UK datacentre investment jumps by 25 per cent

UK has spent more on datacentres in the past 12 months than China

The UK has seen a 25 per cent increase in expenditure on datacentres compared with last year, according to the latest report from B2B provider Datacenter Dynamics Research.

The report states that the UK's expenditure of $3.35bn (£2.1bn) was second only to that of the US at $3.5bn (£2.18bn) and marginally ahead of China, which spent $3.1bn.

In terms of datacentre growth, the UK and US were bottom of the list at 5 and 3 per cent respectively, with most of the investment ploughed into upgrading existing datacentres.

The emerging markets saw the highest growth in datacentres, with Turkey, Brazil and Columbia seeing the greatest expansion at 60, 45 and 40 per cent respectively.

The report gave several reasons for the growth, including: a growth in internet users from 1 billion five years ago to 2.11 billion now; the fact that the number of smartphones is projected to rise from 500 million now to 2 billion in 2015, according to the International Telecommunications Union; and the significant growth in the number of web sites from 18,000 15 years ago to 215 million currently.

DatacenterDynamics Research director Nick Parfitt said, "The world is becoming more IT dependent. Even in developed markets, the expansion of IT and internet use in business, government and socially has created a perfect storm [in demand] for more servers and storage, and more datacentres to power, cool and house them. The perception is without question that datacentres are the best way of ensuring the availability and reliability of IT services and the machines to deliver them."