The UK construction market for data centres is estimated to be valued at around £1.1bn in 2017, following two years of market growth.

Performance has been positive in recent years, with high take up of space in the co-location sector from late 2015 onwards. In 2016 and 2017, the data centre market benefitted from major investment decisions from Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, IBM and Google, and there are several other major data centres being developed across the UK, which should provide further impetus to the market in the next year or two.

The commercial, or co-location, sector has experienced the greatest level of growth, boosted by major data investments from global players in the last two years.




In contrast, expenditure in the public sector has fallen slightly as the Government’s cloud-first policy has led to increased outsourcing and use of wholesale and co-location providers to reduce its IT expenditure. Output in the private sector has remained static since 2015, as businesses increasingly seek to adopt cloud-based solutions and reduce reliance on in-house data centres, recognising the cost, efficiency and security benefits associated with using commercial data centre provision.

A key driver for data centre construction has been the rapid growth in demand for data storage. Consumers’ demand for digital content continues to grow, particularly due to increasing levels of online video streaming, downloading of other media such as music and reliance on social networks.

By far the largest geographical UK data centre cluster remains in the London and M25 area, though there is growth in other areas with large campus style data centres established in Wiltshire, Leicestershire, South Wales and Cambridgeshire. Manchester and Scotland are also becoming more established data centre markets.

The Data Centre Construction Market Report – UK 2018-2022 report is published by AMA Research. The report is available now and can be ordered online at www.amaresearch.co.uk or by calling 01242 235724.