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If you’re short on time, below are some of our thoughts from the above video.

2021 Overview

Based on the conversations we at datacenterHawk have had with people in the data center industry, we feel as though 2021 will be a solid year for the market.

Ultimately a lot of the growth will depend on larger hyperscale deals being completed, but those companies are looking to add to their footprint all across Northern America and the world.

The hyperscale companies that are going to be responsible for the majority of the growth in the industry are looking for flexible deals with data center operators. It’s not just about turn-key capacity anymore. Powered shell and build-to-suit developments are becoming more common.

We feel confident that the demand seen in 2020 will continue at least through the first half of 2021. The persistence of the impact of COVID19 as well as the continued growth of secular tailwinds already in place pre-COVID may drive demand through the entirety of 2021.

Enterprise demand in 2021

In 2020, enterprise demand was a bit on the lower end than we expected. We think that it will increase in 2021 from where it was in 2020.

Many companies delayed IT projects to focus on supporting their employees as they began to work from home. Additionally, financial constraints further constrained directors ability to get funds for IT projects.

We believe that even if the COVID pandemic is not fully solved, it has at least stabilized such that these companies will look to reboot in 2021 and start working on previously-shelved IT projects.

How will the edge grow in 2021

In 2020 we saw edge-focused partnerships between large data center operators and smaller companies, such as Flexential and American Tower, Digital Realty and Vapor IO, Switch and FedEx. While the edge is still very nascent, these partnerships point to the increasing focus it is becoming among large, traditionally core data center operators.

These companies believe there will be a more spread out infrastructure approach with higher demand moving forward. We see these data center operators are positioning themselves to handle that demand when it comes. Expect additional operators to enhance their edge capabilities through new product development or acquisition in 2021.

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DATA4 Group CEO, Olivier Micheli shares how they develop and expand into new markets, even in light of recent trends.

This is an episode of HawkTalk, datacenterHawk’s series of candid one on one conversations with executives and leaders in the data center industry. If you enjoyed this episode, you can check them all out on our blog. If you’d like to know when we release future episodes, you can subscribe here.

DATA4 Group was founded in 2006 and has been a key player in the Paris and French data center markets ever since. After becoming a top data center provider in France, they decided to expand their circle to other European nations. Their CEO, Olivier Micheli, sits down with our lead European analyst to discuss the company and the markets that they’re in.

Below are some of our takeaways from the discussion.

Growth of the Paris data center market

One of the main drivers for the growth in the Paris data center market has been the hyperscale users.

Larger users to want to grow in Paris because is there is some catch up happening. Recently other major markets in Europe, namely London, Amsterdam, & Frankfurt, have seen dynamic growth and the hyperscale users see Paris as a market with the same amount of opportunity as those.

Developing in Italy, Spain, and Luxembourg

Data4 Group has their eyes on expanding to new markets, but they prefer to follow a strategic path and be strong in the markets they’re in before expanding to new areas.

This is how they went about their expansion out of Paris. They stayed focused with a goal to become very strong in that market before moving to Italy, Spain, and Luxembourg.

Now that they’re in those markets, they want to stay focused in those areas until they are able to build a strong foundation before moving to their next markets.

Looking towards Frankfurt

Micheli talks about DATA4 Group’s history and their strategy for getting into the markets they’re in now, but he also mentions their future and where the company wants to go moving forward.

Frankfurt is one market that’s currently on their radar for its large stable economy and massive connectivity.

But they want to follow the same expansion strategy they did the first time around focusing on becoming a top data center provider in their current markets before moving into new markets.

It will be interesting to follow DATA4 Group as they continue to grow and we at datacenterHawk look forward to tracking with them and other providers in the European markets.

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David Dunn, COO of H5 Data Centers, shares how they think about evaluating smaller markets and developing the next generation of talent for the data center industry.

H5 Data Centers has a unique focus on edge data centers and bringing data to people rather than focusing so strongly on where the largest supply and demand is happening in the data center industry.

COO, David Dunn sits down with datacenterHawk to discuss this strategy and the future of the industry.

Below are some of our takeaways from the discussion.

H5’s big focus on smaller markets

A lot of data center providers follow the strategy of finding land to buy in a major market and building a big brand new data center campus from the ground up. H5 takes somewhat of a different approach in their strategy.

H5 has increased their focus on smaller data center markets such as Albuquerque, San Antonio, and Cleveland. While still having a presence in some of the larger markets, H5 takes pride in trying to find the markets that have untapped potential and growing in those areas.

H5’s approach to evaluating new markets

While knowing the supply and demand of the data center markets is important and can be a main way to make decisions in the industry, H5 also looks at the population sizes of markets and the distance between two major cities to determine whether they want to be in a market.

For example, Albuquerque is a city with a decent population size, but it’s also hundreds of miles away from the next city that’s comparable in size. This tells H5 that there are people in that area who will need and want to use data, and likely don’t want to store it hundreds of miles away.

Developing the next generation of data center professionals

H5 takes a lot of pride in doing their part to move the industry forward. One way they do this is by helping educate the next generation about IT needs and the data center industry.

They have made it a point to be involved in the STEM programs of local schools. They want to help create the future jobs in the industry and give kids who might not have had an opportunity to learn about the data center industry a chance and mentor them.

datacenterHawk will continue to follow H5 Data Centers as they continue to on their paths of growth and we look forward to seeing the next steps that they take in the industry.

The Frankfurt data center market is active and poised for growth. Equinix is in a position to be a big part of the growth in the market.

This is an episode of HawkTalk, datacenterHawk’s series of candid one on one conversations with executives and leaders in the data center industry. If you enjoyed this episode, you can check them all out on our blog. If you’d like to know when we release future episodes, please consider subscribing to our channel.

Dan Scarbrough, Lead European Analyst at datacenterHawk, got the chance to sit down with Michael Winterson, the VP of Business Development-EMEA & Jen-Peter Feidner, Managing Director Germany at Equinix to discuss the Frankfurt data center market and Europe as a whole.

Below are some of our take aways from the discussion.

How COVID has changed business as a whole

COVID has changed so much in our world from a business standpoint. In the above video, Michael explains that the biggest issue for Equinix and their customers is how difficult it has been to transition to a socially distanced world.

Before the pandemic, Equinix had about 2,000 visitors per day across all their facilities. when the pandemic hit, they severely limited the number of people that could come into their facilities to avoid locking down any of their locations. Michael and the Equinix team are grateful for their customers who adjusted to these new security measures, including having all appointments scheduled and booked in advance.

The other major change that Equinix noticed related to COVID was the need to rapidly shift network. Networks have had to adapt quickly to the demand that was produced when so many people shifted to working from home and utilizing virtual meetings.

The trend of Asian capacity coming to the Frankfurt market

Equinix has seen a good amount of interest and deployment from Asian data center users in the Frankfurt market. These users not only are coming to Equinix but also building their own smaller footprints in the Frankfurt market.

Germany is a Central European country and has good commercial relationships beyond the digital industry. Specifically in manufacturing and importing and export. country and that there are good commercial relationships beyond the digital industry. These relationships, alongside the access to the digital industry is a big reason for Asian data center users to enter the Frankfurt market.

New entrants and demand growth in the Frankfurt market

There is a surge of demand growth in the European markets right now and specifically in Frankfurt.

As Jens-Peter Feidner puts it in the above video, “People wouldn’t enter a market if there’s not enough demand. Everyone looks at where to invest the dollars. Even if money might be cheap and it’s a good industry to invest, you still don’t want to lose money. So that proves that there’s enough demand.”

Feidner goes on to say that Equinix and other data center providers who have been in the Frankfurt market for a long time, benefit because they have the name, brand, and service that prove they have been able to deliver quality to their clients in the past. The newer entrants in the market have yet to gain that same level of credibility.

Frankfurt is a data center market to keep your eye on moving forward so be sure to stay tuned to datacenterHawk for more up to date content on it and other major US and European markets.

The data center industry can be complicated to get a grasp on. Part of the reason for that are the terms and lingo. So in podcast 36 we thought it would be helpful to decipher some of the common terms that are used in the data center industry.

This is an episode of HawkPodcast, datacenterHawk’s viewpoints on the data center industry. If you enjoyed this episode, you can check them all out on our blog. If you’d like to know when we release future episodes, you can subscribe here.

Below are the terms we go over in the podcast above.

kW (kilowatt & megawatt) - These are the units of power measurement that leases in the data center industry are measured in. They refer to how much power capacity your IT infrastructure has access to.

Gross + E - A type of lease and also a simple equation for how much it will cost you to be in a data center. “Gross” stands for having the right to access the power infrastructure and “E” stands for the actual power that you utilize.

Triple Net Lease “NNN” - This is a different type of lease from the

“Gross + E” that we mentioned above. A “Triple Net Lease” is mainly reserved for larger companies who will take care of some of the building operating costs that are usually provided by the data center operator themselves.

Carrier Neutral Facility - A facility that offers multiple fiber providers instead of just one. Almost all multi-tenant data centers today are carrier-neutral facilities.

Ping, Power, & Pipe - This is a phrase for referring to the basic components of a data center colocation lease. It is another way of referring to power, space, and cooling.

Managed Services - Any service that a data center provider will offer in addition to power, space, and cooling, for example, firewall management, remote hands or rack and stack.

Rack & Stack - Another example of a managed service where the provider will assemble your hardware for you in their facility.

Purpose-Built / Retrofit - These are the two different types of data center construction. Purpose-built means the reason a facility is being built is to be a data center. Retrofit means that a building was not originally meant to be a data center, but has been renovated and changed to be one, likely because it’s in a good location with good power and connectivity.

Absorption - This is the word that the data center industry uses to measure demand/growth in a given time period.

Dark Fiber - A dedicated fiber route between one facility and another. Dark fiber is typically used by a single customer as opposed to shared. Since it is a dedicated resource, it will be more expensive than lit fiber.

Lit Fiber - A fiber route that goes directly into a facility is considered “on net” or “lit”. Data centers will typically have multiple fiber providers entering their facility. Lit fiber is a shared resource.

PUE - Stands for Power Usage Effectiveness. This is a metric that data center facilities will use to measure the efficiency of their design. It measures how much of the power that comes into a facility is used by things other than the data center space (e.g. office space).

Compliance Acronyms (ISO, PCI, SOC1, FEDRAMP, etc) - Compliance is a very important aspect of the data center industry. This has grown in importance due to data breaches and other security issues. There is a long list of acronyms that can be categorized under the compliance umbrella, but the jest of what you need to know is that there are dedicated teams in the data center industry that need to know what all of these acronyms stand for and the specifics of them.

Thanks for listening to this podcast, we hope you’ve found this information to be helpful. If you did, it would help us a ton if you would like, share, and subscribe to our content.

Looking to the future, we see amazing technologies that will only require more data center infrastructure to support them. Ty Miller, the CRO of STACK INFRASTRUCTURE is looking forward to it.

This is an episode of HawkTalk, datacenterHawk’s series of candid one on one conversations with executives and leaders in the data center industry. If you enjoyed this episode, you can check them all out on our blog. If you’d like to know when we release future episodes, you can subscribe here.

STACK INFRASTRUCTURE has become a leader in the data center industry based largely on theirwork with large customers in the space. STACK’s ability to grow and provide the speed and scale needed by hyperscale users has been pivotal in their journey as a company.

The growth of the cloud

Some examples that are contributing to our era’s current digitalization are new technologies, such as AI, 5G, IoT, as well as others. All of these are creating more network demand which ultimately has to live in building, and that building is a data center.

Looking at trends of cloud growth we see that at the end of 2019 the 3 top cloud service providers, AWS, Azure, & Google all had resounding annual growth rates at 33%, 62%, and 68% respectively.

Now looking at 2020 and the shift caused by COVID-19 that has forced millions of people to begin working from home and using technology more, it’s a safe bet that the cloud growth rates will grow even more.

Speed and scale are requirements for growth

STACK INFRASTRUCTURE has put in place a formula for growth, specifically growth along side hyperscale users to target partnerships with. Two major factors of that growth are speed and scale. The ability to bring a facility with a high capacity to market quickly is one of the things that attracts large users to partner with STACK.

STACK also invests in acquiring land for future building and growth. This allows them to be in the right place at the right time when a large deployment is needed in a market that STACK has already invested in. Once they know the need is there, they are able to utilize the land that they already own, and that enables them to be faster at building a facilty than a provider that doesn’t already have land.

Technologies that will contribute to future data center industry growth

Looking forward at some of the things that will drive data center industry demand, we see a couple of technologies that contribute to it.

Some technologies that have high compute requirements are AI and machine learning for an example. This technology sector that is growing rapidly will continue to push the data center industy forward because of the amount of compute power that it will utilize.

Technologies that have high network requirements such as the IoT (internet of things) thrive on connectivity and are requiring more and more data storage.

The more data that these technologies create and send to other devices will continue to grow and need a place to be stored which would ultimately be a data center.

Listening and supporting customers while planning an entrance into the European data center markets has been a main goal for Vantage recently. Hear Josh Buis talk about their strategies and how their customers play a role in their decisions.

This is an episode of HawkTalk, datacenterHawk’s series of candid one on one conversations with executives and leaders in the data center industry. If you enjoyed this episode, you can check them all out on our blog. If you’d like to know when we release future episodes, be sure to subscribe to our podcast.

Vantage Data Centers, a North American provider, recently entered the European data center market. As they look to expand in Europe, they’ll be shaping their strategy by paying close attention to their customer's needs.

If you’re short on time, check out a few quick takeaways from our chat below.

Customers know best

Vantage has a clear focus on their customers. That’s why when they’re looking to expand into other markets, they begin by listening to what markets their customers want to be in and move from there.

While they have an interest in expanding to tier one European markets like Frankfurt and London, Vantage also continues to watch some of the smaller markets like Milan, Poland, and Zurich. Vantage will continue to track markets all across Europe and listen to where their customers want to be as they continue to grow and expand in Europe.

The UK data center market

Most of the activity in the UK has been in and around London, but Vantage entered the UK market by acquiring a data center in Wales from local provider NGD.

While Vantage will continue to plan and ultimately aim to be a part of the London market, they are happy with their entrance into the UK with their new Welsh facility.

Moving forward to a more sustainable future

The data center industry as a whole has a focus on the future, but not everyone has their focus set on sustainability. It’s no secret that data centers use a lot of power, and that’s the reason why there have been pushes from providers to make sustainability a goal moving forward.

Vantage focus’ on their customers, and more so than any other influence that’s where they are getting the most push to make their facilities more sustainable. While government regulations are being put into place for energy and water use, Vantage has an even higher standard from their customers with requests like being diesel free by 2030 and needing to produce a positive water flow from data centers in 2030.

If you enjoyed this video discussion be sure to check out our other HawkTalks on our site datacenterhawk.com

In Podcast 35, David and Mike take a dive into the 3Q trends and analysis based on their thoughts and predictions they made at the beginning of the quarter.

This is an episode of HawkPodcast, datacenterHawk’s viewpoints on the data center industry. If you enjoyed this episode, you can check them all out on our blog. If you’d like to know when we release future episodes, you can subscribe here. You can also click here if you want to read our 3Q 2020 data center overview for North America and Europe.

3Q has wrapped up, you can read more about it on our 3Q 2020 data center market overview. Below are our biggest takeaways and the points we discuss in the podcast above.

The biggest takeaway from the last quarter

We think this will be a record-setting year for the data center industry even with the challenges that have come with the pandemic.

We saw demand spread across all of the primary US markets in the third quarter. Looking back at the second quarter, the Northern Virginia market was responsible for about 70% of the US demand and in third quarter that demand dropped to around 50% of the total US market demand. We saw markets like Chicago, Dallas, Atlanta and others contribute more to the total demand in 3Q.

What surprised us in the third quarter

In the early 2010’s there was a lot of demand specifically from the financial industry in the Northern New Jersey market. Since that time there hasn’t been that amount of large demand in the market.

Then in the first and second quarters of 2020 we saw a lot of those financial companies that had large demand in the past wanting to mature their footprint and bring that demand back into the market.

We expected this demand to continue in the third quarter, but instead there was a bit of a pause. This pause could be attributed to the possibility of the state legislature levying taxes on financial trades, which may cause companies to consider moving their IT infrastructure to a more tax-friendly market such as Chicago or Dallas.

Looking forward to next quarter

At the end of 2020, we will likely be wrapping up the largest demand year ever in the US. What’s more remarkable about that is understanding what took place in 2020 and how the world was turned upside down. So for the data center space to be recording its largest year ever is truly a feat to acknowledge.

When looking back at the fourth quarter in 2019, we saw a lighter amount of demand than the previous quarters in 2019. We’re on the side of believing that 4Q 2020 will not follow this trend, but instead be a strong demand quarter to close out the year.

Don’t forget to check out the rest of our HawkPodcasts and don’t miss out on our latest release of market data for the data center industry.

In Podcast 34, we dive into the European data center market trends that we witnessed in the third quarter and talk about their future.

We’ve been tracking the major European data center markets for several quarter it’s been interesting to look back and see the changes that have occured during 2020,. In this podcast, we dive into some of the third quarter specifics of the European markets and also look forward to 4Q and into 2021.

If you’re short on time, check out a few of our quick takeaways below.

Development activity during COVID-19

We saw growth and demand across all the European data center markets in the third quarter. Generally, there was a significant amount of development and leasing activity in these markets even during this COVID-19 environment.

The European markets are continuing to be a strong area of growth and look to be in place for more interest moving forward.

The Frankfurt data center market continues to grow

Frankfurt continues to be an attractive location for data center providers and users moving forward into the rest of 2020 and beyond. One data point that shows this is that it has a lower population with a high density of data centers. Looking at the overall power usage in the city, some estimates show that 35-40% of the power in Frankfurt goes directly to powering data centers. This is a massive jump compared to other major data centers markets with larger populations such as London.

What the future looks like for the European markets

Predicting the future is always tricky, especially when it comes to the European data center markets.

Growth in the data center industry happens when deals get done. This can make figuring out how much growth to expect in a quarter difficult to determine with precision. A good way to get an accurate feel of a market is by finding out if there are a number of deals pending and waiting to get done.

In the European markets specifically, there are a lot of pending deals which we expect to lead to good growth in the future.

Wrapping up, the European markets continued their growth in the third quarter with the Frankfurt market specifically standing out as an area of consistent activity. The European data center markets as a whole should have a strong fourth quarter as well as continued growth in 2021.

LightEdge started out as an ISP and fell into becoming a data center company which led them to build a data center inside a limestone mine and expanding to 3 colocation facilities. Here’s the story of how they got there.

This is an episode of HawkTalk, datacenterHawk’s series of candid one on one conversations with executives and leaders in the data center industry. If you enjoyed this episode, you can check them all out on our blog.

LightEdge began their journey in the data center industry after starting out as an internet service provider and then out of necessity building and operating their own colocation facility. Since then they have become a data center provider with multiple facilities across the US that focus on compliance.

If you’re short on time, check out a few of our quick takeaways below.

LightEdge’s entrance into the data center industry

LightEdge started out as an ISP, but built their first data center in Des Moines, Iowa out of necessity after they deployed their first cloud platform. They partnered with a construction company and built a data center because at that time the idea of a colocation facility had yet to become as wide spread as it is today.

Growth into the Kansas City market

LightEdge had maxed out the first facility they built with 4-5 years, so they decided to expand into Kansas City with another building. LightEdge got connected with Lamar Hunt and his family, who committed to filling 800,000 SF of data center space if they were to build a Kansas City facility. With that commitment, LightEdge began construction of their 2nd data center which is located inside of a limestone mine that is owned by the Hunt family.

Acquiring a third facility in Omaha

After building facilities in Des Moines and Kansas City, LightEdge looked to add a 3rd facility to their profile and wanted it to be near their already existing data centers. After surveying options, they settled on building in Omaha because that location would give them a good triangulation between their other two data centers and offer similar hazard risk as their other facilities.