European datacentre market going strong in Q2

London has highest Q2 total datacentre uptake in Europe, at 48 per cent

The European datacentre market is still buoyant, despite a slowdown in Q2, according to real estate adviser CBRE.

A boost in wholesale transactions in Q1 skewed the figures to make Q2 appear worse, when it fact, it compares favourably to its corresponding quarter in 2011, claimed the property specialist.

The firm's findings revealed that 7,345m² of tier-one datacentre space was taken up in Q2, with London acting as the main hub of uptake. The UK capital enjoyed a 48 per cent share in Q2's uptake of centres, compared with 20 per cent in Paris, 18 per cent in Frankfurt, and just two per cent in Madrid.

Andrew Jay, head of datacentres in EMEA at CBRE, said that although the figures were lower than Q1, the market is still strong.

"[There is] clear evidence that demand for datacentre services is continuing to weather global economic turmoil well," he added.

On the whole, the UK datacentre market enjoyed a good Q2, with a BT contract win to provide NHS Scotland with infrastructure and Arup outsourcing its facilities to a Vtesse Cirrus centre in Hertfordshire cited as major UK industry developments.

The report claims cloud computing will act as a new source of business for the datacentre market.

It says: "In particular cloud computing continues to form an increasing part of IT strategies that are being implemented.

"The current and future trend for business is to add greater flexibility and scalability to the functions which support core business. Cloud is viewed as an easy win in achieving both and is now forming an important source of new business to datacentre operators."