Since the last edition (two years ago), market conditions in the data centre sector across both countries have been vibrant reflected in the additional 21 new players covered bringing the total to 89 across 13 key cities. New South Wales hosts the largest concentration of data centres.

Players segment broadly into telecommunication carriers, outsourcing providers and hosters (ranging from web hosters through to wholesale data centre providers). In reality, the boundaries between these categories are becoming increasingly less distinct as the pace of acquisition, in Australia particularly, has been extremely brisk. Global Switch is the largest player by space with almost 9% of total space in Australia.

Expansion too has led to significant build, spurred by high occupancy rates and general demand. Yet as in other metropolitan areas worldwide, power supplies are dwindling in the key cities and particularly in the central business districts (CBDs). The significant unmet demand for data centres is driving major growth programmes amongst existing market participants across all segments.

Green is high on the political agenda in both countries. Data centres are the single largest contributor to ICT carbon emissions in Australia, accounting for 18.8%. As such, technical strategies to reduce power consumption and introduce energy efficiency including the use of renewables and even rainwater reharvesting reflect global developments and include hot aisle containment and free air cooling. The climate in New Zealand is more conducive to free air cooling where some facilities covered in the report can be used up to 10 months per year.

The development of cloud computing in Australia could be impacted by privacy legislation which is due to be debated mid-2011. If the law is revised, it will likely have a significant impact on the use by Australian organisations of cloud services that are hosted overseas. As a result the report expects to see the use of locally hosted platforms to increase, although this is unlikely to entirely solve the issue given the complexity of cloud networks and the wider impact of overseas directives. The report provides an insight into modular deployment in both markets. Given the current shortage of quality data centre space it predicts further deployments including Dell and Zellabox.

The report suggests that capacity will increase significantly in Australia by 2012, with New Zealand lagging in development until around 2014-2015. Across both markets the report forecasts an increase in space of approximately 60% by 2015.

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