The data center industry is probably not the first industry one would think of when it comes to changes from the pandemic since data is stored virtually. Tim Huffman, Vice President of CBRE, joined Host Raymond Hawkins, Chief Revenue Officer of Compass Datacenters, to discuss the surprising number of shifts that actually occurred in the industry.

Data center businesses serve clients in acquisitions, dispositions, and buying and selling centers and land. They also help tenants find buildings, negotiate location agreements, select sites, and manage facilities.

The level of investment in data centers and where the investments come from has grown exponentially; money is not necessarily coming from data center buyers. The real estate community has become increasingly involved. “We see more money and more diversity in the money, whether it’s geographical or what kind of buyer are they,” Huffman explained.

Businesses received wake-up calls during the pandemic—clients in facilities or office buildings didn’t have their network story up when everything went remote. Now, centers are working on perfecting it. CBRE even has a network team now to manage this.

While the power output necessary to keep data centers running is enormous, the efficiency compensates. “Data centers, even though they consume an inordinate of power per square foot, our efficiency with it is incredibly sophisticated and candidly much better than office or retail,” stated Huffman. This is feasible partly because cooling is used as a metric to improve utilization efficiency the data center businesses are driving opportunities to purchase green energy. “Sometimes what we’re doing is a baseline understanding of a customer’s data center footprints and helping them find efficiencies, consolidate, recontract, buy, and sell,” said Huffman.

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