{"id":4996,"date":"2012-12-07T15:52:28","date_gmt":"2012-12-07T15:52:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cloudnewsdaily.com\/?p=13778"},"modified":"2012-12-07T15:52:28","modified_gmt":"2012-12-07T15:52:28","slug":"euro-data-centre-viewpoint-2013-to-be-a-year-of-growth-uncertainty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/euro-data-centre-viewpoint-2013-to-be-a-year-of-growth-uncertainty\/","title":{"rendered":"Euro Data Centre Viewpoint: 2013 to be a Year of Growth, Uncertainty"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

Guest Post by Roger Keenan, Managing Director of City Lifeline<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

The data centre industry forms part of the global economy and, as such; it is subject to the same macro-economic trends as every other industry.\u00a0 For 2013, those continue to be dominated by uncertainty and fear.\u00a0 The gorilla of course, is the on-going problem in the Eurozone.\u00a0 This time last year, many commentators predicted that this would come to a head in 2012, with either the central monetary authorities accepting fiscal union and central control across the Eurozone, or the Eurozone starting to break up.\u00a0 In the event, neither happened and the situation remains unresolved and will continue to drive uncertainty in 2013.<\/p>\n

One major uncertainty has been resolved with a convincing win for Barack Obama in the US presidential elections and the removal of the possibility of a lurch to the right.\u00a0 However, the \u201cfiscal cliff\u201d remains and will cause a massive contraction in the US economy, and hence the world economy, if it goes ahead at the end of 2012.\u00a0 For the UK, predictions are that interest rates will stay low for the next two to three years as the banks continue to rebuild their strengths at the expense of everyone else.<\/p>\n

So the macro-economic environment within which the data centre industry operates is likely to stay uncertain and fearful in 2013.\u00a0 Companies have massive cash reserves, but they choose to continue to build them rather than invest.\u00a0 Decision making cycles in 2013 are likely to be as they are now \u2013 slow.\u00a0 Companies will not invest in new project unless they have the confidence that their customers will buy, and their customers think the same and so the cycle goes round.<\/p>\n

At a more specific industry level, the on-going trend towards commoditisation of infrastructure is likely to continue.\u00a0 Whereas data centres five years ago were specific and unique, new entrants to the market have made data centre capacity more available than it was and driven up technical standards.\u00a0 Older facilities have upgraded to match new builds, which ultimately benefits the industry and its customers.\u00a0 The new builds and rebuilds are of varying quality and veracity, with some being excellent, however, others are claiming tier levels and other standards which are simply not true or claiming to be in central London whilst actually being somewhere else \u2013 perhaps following the example of London Southend Airport?\u00a0 Even in a more commoditised market, quality, connectivity, accessibility and service still stand out and well-run established data centres will always be first choice for informed customers.<\/p>\n

The next part of the consolidation process is probably networks; new entrants are coming into a market where prices continue to fall at a dizzying rate.\u00a0 There is no end of small new entrants to the marketplace, some of which will succeed and some of which will fall by the wayside.\u00a0 At the larger end, consolidation continues.\u00a0 In City Lifeline\u2019s central London data centre alone, Abovenet has become Zayo (and consequently moved from the very top of everyone\u2019s list to the very bottom, possibly not causing joy in Abovenet\u2019s marketing department), Cable and Wireless\/Thus has become part of Vodafone, PacketExchange has become part of GT-T and Global Crossing has become part of Level 3.<\/p>\n

Data Centre Infrastucture Management (DCIM) systems may establish themselves more in 2013.\u00a0 DCIM was predicted to have a massive impact, with Gartner stating publicly in 2010 that penetration would be 60% by 2014.\u00a0 In the event, penetration at the end of 2012 is only 1%.\u00a0 DCIM is hard and laborious to implement but it offers serious benefits to larger organisations in terms of the management of their physical assets, power, space and cooling and can quickly repay its investment in answering the basic question \u201chow many servers can I have for the capacity I am paying for\u201d.\u00a0 DCIM deserves more success than it has had to date, and perhaps 2013 will be the year it takes off.<\/p>\n

Power densities will continue to increase in 2013.\u00a0 Five years ago, many racks drew 2KW (8 amps).\u00a0 Now 8 amp racks are becoming unusual and 16 amps racks are the norm.\u00a0 Five years ago 7KW racks (about 30 amps) were unusual, now they are common, and 20KW racks are starting to appear.\u00a0 The trend to higher and higher performance and power densities will continue.<\/p>\n

The data centre industry continues to grow, driven by the move to Cloud.\u00a0 By the end of 2013, an estimated 23% of all data centre space will be in commercial colocation operations.\u00a0 The leading market segments are likely to be Telecoms and Media, with 24%, Healthcare and Education, with 21% and Public Sector, also with 21%.\u00a0 In-house data centre capacity is likely to continue to decrease and the commercial colocation market to grow, even in spite of the uncertain macro-economic environment.<\/p>\n

\"Roger<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0Roger Keenan joined City Lifeline, a leading carrier neutral colocation data centre in Central London, as managing director in 2005.\u00a0 His main responsibilities are to oversee the management of all business and marketing strategies and profitability. Prior to City Lifeline, Roger was general manager at Trafficmaster plc, where he fully established Trafficmaster\u2019s German operations and successfully managed the $30 million acquisition of Teletrac Inc in California, becoming its first post-acquisition Chief Executive.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Guest Post by Roger Keenan, Managing Director of City Lifeline The data centre industry forms part of the global economy and, as such; it is subject to the same macro-economic trends as every other industry.\u00a0 For 2013, those continue to be dominated by uncertainty and fear.\u00a0 The gorilla of course, is the on-going problem in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[936,613,1278,78,8,387],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-data-center-infrastructure-management","category-emea","category-eurozone","category-guest-post","category-hosting","category-london"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4996"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4996\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}