EDITOR’S QUESTION
PATRICK LASTENNET,
DIRECTOR OF
ENTERPRISE,
INTERXION
ne of the biggest
causes of the boom in
European data centres
is the digitisation of
old legacy systems
being carried out en
masse by large organisations on an
industry-wide and international scale.
As Digital Transformation continues
to impact all sectors and industries,
businesses implementing technologies
such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine
Learning (ML) and 5G are all driving
demand for data centre capacity in and
around urban and industrial centres.
O
The financial services industry is a
particularly interesting example of this
digital transition manifesting itself. In
order to compete with the technology-
enhanced customer experience of
neobanks such as Monzo, household name
retail banks are being pushed to update
outdated ‘Frankenstein systems’ that
they have cobbled together over many
decades, and are no longer fit for purpose.
The move towards dashboards and data
visualisation in the consumer banking
space is necessitating new and better
infrastructure. As a result, London-based
financial institutions are increasingly
leaning on external data centres in the city
and Canary Wharf in a bid to quickly adapt
to the needs of the market, with the need
for costly fork-lift upgrades of their own
in-house technology.
www.intelligentdatacentres.com
WITH EUROPE
HOME TO
MANY MAJOR
FINANCIAL
HUBS – LONDON,
FRANKFURT,
AMSTERDAM
AND PARIS TO
NAME BUT A
FEW – THE BOOM
IN EUROPEAN
DATA CENTRES
HAS FINANCIAL
SERVICES TO
THANK.
Outside of the consumer space, the
wider finance and investment industry
is also seeing this shift. The rise in
popularity of quantitative analysis and
high frequency trading is driving, and
has also been driven, by the improved
quality and accessibility of high levels
of compute capacity at relatively low
cost. This growth has had a direct impact
on the demand for data centre use –
particularly those with the specialised
hardware to run compute intensive
workloads. Machine Learning-powered
predictive analytics, designed to identify
how any (in)significant external factor
could influence investment value will
undoubtedly continue to grow – again
fuelling demand for data centres. With
Europe home to many major financial
hubs – London, Frankfurt, Amsterdam
and Paris to name but a few – the boom
in European data centres has financial
services to thank.
Looking at the wider picture, it’s also
impossible to deny the impact Brexit has
had on the rise in European data centres
over the past few years.
While London, and the UK more widely,
remains a huge business and finance
hub, uncertainty surrounding the impact
Brexit will have on international trade
has led many traditionally London-
based businesses – financial institutions
included – to relocate both manpower and
operations, and therefore data processing,
to mainland Europe. The need to locate
data centres in close proximity to
business and finance hubs such as Canary
Wharf to reduce latency means that
this migration of workloads is creating
demand for larger, more advanced data
centres across the continent.
Issue 14
31