HYPERSCALE DATA CENTRES
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“The drive of hyperscale isn’t just directly with them building their own data centres, it’s through the colocation providers as well. “There’s huge demand when the colocation providers are looking into it and when the hyperscale data centre providers are looking into it, they’re also trying to find land and power and all the other essential commodities that need to be plugged into these data centres. So what you’re seeing at the moment is you’re seeing a mix between the hyperscale data centres trying to build directly and then the traditional data centres, the colocation providers looking for land for additional revenues of business growth for themselves as well.” Opportunities for resellers There are also opportunities for resellers, especially equipment providers. “There’s a huge market with regards to the fit out of the data centre that could involve resellers,” says Sam. “Resellers can work directly through an integrator network so when clients are looking to fit out the space and buy the product, the resellers would then be involved. There’s a couple of different routes to market. There’s obviously a direct route to market which is selling to the hyperscale or colocation data centre directly. Then there’s an integration element where they can supply into the Integrators as well. That would be looking to do more than just one or two product lines and they would be looking to then bundled up and using the resellers to basically provide support to them as well as provide, obviously, the products.” Tom adds that there has been a shift from some of the managed service providers of old which used to do a lot of hosting themselves and provide a lot of the full wraparound service, but now they are acting more like consultants to customers. “They are more asking ‘how do we transform your legacy stack into a cloud ready solution? How do we help you along your cloud journey?’ “Even though probably five to 10 years ago that kind of attitude wouldn’t have made sense, in this seemingly endless move towards this hyperscale cloud it does makes sense as you’re not going to overturn this inexorable drive.” On the edge As Richard Clifford, head of solutions at Keysource, notes, the growth in hyperscale presents a great opportunity in other areas. “With the drive to the ‘Edge’ traditional
data centres are seeing opportunities to host hyperscalers and also secure further investment to speed up growth,” he says. “There are also opportunities to sell to the growing tranche of operators specialising in ‘Regional Edge’, such as Pulsant, Proximity, Datum; and Asanti Data Centres.” But for more traditional data centre providers, which face a threat from hyperscalers, there are several things that data centre operators can do to maintain their competitiveness, Richard says: l The ability to negotiate competitive energy rates is essential to maintain a market edge – with pricing ranging from 15p to 90p being seen across the UK l Tackling the optimisation opportunity is key. So many facilities are sitting at 20% to 40% utilisation, which is nowhere near the design conditions and the potential savings in cost and carbon are huge!
Sam Bainborough sales director EMEA – Strategic Segment Colocation & Hyperscale including Facility Management Vertiv
vertiv.com
l Sustainability savvy – with a new day dawning on regulation, reporting and green investment, organisations have to understand their Scope 1, Scope 2 and Scope 3. l Agility is a must; operators need to have the ability to accommodate mixed density racks and even the latest high density cooling in direct or immersed liquid formats l Speed of deployment is a given. Consider the future development strategy, the lead time of plan and the
Richard Clifford head of solutions Keysource
keysource.co.uk
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