data centre in a single 2,500 sqm phase with 5 MW of customer available power when fully built out. MAD3 is close to Interxion’s existing campus on land that Interxion intends to purchase in 1Q 2018 and is expected to open in 2Q 2019.

MAD3 will be connected redundantly to the existing and proprietary campus fibre ring, providing access to over 80 carriers, ISPs, CDNs, and the ESpanix and DE-CIX Internet exchanges. Capital expenditures associated with MAD3, including the property purchase, is expected to be approximately €44 million.

In Copenhagen, Interxion will expand CPH2, with 900 sqm scheduled to open in 2Q 2018 and 600 sqm in 1Q 2019. The capital expenditure associated with these builds in CPH2 is expected to be approximately €18 million.

In Stockholm, Interxion will expand STO5 in two phases that will add approximately 400 sqm in 2Q 2018 and 800 sqm in 1Q 2019.

The capital expenditure associated with the remaining phases of STO5 is expected to be approximately €18 million.

In Brussels, Interxion will add BRU2 which includes approximately 1,000 sqm of equipped space and 1 MW of customer available power.

The new facility is scheduled for availability in 1Q 2018, and connects directly via dedicated fibre to the existing facilities at BRU1, providing access to over 100 connectivity providers, and the BNIX, NL-ix, AMS-IX, LINX, and DE-CIX internet exchanges. Capital expenditures associated with BRU2 is expected to be approximately €3 million.

AMERICAS

ASIA PACIFIC

EVENTS

DATASOURCE

ISSUE 168

12

FEBRUARY 2018

BT, IBM team up in cloud data centre push for AI, IoT and blockchain Service launched in the UK will be rolled out to IBM Cloud data centres in mainland Europe, the US, Australia and Asia throughout 2018.

British Telecom (BT) has launched an exclusive cloud service based on IBM’s cloud platform to boost widespread adoption of AI, IoT, blockchain, data and analytics capabilities.

The service, named BT Cloud Connect Direct for IBM, provides global businesses with direct access to IBM Cloud via the BT network with a global reach spanning 198 countries and territories customers since 2015 on their digital transformation journeys by connecting them easily and securely to a world-class ecosystem of cloud services, applications and data.

Customers will be able to access services including compute, network and storage infrastructure.

Cloud Connect Direct for IBM is being delivered into IBM Cloud data centres in the UKviaIBM Cloud Direct Link, a network service designed to bridge data transfer between private infrastructure and the public cloud.

Keith Langridge, vice president of network services at BT, said: “Cloud Connect Direct for IBM is designed to help businesses fully harness the potential of high-value digital services delivered via IBM Cloud. Businesses deploying IBM Cloud services can now benefit from improved performance, security and reliability, creating a rich digital experience for their customers and employees.”

BT said in a statement that this will be followed in the coming months with direct connectivity into IBM Cloud data centres in mainland Europe, the US, Australia and Asia.

Cloud Connect Direct for IBM will be managed and supported from a single BT-managed service desk.

Kit Linton, vice president of network, IBM Cloud said: “Enterprises are rapidly turning to the cloud to modernize their core applications and build cloud-native solutions that leverage AI, IoT, Blockchain and more. The collaboration with BT will help enterprises around the world seamlessly connect to the IBM Cloud so they can maximize their data and generate new business value.”

Cloud Connect Direct for IBM is available to customers today.

Cloud Connect Direct for IBM is the latest development in BT’s Cloud of Clouds portfolio strategy, which has been helping

Elegant Jubilee own now 51% Of Reuben Brothers’ data centre operator Global Switch Current executive to keep their positions, including CEO John Corcoran and CFO David Doyle.

Guaranteed Notes due 18 April 2018, as well as under the A$1 billion Debt Issuance Programme issued by Global Switch Property (Australia) Pty Limited (collectively, the “Notes”).

Chinese investor group Elegant Jubilee has become the majority shareholder in London-based Global Switch after scooping 2% more of the operator’s stake until now owned by Aldersgate Investments, a Reuben Brothers company.

Under these programmes, the outstanding notes potentially affected by the transaction, comprise £350.0m due 2022; €303.6m due 2018 and A$12.9m due 2020.

Global Switch operates data centres in Europe and APAC and is currently undergoing a large footprint expansion in both continents.

Following the latest acquisition, the organisations said that there is no change to the board of directors of Global Switch or the management of the company.

John Corcoran, Chief Executive Officer, and David Doyle, Chief Financial Officer and the existing management team will continue to manage the day-to-day running of the company.

Aldersgate Investments is to continue to jointly control the company together with Elegant Jubilee under the governance of the existing Shareholders’ Agreement.

The Transaction will technically result in a change of control, as defined under the terms of the Company’s €1 billion Euro Medium Term Note Programme and €600 million 5.50 per cent.

WORLD

EMEA

The two new €500 million bond offerings issued under the new €3 billion Euro Medium Term Note Programme in May 2017, are completely unaffected by the Transaction.

In consequence of a technical change of control event being triggered under the Notes, the holders of the affected Notes have the option to require the Company (or Global Switch Property (Australia) Pty Limited, as applicable) to redeem or (at the option of the Company (or Global Switch Property (Australia) Pty Limited, as applicable)), purchase such Notes in accordance with the terms and conditions of the relevant prospectus or information memorandum (as applicable).

The data centre operator said in a statement that it expects no adverse financial impact on the company as a result of any redemption or repurchase.

AMERICAS

ASIA PACIFIC

EVENTS

DATASOURCE

ISSUE 168

13

FEBRUARY 2018

Catching up with Microsoft? AWS reaffirms ‘excitement’ over data centre infrastructures in South Africa

Dublin first European capital to land new hyperscale data centre in 2018 Ireland continues to attract strong foreign data centre investment despite the PR-disaster that affected Apple and AWS’ projects.

Dublin, already home to data centres of some of the world’s largest technology companies, has been chosen by no other than Amazon for the construction of a new hosting property.

This despite ongoing objection for another data centre campus in the Irish capital.

According to the Irish Independent, the building in Tallaght, south of Dublin, could cost up to €45m and is projected to measure 88,500 sqf.

Amazon has in less than ten years become one of the largest foreign investors in Ireland with more €1bn invested in data centres and operations.

Johannesburg and Cape Town are posed to become hot spots for international public cloud providers as demand forces market entry of key players.

AWS is gearing up to launch AWS Direct Connect in South Africa as company executives say data centre are probably the next step in the expansion roadmap for the continent. According to Peter Desantis, AWS VP and global head of infrastructure, the launch of Direct Connect will enable customers in South Africa to connect to the global AWS network, apart from China.

The service will be launched from Johannesburg and Cape Town, he told Business Insider South Africa. The introduction of AWS Direct Connect marks the world’s largest public cloud services provider entry into the African market.

Desantis said the launch of the platform is a “precursor to building Amazon data centres in South Africa”. This was not the first time that an AWS executive openly talked about the introduction of data centres in the country.

The company is, however, facing some delays – similar to what Apple has experienced in Athenry – as a consequence of local objection to a much larger €700m data centre campus that would comprise seven buildings.

Running as “Project G”, the development would see on a first stage the construction of a 223,233 sqf data centre building in Mulhuddart, in the north-west of the Irish capital, in a piece of land owned by the Irish Industrial Development Authority (IDA) and totalling 26 acres.

The first building could cost €200m, with the remainder six projected at a smaller scale and price.

Work was expected to start in 2017, however, such did not happen as a result of the mentioned objections.

In November last year it was found that some of Amazon’s most senior figures had hold talks with representatives from the Irish government over delays on data centre planning approvals.

Back in July this year, Amazon’s CTO Werner Vogels spoke of the possibility of building facilities in South Africa to help cope with local and regional demand. The executive said at the time that the company was working on understanding the region’s demand, not only in South Africa, but across the whole of the region.

However, Werner did not give away any dates for when the data centres would be built. He said: “We have a lot of customers here already, especially when it comes to young business, (…) but also larger companies, before opening up a region here.”

However, whilst AWS hints at the possibility of opening sites in South Africa, rival Microsoft has already announced plans to bring online data centres in Johannesburg and Cape Town in 2018.

Scott Guthrie, executive vice president, Cloud and Enterprise Group, Microsoft, said: “We are excited by the growing demand for cloud services in Africa and their ability to be a catalyst for new economic opportunities.

“With cloud services ranging from intelligent collaboration to predictive analytics, the Microsoft Cloud delivered from Africa will enable developers to build new and innovative apps, customers to transform their businesses, and governments to better serve the needs of their citizens.”

WORLD

EMEA

AMERICAS

ASIA PACIFIC

EVENTS

DATASOURCE

ISSUE 168

14

FEBRUARY 2018

UK National Health Service hit by ‘major incident’ at key data centres Local authorities investigated the issue as a priority as cyberattack was ruled out from the beginning.

The Welsh arm of the UK’s NHS has experienced technical difficulties due to a data centre failure which affected two IT facilities for more than two hours this Wednesday.

NHS Wales tweeted around 3:11pm that an investigation was being carried out into the issue by the NHS Wales Informatics Service.

The National Cyber Security Centre said soon after initial reports on the incident that the outage was not caused by a cyberattack.

“If you have an appointment for an urgent issue then your appointment will be honoured but please bear with us as our ability to provide high quality care will be more limited today.

The organisation also said the matter was being “dealt with as a priority” to find and repair the issue at the Blaenavon and Cardiff Bay data centres.

“NHS Wales Informatics Service (NWIS) are currently working hard to solve the problem. We apologise for any inconvenience caused but this matter is entirely out of our control.”

The issue was officially declared over at 5:13pm, however, what caused the problem remains under investigation.

Commenting on the incident, Dave Anderson, digital performance expert, Dynatrace, said the outage that affected Welsh NHS systems just shows why there is a need to get better about managing the performance of our digital systems.

Doctors and general practice and hospital staff across the region were unable to access patients’ data, as well as appointments systems, emails, intranet platforms and other IT systems.

According to the Welsh Daily Post, the outage had an impact on several parts of the country, including Hywel Dda, Cardiff and Vale, ABMU, Betsi Cadwaladr, Aneurin Beavn and Powys.

He said: “Whilst systems are now back up and running, the chaos it created shows why we need to move from hours to minutes to resolve problems like this. Ultimately, it comes down to our reliance on software and the need for it to work perfectly and that’s difficult in IT environments that are getting more complex by the day.

A GP Surgery in Merthyr Tydfil tweeted about the event asking patients to consider the urgency of their appointments. However, the GP assured that urgent appointments would be “honoured”.

“The challenge is that trying to find the root cause of the problem is like finding a needle in a haystack, and then understanding the impact and how to roll back from it is even more difficult.

In the tweet it reads: “NHS Wales IT systems are down across Wales, including at Prince Charles Hospital and in many GP Practices including ours. “We are still able to see emergency patients however we have no access to any medical notes, our appointments system repeat prescriptions etc.

“We’ve reached a tipping point where humans can no longer decipher such complexity and solve problems like this without AI intelligence that can pinpoint exactly what the root cause of the problem is.”

Brexit-London becomes AWS’ 50th global cloud Availability Zone Milestone launch comes as Microsoft gains 4% of the public cloud market whilst AWS lost 6% of market share.

“Since launching the EU (London) Region, we have seen an evergrowing set of customers, particularly in the public sector and in regulated industries, use AWS for new and innovative applications.”

Amazon’s AWS has opened its 50th Availability Zone (AZ) in London, the third in the British capital alone.

Some of the organisations using AWS’ infrastructure in the UK include the BBC, BT, Deloitte, Travis Perkins, Clearscore, the Met Office and Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA).

The new zone was announced by Jeff Barr, Chief Evangelist for AWS, in a company blog. He explained that the addition of a third zone in London will give users additional flexibility to “architect highly scalable, fault-tolerant applications that run across multiple AZs in the UK”.

The 50 AZs are operated from 18 geographic Regions around the world, with announced plans for 12 more AZ and four more Regions in Bahrain, Hong Kong SAR, Sweden, and a second AWS GovCloud Region in the US. According to KeyBanc analysts speaking to CNBC, AWS had in Q4 2017 62% of the public cloud markets.

He said: “We expand AWS by picking a geographic area (which we call a Region) and then building multiple, isolated Availability Zones in that area. Each Availability Zone (AZ) has multiple Internet connections and power connections to multiple grids.

However, the company saw its stake drop from Q4 2016’s 68%, with Microsoft sliding in 4% more in market revenue as Azure topped 20% of the public cloud market, up from 16% in the same period the year before.

WORLD

EMEA

AMERICAS

ASIA PACIFIC

EVENTS

DATASOURCE

ISSUE 168

15

FEBRUARY 2018

AWS explodes into Africa with largest cloud release EVER

CyrusOne buys Zenium Data Centers for $442m Company adds more than 260,000 colocation sqf and 49.3MW of power capacity to its portfolio which now amounts to 48 properties worldwide.

The data centre market experienced in 2017 a record breaking M&A wave that lasted up to the last hour with CyrusOne announcing the acquisition of Zenium Data Centers for $442m.

To purchase the European operator, CyrusOne entered into a definitive agreement with Quantum Strategic Partners Ltd., a private investment fund managed by Soros Fund Management LLC and certain other sellers named therein who manage Zenium’s assets.

Next step could be to build its own data centre infrastructure, a move that Microsoft has already announced earlier in 2017.

The world’s top public cloud provider has officially landed in Africa with the launch of AWS Direct Connect.

The launch comes less than 24 hours since Data Economy reported on the nearing launch of the service and the company’s “excitement” over IT infrastructure in South Africa.

Direct Connect has been made available through data centre services provider Teraco’s Johannesburg JB1 and Cape Town CT1 data centres and via Teraco Cloud Exchange.

The platform will enable customers to directly access AWS services in AWS infrastructure Regions around the world.

AWS Direct Connect can be used to access all AWS services in any AWS Region globally, apart from China.

Lex van Wyk, CEO, Teraco, said: “AWS Direct Connect is an exciting addition to Teraco. Clients looking to build hybrid solutions with their dedicated IT infrastructures now have choice.

“Teraco offers immediate activation of secure connections from our clients to AWS. The value of these cloud computing options will also be seen in the different types of connections clients require. “ “We have successfully built Africa’s largest Internet ecosystem, and we are excited to offer clients access to all levels within this now complete ecosystem, including content and cloud providers.”

“Our data centres act as a true cloud hub, enabling interconnection between cloud service providers, their clients and channel partners making it attractive to those building and managing reliable and high-performance hybrid IT solutions. Thanks to our diverse and populated carrier community, our clients are provided with several choices.”

WORLD

EMEA

Zenium is a hyperscale data centre provider with four properties in London and Frankfurt which combined provide more than 260,000 colocation sqf and 49.3MW of power capacity.

Approximately 54% of the power capacity, or 26.8 MW, is currently leased.

The purchase price of $442m, reflects a multiple of 18 times expected annualised Adjusted EBITDA of approximately $25m from both commenced and signed but not yet billing leases.

CyrusOne will also reimburse Zenium for capital expenditures between signing and closing. The transaction is expected to close in Q1 2018, subject to the fulfilment of customary closing conditions including applicable regulatory approvals.

Gary Wojtaszek, president and chief executive officer of CyrusOne, said: “This transaction establishes a significant presence for us in Europe’s two largest data centre markets and provides a platform to scale to meet the strong demand across the continent.

“The Zenium team is experienced and well-respected with particular expertise leasing to hyperscale companies, and they have built an outstanding, fast-growing company.

“The capacity for further growth at their existing locations remains substantial, allowing us to nearly double the size of their business, and we will be able to leverage the European infrastructure to expand within London and Frankfurt and into new markets in an efficient, cost-effective manner.”

Franek Sodzawiczny, Zenium’s founder and chief executive officer, said: “We are thrilled to join the CyrusOne team and believe that their unique capabilities and strong customer relationships, particularly among hyperscale companies, will accelerate growth across the existing European portfolio.

“We look forward to realizing the benefits of our combined expertise and similar operating philosophies as we continue to broaden CyrusOne’s footprint to capture growing European demand.”

AMERICAS

ASIA PACIFIC

EVENTS

DATASOURCE

ISSUE 168

16

FEBRUARY 2018

AMERICAS Shock in the valley. Equinix CEO Steve Smith leaves company over ‘poor judgment’ on staff matter Company is currently in search for a new CEO as Executive Chairman Peter Van Camp becomes interim CEO with immediate effect.

nature of a search process, we would not want to speculate at this early date. We are fortunate to have someone of Peter Van Camp’s experience to serve as interim CEO.”

The world of data centres has tonight been rocked by the sudden resignation of Steve Smith as CEO of Redwood City-headquartered Equinix. Smith has also resigned from the board of directors of the company “after exercising poor judgment with respect to an employee matter”, the company explained in a statement.

A spokesperson told Data Economy: “Steve exercised poor judgment with respect to an employee matter. As a result, he submitted his resignation to the company. We are not disclosing further details of the situation.”

Shares of the company were this afternoon trading at -2.13% on NASDAQ at $439.17 per share. The company’s market capitalisation stands currently at $34.52bn, making it the most valuable data centre REIT in North America.

The Equinix Board of Directors has accepted his resignation and appointed Executive Chairman Peter Van Camp interim CEO of the company, effective immediately. He will also retain his Executive Chairman responsibilities during the interim period. The Board will commence a formal process to appoint a new CEO. Data Economy has also asked the company about the process of finding a new CEO. The same spokesperson said: “Given the complex

WORLD

EMEA

Van Camp said: “The Board gave this matter the deepest consideration and recognizes the many contributions Steve made over the past eleven years to achieve the global scale, reach and market leadership the company enjoys today. He has worked hard to grow and sustain the business, and we greatly appreciate his efforts.

“I also want to emphasize that this action was not related to the company’s operational performance or financial condition, both of which remain strong. The Board and leadership team remain fully committed to the strategy.”

“The company is well-positioned strategically, with tremendous depth at the leadership level and a passionate team that will guide the business and continue to drive the performance of the company.

With our 2018 strategy and plan securely in place, we are wellpositioned to capitalize on the role Equinix plays in helping companies evolve from their traditional business practices to the digital world by globally interconnecting with the people, locations, cloud services and data critical to their operations.”

Van Camp has been with Equinix in key roles for more than 17 years.

Van Camp served as CEO of Equinix for seven years (2000 to 2007).

Since 2007, he has served as executive chairman of the Equinix Board of Directors.

AMERICAS

ASIA PACIFIC

EVENTS

DATASOURCE

ISSUE 168

17

FEBRUARY 2018

Peak 10 + ViaWest planning 220,000 sqf data centre beast to connect US to Asia and the south pacific Australia, New Zealand, China, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea all set to be connected to the hub in Oregon.

Peak 10 + ViaWest has unveiled plans to expand its Oregon data centre by more than 114,000 sqf in answer to demand for connectivity into Asia and the South Pacific.

Once fully built, the Brookwood data centre in Hillsboro will amount to 220,000 sqf of space focused on servicing customers with operations in the US and Australia and New Zealand, as well as the other parts of APAC spanning China, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea.

and an 88,000 square foot expansion of its Englewood, Co., Compark data centre.

The expansion follows Peak 10 + ViaWest’s announcement in September that Brookwood, along with eight other Peak 10 + ViaWest data centre and cloud node locations, had been updated to feature a core network backbone with 100 Gigabit connectivity.

This core network backbone extends to Peak 10 + ViaWest’s aggregate portfolio of 41 data centers in 21 markets, as well as six carrier exchange locations across the US. The Brookwood expansion follows Peak 10 + ViaWest’s recent acquisition of a 203,000-square foot data centre in Philadelphia,

Chris Downie, CEO for Peak 10 + ViaWest, said: “We are seeing great demand for connectivity-enabled colocation and highlyreliable hybrid IT solutions across the country, and especially in the greater Portland area.

“Our Brookwood data centre is a highly sought after location due its impressive high-density capacity and impending carrierneutral, low-latency connectivity to Asia and the South Pacific.

Our customers – and the industry – will continue to see us add new capacity and capabilities to our data centres to address this demand.”

Digital Realty to introduce Oracle Cloud in data centres from Silicon Valley to London Service to be rolled out across half a million square feet of data centre space in 14 metros.

Digital Realty has unveiled plans to expand its public cloud ecosystem by introducing dedicated and private access to Oracle Cloud through Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) FastConnect.

The service is to be rolled out across 13 US metropolitan areas and London in the UK, comprising 16 Digital Realty locations comprising 500,000 sqf.

The metro areas include Ashburn, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, London, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Phoenix, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle and Silicon Valley. As a result, a total of 59 Digital Realty data centers support private connections to Oracle’s Infrastructure as a Service.

Don Johnson, Senior Vice President Product Development, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, said: “Customers require seamless connectivity from their data centres and networks to Oracle Cloud for their most demanding workloads and applications.

“With Oracle’s FastConnect service via Digital Realty, customers can provision the dedicated and private connections they need today and easily scale with their growing business demands.”

Digital Realty Chief Technology Officer Chris Sharp, said: “Our direct connections to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure build upon our commitment to ensure that our customers have interconnected access to the critical IT resources they need to drive business success.

“The rapid growth of Oracle Cloud is a testament to its strength in the marketplace, and we are extremely pleased to be working closely with Oracle to accelerate its momentum.”

Oracle FastConnect enables customers to set up a hybrid cloud by providing a way to create fast, low-latency, private and dedicated connectivity to Oracle Cloud.

WORLD

EMEA

AMERICAS

ASIA PACIFIC

EVENTS

DATASOURCE

ISSUE 168

18

FEBRUARY 2018

Iron Mountain acquires IO Data Centers for $1.3bn, 2017 global data centre M&As officially double of 2016 at $27bn Company’s portfolio will total more than 90 MW of capacity, with an additional 26 MW of under construction and future expansions of up to 135 MW.

transactions in early 2018, Iron Mountain’s data centre portfolio will total more than 90 MW of existing capacity, with an additional 26 MW of capacity currently under construction and planned and future expansion potential of another 135 MW.

Iron Mountain has acquired Arizona-based IO Data Centers’ US business in a transaction worth $1.315bn which has pushed the value of data centre M&As in 2017 to $27bn. The deal has helped industry acquisitions top a historical value, more than the double of 2016’s M&As which amounted to $13bn, according to data sourced by Data Economy.

Iron Mountain President and CEO William L. Meaney, said: “We continue to experience strong demand and growth in our data centre business, with a focus on establishing a presence in the largest global markets for colocation and enterprise customers.

This year’s $27bn is only comparable to the combined amounts invested in 2014, 2015 and 2016 proving consolidation is at an all-time high. As for Iron Mountain, the company’s multi-billion Dollar portfolio expansion excludes an extra $60m based on future performance and subject to customary adjustments.

Shares of the company closed this Monday’s trading in New York at a positive 1.45% with a stock valued at $40.70 per share and a market capitalisation of $10.71bn. With the acquisition, the operator is adding approximately 62MW of existing capacity across four data centres in Phoenix and Scottsdale, Arizona; Edison, New Jersey; and Columbus, Ohio.

The agreement to acquire IO’s US sites follows the acquisition of FORTRUST data centre on September 1, 2017 and the announcement of Iron Mountain’s international data centre expansion through the planned acquisition of two Credit Suisse data centers in the London and Singapore markets. Upon closing of the Credit Suisse and IO

EMEA

“This transformative transaction is closely aligned with our strategy and we expect it to accelerate our growth profile by bringing our data centre business to approximately 7% of total revenue and approximately 10% of Adjusted EBITDA by 2020 – significantly exceeding our initial goal – while enhancing business diversity and the margin profile of the company.

“We believe we can add significant value to IO’s U.S. operations by leveraging our strong brand that is synonymous with security and trust, and our relationships with more than 30,000 North American data management customers.” George D. Slessman, founder and CEO of IO, said: “We are pleased to enter into an agreement with Iron Mountain and excited by the potential this transaction represents.

The portfolio also boasts an expansion potential of a further 77MW in the markets of Phoenix and New Jersey. The existing data centre space in the four owned facilities totals 728,000sqf and caters more than 550 customers that includes blue chip financial services, aerospace, federal government and technology companies among its Top 10, with no single customer representing more than 10% of total revenue.

WORLD

“Our strategy includes organic expansion within our existing footprint, greenfield development in the largest U.S. markets such as our newly opened campus in Northern Virginia, and targeted acquisitions of properties with customer profiles that closely mirror our own.

“Iron Mountain’s deep customer relationships, global scale and excellent access to capital markets, combined with IO’s strong presence in the high-growth data centre industry will provide attractive opportunities for our employees and a broader, more geographically diverse platform of facilities and services for our customers.”

The transaction is anticipated to close in January 2018, subject to satisfaction of customary closing conditions.

AMERICAS

ASIA PACIFIC

EVENTS

DATASOURCE

ISSUE 168

19

FEBRUARY 2018

Apple to invest $10bn in data centres, starts by breaking ground in Reno

AT&T expands connectivity into the world’s largest data centre operator As businesses shift towards multicloud environments, providing easy connectivity between different cloud architectures is becoming paramount.

AT&T has entered into a partnership with Equinix to make AT&T Switched Ethernet ServiceSM with Network on Demand available to businesses across the colocation provider’s International Business Exchange (IBX) data centres.

With the partnership, customers sitting at the facilities will be able to add connectivity and scale bandwidth in near real time based on their business needs.

Company to repatriate $250bn to the US, create 20,000 jobs and open a new campus as part of multi-billion Dollar plan to boost the American economy.

Apple has announced plans to invest $10bn in US data centres over the next five years as part of a wider plan to invest and contribute $350bn to the country’s economy. The company said it will invest the cash in facilities across the US. Over the last decade, Apple has invested billions of dollars in data centres and co-located facilities in seven US states, including North Carolina, Oregon, Nevada, Arizona and a recently announced project in Iowa.

As part of the new CAPEX round, Apple has also broken ground on a large building in downtown Reno, which will support its existing Nevada facilities. The data centres help the company support many of its services including the iCloud, Apple Pay, Apple Store and messaging applications.

But data centres are not the only target for Apple. In total, the company said it expects to spend over $30bn in total in capital expenditures, create over 20,000 new jobs in addition to its 84,000 staff. The company said in a statement that it supports more than 2 million jobs across the US. With that, the iPhone maker expects to contribute to the US economy $350bn by 2022, not including Apple’s ongoing tax payments, the tax revenues generated from employees’ wages and the sale of Apple products. Apple has however not specified how it reached that figure.

It said, however, that expects to pay around $38bn in taxes based on the amount of cash it plans to repatriate back to the US, which is estimated to be between $245bn and $250bn. The ‘bringing the money back home move’ comes as new tax laws come into force setting repatriation taxes at 15.5%.

AT&T Switched Ethernet Service with Network on Demand has been designed to boost business agility and competitiveness by allowing businesses to turn up sites in just days to deliver the voice, data and video applications necessary for business today.

According to AT&T, more than 90% of its business customers are using some form of cloud computing with many operating in a multicloud environment.

This expansion allows AT&T customers to leverage the extensive cloud density available at Equinix facilities and utilise one provider for their end-to-end cloud infrastructure.

Roman Pacewicz, chief product officer, AT&T Business, said: “A dynamic network can differentiate a company. This is a critical move for many customers as they continue on their digital transformation and look to adopt technologies that require optimal speed and performance.

“Our work with Equinix lets us deliver the physical infrastructure and network connectivity options to support our customers’ evolving business needs.”

Charles Meyers, president, Strategy, Services and Innovation, Equinix, said: “Today’s digital business environment demands high-performing, agile network operations. Cloud and data centre services must offer the scalability and reliability that IT managers require, while helping enterprises rapidly scale their operations globally.

“AT&T’s network expansion is coming at the right time for our customers. As businesses are increasingly adopting the cloud, we are providing customers with the agility, connectivity and interconnection opportunities they need to compete and grow their businesses on a global scale.”

In addition, Apple has unveiled plans to establish an Apple campus in a new location, which will initially house technical support for customers. The location of this new facility will be announced later in the year. Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, said: “Apple is a success story that could only have happened in America, and we are proud to build on our long history of support for the US economy.

“We believe deeply in the power of American ingenuity, and we are focusing our investments in areas where we can have a direct impact on job creation and job preparedness. We have a deep sense of responsibility to give back to our country and the people who help make our success possible.”

WORLD

EMEA

AMERICAS

ASIA PACIFIC

EVENTS

DATASOURCE

ISSUE 168

20

FEBRUARY 2018

Facebook could invest up to $20bn in a single hyperscale data centre campus Local authorities are expected to approve a new development codenamed Morning Hornet in the coming hours.

The world’s largest social media company could be about to announce one of the world’s largest data centre investments topping up to $20bn in capital expenditures on a single site over a number of years.

According to The Atlanta Business Chronicle, Facebook is expected to announce a 400-acre campus in the Greater Metro Atlanta, east of Covington.

Facebook was not immediately available for comment.

The site is to be located at Stanton Springs, mainly in the Walton County, a new development backed by local authorities to boost the settlement of large corporate campuses, data centres, advanced manufacturing or bio-pharmaceutical facilities, or high-technology distribution centres in the region.

The Facebook project could be codenamed under “Morning Hornet”. The local Joint Development Authority for the Walton County and three other counties that also own part of the land in which Stanton Springs sits, are expected to approve the purchase and sale agreement, pre-development agreement and site access agreement of the secret development this Tuesday.

According to the company’s job page, Facebook is currently looking for a construction project engineer to be “located in the South-eastern region of the United States”.

“The exact location is still to be determined,” it reads in the ad that includes Atlanta, GA, as a general location.

Additionally, Facebook has also posted job vacancies for two construction project managers to be based at the same “still to be determined” location.

If Facebook announces a hyperscale data centre campus in Atlanta, the company will be joining one of the fastest growing hosting hotspots.

T5 Data Centers latest large US operator to launch data centres in Europe New facility to open as a direct response from demand posed by Brexit and GDPR.

Building I will be a 7 MW, 84,000 sqf facility and is due for completion in Q1, 2019, which will coincide with the landing of the Ireland France Subsea Cable (IFC-1), the first cable to directly link Ireland to mainland Europe.

US-centric data centre operator T5 Data Centers has launched its first overseas project in Europe in a new joint venture with JCD Group of Cork, Ireland.

Building II will be a 97,000-square-foot, 7 MW data centre, and Building III will be a 323,000-square-foot, 32 MW data centre.

The company said it has opened T5@Ireland data centre in response to coming political changes in the European Union, including Brexit and associated EU data sovereignty laws.

T5@Ireland is fed by 60 MW of power from an adjacent dual fed substation, and can deliver this power within expedited delivery deployments of new facilities.

The campus is a 32.5-acre, 46 MW dedicated data centre campus with full planning permission for two enterprise facilities of 7 MW each, and a cloud targeted facility of 32 MW. The site is carrier rich and will have direct access to Ireland’s five largest domestic fiber carriers, as well as subsea cable connectivity to the US, the UK and Europe via GTT Express (lowest latency between EU and US), GTT North & South, (secondary routes between US, UK and Europe), Aquacomm’s AEC-1 Cable (Ireland to NYC).

WORLD

EMEA

Pete Marin, CEO & President of T5 Data Centers, said: “Cork is a growing technology hub with a great talent pool and robust infrastructure. We expect T5@Ireland to attract European customers seeking a new location for their enterprise operations, and for US companies seeking a European data center presence.

This is the next phase of T5’s global expansion strategy and shows our commitment to serve our customers wherever they need us.”

AMERICAS

ASIA PACIFIC

EVENTS

DATASOURCE

ISSUE 168

21

FEBRUARY 2018

Facebook to step up $1bn CAPEX in Oregon data centre by ‘hundreds of millions’

Stream Data Centers unveils 130,000 sqf Chicago data centre

When fully built by 2021, the five buildingcampus will offer 2.15 million sqf of data centre floor.

The world’s largest social media company has announced another large-scale data centre investment set to reach the “hundreds of millions” of Dollars.

Mark Zuckerberg’s platform is planning to expand its Prineville campus in Oregon with the addition of two large hosting buildings.

The company originally landed in Prineville in 2015 where it has continuously invested in the expansion of its three facilities in a capital expenditure that ascends to more than $1bn and which employ more than 200 staff.

The majority of the “hundreds of millions of Dollars” to be added to the campus will be spent on the IT hardware to fill the data halls, Facebook said.

The first building is due to break ground before the end of 2017 and be completed by 2020 with the second new facility set to begin construction next year.

Together, the two sites will add 900,000 sqf of data centre space by 2021, when fully built.

KC Timmons, Data Center Operations, West Region, Facebook, said: “This [expansion] translates into keeping construction crews busy for another four years, plus additional full-time jobs as the data halls come online.

Company to add 19th hub increasing footprint to more than 200MW and two million square feet.

Stream Data Centers has unveiled plans to build a 130,600 sqf data centre in the Windy City to boost colocation provision for cloud, financial, healthcare and other enterprise customers.

The site is located on a piece of land measuring 5.82 acres development in Elk Grove Village, Ill, Chicago.

“As of September 2017, the Prineville Data Center supports more than 200 people working full-time, with approximately 75 percent living in Crook County.

Of the total square footage, 70,000 sqf will be dedicated to raised floor halls powered by 15MW. The facility will also count with two 25MW utility feeds from two separate substations.

“We continue to be thankful to the city of Prineville, Crook County, and the state of Oregon for their ongoing support of the Prineville Data Center, and we are excited to deepen our local investment. We have made Prineville our home, and we are proud to be a part of such a wonderful community.”

Stream’s Co-Managing Partner, Robert Kennedy, said: “Elk Grove Village has become a prime destination for data centre operators, cloud service providers, and enterprise users, offering robust fiber optic connectivity, reliable power infrastructure and immediate proximity to the entire Chicago metro area.

“Our new development in Elk Grove Village seeks to address the needs of cloud providers and enterprise companies with significant requirements in and around the Chicago area.

“We believe that our value proposition will serve cloud, financial, healthcare and other enterprise companies looking for lowlatency data centre connectivity with this highly-secure and resilient option, located in the heart of the Chicago market.”

To date, the Stream Data Centers has acquired, developed and operated more than two million square feet of data centre space across 18 sites in Texas, Minnesota, California and Colorado, representing more than 200MW of power.

WORLD

EMEA

AMERICAS

ASIA PACIFIC

EVENTS

DATASOURCE

ISSUE 168

22

FEBRUARY 2018

Argentina or Chile? South American nations battle each other out for AWS data centre Both the President of Argentina and the President of Chile have hold talks with Amazon over the last few months during trips to the US. Amazon’s cloud business AWS has long been threatening to add a second region in South America and the choice seems to be now between Chile and Argentina, according to people familiar with the matter.

Speaking to Bloomberg, another source said the company could even end up opening data centres in each country instead of opting for just one location.

the last few months. Bachelet has inclusive visited Amazon’s headquarters during a trip to the US in June 2017.

For the two nations, a data centre project from one of the world’s largest companies would mean much more than just a cloud investment: it would see two of the largest South American economies strengthen their role on the world stage and reinforce their foreign capital investment limelight, which could be worth millions of Dollars in the AWS case.

Macri has also visited the US, and met in New York at the end of last year with Elaine Feeney, Amazon’s Vice President for global infrastructure expansion.

AWS currently has three operational data centres in Brazil, the company’s only region across the whole of Central-Latin America.

Both the President of Argentina Mauricio Macri and the President of Chile Michelle Bachelet have hold talks with Amazon over

Digital Realty forecasts $3.2bn in revenues and plans big on 2018 CAPEX The company who invested $7.6bn in a single M&A in 2017 is aiming to deliver a core FFO 8% above the midpoint of its 2017 core FFO. Digital Realty has released its 2018 outlook with revenues expected to reach between $3bn to $3.2bn.

Chief Executive Officer A. William Stein, said: “The strength of our global, connected, sustainable platform – supported by strong secular demand drivers – provides the framework for our expectation of delivering high-single-digit growth in 2018 core FFO per share.”

EMEA

As for capital expenditures, Digital Realty predicts it will spend between $900m and $1bn in expanding and upgrading its more than 180 data centres global footprint.

Chief Financial Officer Andrew P. Power, said: “Digital Realty’s comprehensive set of data centre solutions provides unparalleled value to our customers, translating to a stable earnings base while also positioning us to achieve accelerating growth upon this base.

The operator also expects to deliver 2018 core funds from operations (FFO) per share within a range of $6.45-$6.60, which represents yearover-year growth of approximately 8% from the midpoint of 2017 core FFO per share guidance of $6.00-$6.10.

WORLD

The company’s adjusted EBITDA margin is expected to sit between 58% and 60%, whilst the G&A margin is projected at 5.5% to 6.5%.

“We are committed to delivering sustainable growth for our customers, shareholders and employees, and we expect to generate growth in cash flow on par with earnings growth in 2018 and beyond.”

Digital Realty plans to release its financial results for the fourth quarter and full-year 2017 after the market closes on Thursday, February 15, 2018.

AMERICAS

ASIA PACIFIC

EVENTS

DATASOURCE

ISSUE 168

23

FEBRUARY 2018

ASIA PACIFIC Here’s what we know about global switch’s new Hong Kong data centre As company prepares to open 764,000 sqf campus, more expansion is in the pipeline for the Londonbased company.

Global Switch’s current portfolio boasts more than 3,200,000 sqf of data centre space across ten campuses in Europe and APAC inAmsterdam, Frankfurt, London, Madrid, Hong Kong, Sidney, Singapore and Paris.

Data centre services provider Global Switch is this Tuesday cutting the ribbon on its new Hong Kong data centre in partnership with China Telecom Global and Daily Tech.

In a recent interview with Data Economy, CEO Corcoran said the company is heavily investing in its APAC footprint as demand surges across the continent.

The five building campus sits in the Tseung Kwan O Industrial Estate, developed by Hong Kong Science & Technology Parks, and will provide 764,000 sqf of data centre space once fully built.

He said: “If I look at our current portfolio, roughly two thirds of our revenue and profit is generated from Europe and the UK, and then one third from Asia Pacific,” Corcoran said.

The building will provide 100MVA of power and 71.5MW of planned cooling provision and is also located adjacent to the Tseung Kwan O cable landing station and close to both the other major submarine cable landing stations and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange hosting facility.

“We have got a development portfolio of eight new data centres and expansions to existing facilities. The first five or so, we are going to be spending £1bn on those data centres over the next three years more or less.

To witness the official opening of the first phase of development, David Chung, JP, Under Secretary of the Innovation and Technology Bureau; John Corcoran, CEO of Global Switch; Deng Xiaofeng, CEO of China Telecom Global and Li Qiang, Chairman of Daily-Tech will be the officiating guests for the event.

WORLD

EMEA

“In respect to the new data centres, we own the land already, we have secured the power, and we either have planning consent or outlining planning consent. This is not a pipedream, this is a pipeline.”

AMERICAS

ASIA PACIFIC

EVENTS

DATASOURCE

ISSUE 168

24

FEBRUARY 2018

Colt ready to invest in data centres in India and Singapore

Apple’s $1bn first Chinese data centre has now an official opening date Company reassures customers that are to be migrated to the new building that their data will continue to be protected under the same encryption standards as it has been under US policy.

Six months after being announced, Apple’s first Chinese data centre is nearly ready to start welcoming the first local iCloud customers.

The date for the first migrations is set for February 28, according to 9to5mac, with customers currently being directly notified about the move.

New builds follow on from the appointment of Ras Scollay as Asia Pacific Head of Sales and Marketing, former CenturyLink sales head in Singapore and Japan.

Colt Data Centers is currently in the early stages of deployment of different data centre construction projects in Singapore and India. The expansion has been disclosed by Quy Nguyen, VP of global accounts and solutions at Colt, whilst speaking to Computer Weekly.

The expansion into the two markets echoes what the data centre business arm CEO of Colt, Detlef Spang, told Data Economy in October 2017, when ten new facilities were under planning for Europe and Asia.

As for the two projects on the cards for India and Singapore, Nguyen said that in the later destination, the operator is currently awaiting on the city state’s Economic Development Board (EDB) and JTC Corporation, a real state company owned by the government of Singapore, for an approval to its application to build a data centre facility at Singapore’s 13 hectares Data Centre Park.

According to Nguyen, Colt, which today operates in Singapore as a Digital Reality tenant, is however already searching for anchor tenants for the potential future facility, targeting mostly customers from China and the US.

The need to expand into China came as the national government tightened its legislation on how national citizen’s data should be handled and enforcing the need to host Chinese people’s data within the borders of China.

Apple has, however, been telling customers that their data will continue to be protected under the same encryption standards as it has been under US policy.

The iPhone maker also reassured users that no backdoors to their ecosystems will be created.

In a statement issued to 9to5mac, Apple said: “Last year, we announced that Guizhou on the Cloud Big Data (GCBD) would become the operator of iCloud in China. As we said at the time, we’re committed to continuously improving the user experience, and our partnership with GCBD will allow us improve the speed and reliability of our iCloud services products while also complying with newly passed regulations that cloud services be operated by Chinese companies.

“Because of our commitment to transparency, there will be a series of customer communications over the course of the next seven weeks to make sure customers are well informed of the coming changes. Apple has strong data privacy and security protections in place and no backdoors will be created into any of our systems.”

The $1bn data centre facility has been built in the province of Guizhou in partnership with Guizhou-Cloud Big Data Industry (GCBD), a Chinese data management company.

Colt also has a footprint in Hong Kong through leasing space from HKCOLO, but the company has no plans to expand in this market, according to Nguyen.

He said: “We wanted to get into those markets quickly and our intent was to launch our own data centres after we understood those markets well enough.”

Nearly 4,000 Km away, in India, Colt is eyeing up a large data centre facility with a power capacity of more than 100MW. Projected for Navi Mumbai, the company is currently looking for a plot of land before the end of quarter one 2018.

Nguyen said: “Hyper-scale cloud providers have created edge nodes in India, but most of them are still hosting data in Singapore or areas outside India.

“The growth of India has reached an inflexion point where they plan to bring computing resources into India.”

WORLD

EMEA

AMERICAS

ASIA PACIFIC

EVENTS

DATASOURCE

ISSUE 168

25

FEBRUARY 2018

NTT Communications launches new Asian data centre Hub in Malaysia comes as country expects to double data centre revenues to half a billion Dollars by 2020.

NTT Communication subsidiary NTT MSC Sdn Bhd (NTT MSC) has cut the ribbon on the upgrade of a data centre facility in Malaysia, increasing capacity by up to 40% to nearly 140,000 sqf of hosting space.

The Cyberjaya4, Annex Data Center & Sora Building opening was officiated by Datuk Yasmin Mahmood, Chief Executive Officer of Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC).

Reports by the Malaysia Internet Exchange (MyIX) reports that Internet traffic in the country is still on a rapid rise.

Mahmood said: “NTT MSC is one of our earliest MSC Malaysia status companies and has been operating for more than 20 years here.

In terms of contribution to GDP, the digital economy in Malaysia is projecting to grow 3% yearly from 17% in 2015 to 20% in 2020. With a sustained push by all stakeholders, Malaysia is on track to grow the Digital Economy contribution to reach the targeted value of RM324.9 billion by 2020, as set out in the 11th Malaysia Plan.

“MDEC is supporting the further growth and development of the data centre industry in Malaysia, which is a vital aspect of the nation’s Digital Economy aspirations.

“NTT MSC’s expansion and growth is a testimony to Malaysia’s success in becoming the regional Data Center hub in ASEAN. The launch of NTT MSC’s expansion in Cyberjaya is timely.”

According to Wan Murdani Wan Mohamad, director of digital enablement at the MDEC, revenues from international clients subscribing to Malaysia’s data centres has increased from 5% to almost 20% over the last few years.

In the last five years, the Malaysian cloud services and data center industry has recorded a 20% year-on-year growth, according to analysts.

He has also said that the data industry is expected to more than double from 2017’s revenues of RM900m ($201.7m) to RM2bn ($448.2m) by 2020.

Chayora begins $2bn Chinese data centre investment roadmap First hyperscale data centre expected to be online by end of 2018, with second campus to break ground in the second half of the year.

Forthcoming in the second quarter of 2018, Chayora will begin construction of its second hyperscale campus, a 280MW data centre to serve the greater Shanghai region, home to a population of more than 200 million.

Hong Kong-based Chayora has broken ground on one of two hyperscaler data centres it has projected for mainland China as part of a $2bn investment.

Oliver Jones, co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, Chayora, said: “The continued development of China and its importance to the global economy was underlined by China’s leadership at the 19th National People’s Congress in Beijing in October.

The first data centre, being built in Beichen, Tianjin, is a 300MW, 32-hectare / 80-acre campus and will serve the greater Beijing region that is home to more than 150 million people in the JingJinJi mega-metropolitan area of northern China.

Chayora’s initial data centre building is expected to be operational by the end of 2018. This first building on Chayora’s Tianjin Data Centre campus has been designed for up to full 2N resilience and redundancy with dedicated substations for a 25MW IT load. Both gas turbine power generation and advanced grid power will support the site.

The campus, when completely built-out, will comprise six large 3000 rack data centres and three smaller 1000 rack high performance computing facilities.

WORLD

EMEA

“The creation of world-class technology infrastructure will play a key part in underpinning these goals and Chayora is committed to supporting this achievement.

“Recent predictions from Forward Intelligence Group indicate that China will represent approximately 25% of world cloud revenues by 2020.

This aligns with our own expectations and reinforces our strategy of creating some of the world’s largest and most advanced data centre sites to accommodate these developments.”

AMERICAS

ASIA PACIFIC

EVENTS

DATASOURCE

ISSUE 168

26

FEBRUARY 2018

EVENTS

EUROPE, MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA

13th March 2018 Datacenter Dynamics Energy Smart Stockholm, Sweden VISIT WEBSITE

23rd May 2018 DatacenterDynamics Espana Madrid, Spain VISIT WEBSITE

12th –14th June 2018 Datacloud Europe Monaco

12th June 2018 Datacloud Awards Monaco

Datacloud Europe is the premier congress and Awards for investing, powering, connecting, building and deploying datacenter, cloud and Edge.

Now in its 15th year Datacloud Europe has evolved as a recognised beacon of high quality content offering thought leadership across the critical IT infrastructure markets and has performed a seminal role as the international networking and deal making opportunity for old and new contacts alike.

VISIT WEBSITE

20th June 2018 Datacenter Dynamics Africa Johannesburg, South Africa

With a powerful 3-day agenda including the Enterprise Cloud Forum, plus 2-days of deep content, the annual event attracts investors, financiers, business leaders and their enterprise customers in the stunning backdrop of Monte Carlo to do deals that influence outcomes for the next 12 months and beyond.

VISIT WEBSITE

Details coming soon

28th September 2018 Datacloud Africa Leadership Forum Marrakech

13th September 2018 Datacloud Ireland Dublin

VISIT WEBSITE

VISIT WEBSITE

WORLD

EMEA

AMERICAS

ASIA PACIFIC

EVENTS

DATASOURCE

ISSUE 168

27

FEBRUARY 2018

AMERICAS 25th April 2018 Datacenter Dynamics Argentina Buenos Aires, Argentina VISIT WEBSITE

20th June 2018 Datacenter Dynamics Colombia Bogota, Colombia VISIT WEBSITE

1st –2nd May 2018

26th June 2018 Datacenter Dynamics Webscale San Francisco, USA VISIT WEBSITE

Datacenter Dynamics Enterprise New York, USA Rumours of the demise of the enterprise data center to be challenged at 16th DCD summit in New York.

As the IoT, Smart Cities, Big Data and Cloud drive the industry forward and now blockchain and AI join the affray, DCD Enterprise is about NOT forgetting the engine. Join 1,500+ professionals whose day job is to keep the digital world up and running. From “mud to cloud”, this event covers the full ecosystem for how enterprise data centers are being re-defined and how the economics of digital business, IT and data center service delivery is being re-shaped.

With 100+ hours of expert panels, keynote presentations, interactive workshops and roundtables, not to mention an expo showcasing 100 of the latest technologies - this really is the event not to be missed! In less than 48 hours you will network, learn and share your way to a more decisive 2018.

VISIT WEBSITE

WORLD

EMEA

AMERICAS

ASIA PACIFIC

EVENTS

DATASOURCE

ISSUE 168

28

FEBRUARY 2018

ASIA PACIFIC 13th February 2018 DatacenterDynamics Indochina Bangkok, Thailand VISIT WEBSITE

5th April 2018 DatacenterDynamics Indonesia Jakarta, Indonesia

22nd March 2018

VISIT WEBSITE

Datacloud Asia 2018 Singapore

26th April 2018 DatacenterDynamics Focus On Hyderabad, India

Pan-regional forum for cloud and data centre leadership.

Meet with leaders, investors and experts for insights and potential business opportunities.

Join the leading deal making event for the Asia region, attended by executives from Asia and internationally, the event has acquired a leading reputation as a place to meet operating companies, service providers, network owners, enterprises including hyperscales, expert consultancies and solutions firms.

VISIT WEBSITE

7th June 2018 DatacenterDynamics Enterprise Shanghai Shanghai, China

VISIT WEBSITE

VISIT WEBSITE

WORLD

EMEA

AMERICAS

ASIA PACIFIC

EVENTS

Contact us TRANSACTIONS

–– Colo & new build site finding –– Acquisition, disposal & marketing –– Sale & lease back –– Leasing and service (SLA & KPI) agreements –– Market analysis –– Benchmarking

CONSULTING

–– Country & Region analysis –– Total cost of ownership (TCO) analysis –– Total cost of occupation (TCOO) analysis –– Product development –– Planning strategy –– Permissions and approvals –– Power & communication studies –– Capital allowances –– Benchmarking –– Rent reviews –– Lease negotiations –– Property taxes –– Planning applications

Chris Jones

Senior Director Head of Data Centres GVA +44 (0)20 7911 2525 chris.jones@gva.co.uk

+44 (0)20 7911 2000 gva.co.uk

GVA London, United Kingdom: 65 Gresham Street London EC2V 7NQ United Kingdom

GVA GVA is a trading name of GVA Grimley Limited.

Where articles are sourced from external providers the statements and opinions expressed within them are those of the authors alone and not of GVA Grimley Limited or any of its associated, subsidiary or affiliated companies. GVA Grimley Limited will not be held responsible for any claim, loss, damage or inconvenience caused as a result of any information within these pages.

GVA for themselves, for any joint agents and the for the vendors or lessors of this property whose agents they are give notice that: (i) the particulars are set out as a general outline only for the guidance of intending purchasers or lessees and do not constitute, nor constitute part of,an offer or contract. (ii) a ll descriptions,dimensions,references to condition and necessary permissions for use and occupation,and other details are given in good faith and are believed to be correct but any intending purchasers or tenants should not rely on them as statements or representations of fact but satisfy themselves by inspection or otherwise as to the correctness of each of them. (iii) n o person in the employment of GVA or any joint agents has any authority to make or give any representation or warranty whatever in relation to these properties.