UK DATA CENTRES REPORT: The Carrier Neutral marketplace - is it finally a sellers market?
Published November 2006

Report Synopsis

This new report provides the first assessment of the Data Centre market in the United Kingdom and specifically addresses:

• User issues, with user box-outs throughout the report highlighting opinions expressed in interviews, and the impact of Data Centres from the user perspective. It also includes how these issues will evolve, the different options open to users, specific drivers and obstacles and how these vary by vertical markets.
  
• Carrier Neutral Vendors in the market, within London and outside the capital. There are detailed assessments of key vendors and their future plans, key competitive, technological and market challenges facing the vendors and a SWOT analysis of key players.
  
• Market sizing and forecasts for space and pricing in the UK market through to 2010
  
• Future perspective of UK Market – analysis of future market developments

The report includes material based on primary interviews with the end user market and vendors, and quotes directly from attributed sources. It underlines the increasingly difficult task of user companies owning and managing an estimated 1,500 data centres across the country themselves, and the reasons why managers are more actively seeking solutions offered by third party providers from managed services to full outsourcing.

There is much to be gleaned from the report, ranging from snappy pieces of market intelligence, an analysis of market drivers, and statistics such as the total fitted out carrier neutral space in the UK. The report also provides strategic insight into specific data centre businesses and contains detailed key vendor profiles and SWOT analysis.

The theme of carriers moving to take share in the large enterprise space first identified in BroadGroup’s Managed Services Europe report is sustained here, and reveals the increasing levels of competition confronting the carrier neutral sector from companies such as BT, Cable and Wireless, COLT and Verizon and the intriguing possibility of new entrants in the market. Users themselves confront challenges in continuing to manage their own data centres, which is only matched by their level of concern about migrating to third party providers.

A central question of the report is whether – in the UK – the carrier neutral space is now a sellers market. In response, the report assesses current user requirements, and how easily or not they might be met. Beyond this lie many questions about the justification for carrier neutral acquisition, new-build, space competition and the unknown dimension of new player market entry. The report also questions the rationale behind the business strategies of carrier neutral data centres, and whether short term thinking prevails over a long term assessment, and the issue of price rather than premium.

Finally the report provides forecasts of space and pricing through to 2010 and offers pointers on some of the emerging questions for future market development in the UK marketplace.

Who Should Buy this Report:

The report is recommended reading for all companies engaged in the data centre sector including:

• Data Centre Operators and Owners
• Systems Integrators
• Telecommunication Service
• Providers
• Supplier Organisations
• Technical Support Companies
• Regulatory Agencies
• Consultancies
• End User Organisations

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