What’s driving the growth of the UK data centre industry?

Despite economic uncertainty, the UK data centre sector continues to thrive. The market was valued at £35.58 billion in 2021 and, according to research from Arizton, it’s set to increase to £55.18 billion by 2027 at an annual growth rate of 7.58%.

Equinix is one of the latest company to announce a big investment in UK cloud infrastructure with a £179 million deal to expand its sites in London and Manchester.

But what’s driving this investment? Here are five factors…

Increasing connectivity

As big telecom operators such as EE, Vodafone and Three roll out 5G services across the country, there’s increased demand for data traffic. That requires higher-density servers and bigger data centres.

The digitisation of businesses

British businesses are increasingly turning to new technologies to manage their operations and using data to help make decisions. Rather than build their own server infrastructure to power all this activity, it’s far more cost effective — and scalable — to work with a data centre provider. With the increasing threat of ransomware and cyber attacks, the cloud also ensures business continuity and disaster recovery.

Government support

The data centre sector has government backing as it’s central to the country meeting the targets set out in a number of its digitalisation initiatives, such as the National AI Strategy, the UK Digital Strategy, the National Data Strategy and IoTUK. The government has also invested £300 million in its own cloud infrastructure — the Crown Hosting Data Centres — which provides the physical data centre space for public sectors.

Big tech investment

The data centre sector has become an increasingly profitable area for big tech companies such as Microsoft, Amazon and Google. Amazon’s AWS is the largest cloud infrastructure provider, with 34% of the global market share. The division is now more profitable than the company’s e-commerce business. Back in March 2022, AWS announced plans to invest $2.4 billion into developing data centres around the UK.

Smart cities

Technology can play a key role in helping cities become more sustainable, ensuring they meet Net Zero targets and become more efficient when it comes to using resources such as energy and water. London, Manchester, Glasgow, Bristol and Hull are amongst the UK ‘smart cities’ that have attracted investment for public tech initiatives. And of course, all that increases the demand for data centre services.

What does all this mean?

As the data centre sector expands, it calls for more power and stand-by power generation. This will require more noise control solutions, especially as part of mixed urban and residential developments.

Here at Wiltech Acoustics, we have extensive experience in creating bespoke package solutions for the power generation industry. Our range includes stand-by power generator enclosures and canopies to help mitigate environmental noise, and we also provide temperature-controlled UPS housings, low and high voltage switchgear enclosures and inverter enclosures.

We are here for our clients from the initial consultancy and design through to the manufacture, delivery and finally site installation.

Contact us to find out more.