Data Centre Essentials

10The Importance of Planning to Avoid Things Going Wrong

Introduction

Data centres are critical infrastructure helping to enable people and communities to function and thrive. The exponential uptake during the lockdown in subscription streaming services such as Netflix or Spotify and acceleration in the use of communication platforms such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams has increased average bandwidth usage per household and, in business, the increased monetisation of data and growth in cloud services are driving ever‐growing demand for data centre capacity.

This demand has fuelled industry restructuring with increased private equity and infrastructure fund investment and accelerating M&A activity. The world’s increasing, insatiable demand for data, online content, digital communication, and entertainment will be dependent on the ability to provide further data centre capacity and is resulting in:

• disruption in the capacity market for hyper‐scale data centres and an increased trend for users to bring critical data services ‘local’ (i.e. ever closer to data end users) to build resilience, reduce reliance on global network bottlenecks and, ultimately, increase the speed of access for data users including ‘edge’ data centres.
• requirement for reliable power sources driving an increased need for electricity supply for robust energy storage solutions.
• increased political, regulatory, and reputational pressure to decarbonise, affecting all elements of both new developments and existing ...