SNW Europe - Data Center Trends
Germany: NSA Affair Could Slow Down Cloud Expansion
Attendees at SNW Europe, a popular annual conference on Storage, Networks and Datacenter Technologies, said that the recent discussion concerning NSA activities in Europe has slowed down expansion plans for cloud services for several customers. "It has become more difficult for us recently to sell cloud services with the heavy media reports around NSA involvement in Europe," a provider said. Another attendee said that Germany remains a solid market for colocation providers like Equinix Inc and Telecity Group Plc. Both sources said they currently see strong customer demand for data center services from Deutsche Telekom AG's T-Systems and from BT Group plc's BT Compute. "They earn a lot of trust with large German-based companies that do not want to bring their data into other countries. There is no other country than Germany with such a conservative approach, and the Frankfurt region with its high level of interconnects benefits heavily from that," a data center specialist said. A London-based attendee said he sees Frankfurt region colocation prices rising more strongly than in any other major hub in Western Europe.
Overcapacity Only With Legacy Data Centers
When asked about overcapacity for data center space, an independent international source said there is "overcapacity everywhere in Europe" with low-power data centers but an ongoing shortage for high-computing power data centers. "There are plenty of older legacy DCs available, but they just can't compete anymore," the source said. One attendee said that in key European DC hubs Paris, London and Amsterdam, many providers, including Equinix and Telecity, are heavily investing in increasing server density capabilities at existing locations, due to high real estate prices. "London still benefits from the fact that energy prices in Slough and in London East are clearly lower than in Paris or Amsterdam," a manager said. Attendees said that not only data center space has an overcapacity problem, but also cloud." In the UK, there is already an overcapacity even for secure cloud," an industry source said.
Network Operators "Not Ready" for Higher-Density Systems Yet
An engineer said that the trend for high-density data centers creates a new demand for better cooling systems, now that a multiple of the previous computing power is sitting in the same space. The representative of a large infrastructure supplier, however, said that European network operators are "not ready" for high-density cooling systems and the necessary power resources. Both said that colocation providers Equinix and Telecitiy are currently faster in implementing the new cooling and power infrastructure and are poised to gain share within the next two years in Europe.
Among companies that gained most attention from data center contacts was VCE (a privately held company formed by Cisco Systems Inc. and EMC Corp with investments by Intel Corp and VMWare Inc). Attendees said VCE with its vBlock product has very little competition for its converged infrastructure product because it can provide all server components in all sizes within an extremely short implementation time. The company benefits from the fact that almost 90% of the components come from its investing companies with short approval time. The company displays its vBlock product as white ware with only its own logo visible, but attendees said the vendor could take significant share from providers with a smaller portfolio or proprietary solutions.
What: SNW Europe, Europe's largest independent show for storage, networks and data center technologies
When: October 29-30
Where: Frankfurt, Germany
Who: Over 1,500 IT decision-makers from 35 European, Middle Eastern and African countries, the USA and Asia
