Top Expected Driver of Data Center Capacity in Europe: Storage

Storage growth, business growth, and the virtualization of critical applications are seen to be the greatest drivers for data centre capacity growth for European companies participating in a commissioned survey.

2014 survey of data centre trends across Europe canvassed data centre decision makers in the UK, Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Ireland.

The combined survey results for the five countries revealed that the top expected drivers of data centre capacity growth were storage growth (56%), business growth (48%), and virtualization (42%). The next tier of drivers included big data (36%), BC (26%), and data centre consolidation (23%).

Key drivers by country were as follows:

• UK: Storage growth, business growth, virtualization, and big data
• Germany: Storage growth, virtualization, big data, and business growth
• France: Storage growth, business growth, virtualization, and big data
• Netherlands: Business growth, storage growth/big data (tied), and virtualization/redundancy (tied)
• Ireland: Business growth, compliance/consolidation (tied), and BC

Strong Expansion Plans
When asked about future plans for data centre capacity planning, almost all respondents (92%) indicated they are planning some form of expansion within the next four years.

More than one-third (38%) of respondents expected their existing data centre budget to grow between 5-10% in the next 12 months, with an additional 7% of respondents expecting to increase their data centre budget by more than 10% in the next 12 months.

Key Considerations: Network Connectivity Options and Resiliency
When making decisions about new data centre facility investments, the most important considerations for respondents were the data centre's network connectivity options (81%), including carrier availability and carrier density. The next most important considerations were the resiliency level and availability of the data centre facility (79%), the cost of energy at the data centre location (77%), and the level of control over the data centre facility (76%).