Vantage Data Centers is investing £500 million to construct two data centres in London.
The hyperscale data centre company is building a new 48MW campus in North Acton, on around five acres of land. Vantage said this will become part of the data centre community in the northwest part of London.
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Its new campus will measure 430,000 square feet and host two 24MW multi-story data centres once fully developed. The facility is aiming to launch in late 2024 and will become the company’s 11th campus in the EMEA region.
The new data centre campus' size isn't especially large in comparison with others in the UK, Tiny Haynes, principle edge computing infrastructure and services analyst for S&P Global, told IT Pro.
Vantage's other data centre in Newport is 70MW, and Equinix's sites in Slough are of a similar power figure, as well as Vodafone's in Swindon. "Things get interesting when they hit 100MW – then you have to look at separate deals with the national grid or generating your own power," said Haynes.
Vantage chose London as it claims it’s the largest of the Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, and Paris (FLAP) data centre markets, helped by the UK’s role in public cloud infrastructure adoption.
The 'FLAP' market accounts for 55% of the Western European colocation market, according to research from Synergy Research Group published in October 2022. London is the largest market, followed by Frankfurt, Paris, and then Amsterdam.
The company said it’s a key time for it to enter this market since hyperscale data centres account for around 48% of the London market and is projected to grow to 66% by 2027, according to Structure Research, cited by Vanguard in it announcement.
“With London being one of the largest data centre markets in the world, this expansion further solidifies Vantage’s role at the forefront of the digital infrastructure revolution,” said Antoine Boniface, president of EMEA at Vantage Data Centers. “With relatively little inventory available in London and requirements on the rise, we are ideally positioned to deliver for our customers.”
Tim Kay, deputy director for technology at the Department for International Trade, said that the continuing demand for data centres in London offers a prime opportunity for Vantage to enter the market.
“Vantage’s presence in London will play a key role in enabling leading technology enterprises with additional IT capacity to support digital transformation initiatives and cloud adoption,” he said.
Vantage also revealed it has completed constructing 12MW of a second 40MW facility at its campus in Cardiff, based in the second largest data centre market in the country. Here it aims to develop three data centres to form a combined 148MW campus across 2 million square feet.
The campus operates entirely on renewable energy sources and offers low latency of fewer than 1.5 milliseconds between Wales and London, the company said.
“We are delighted to welcome customers to our newest data centre in Cardiff,” said Justin Jenkins, Vantage’s COO in Europe and president of its UK operations. “The significant investment Vantage is making in Wales is transforming the area into one of Europe’s leading data centre hubs and a top cloud region in the UK.”
