THE EDGE
he top five data centre REITs
have a combined market cap
T approaching US$100 billion.
Aggregated revenues for the
top 10 biggest data centre operators are
around US$18 billion.
Hoya Capital defines wholesale data
centres as serving larger customers, with
long leases of five to 15 years. It says:
‘data centre REITs own roughly 30% of
investment-grade data centre facilities in
the US and command roughly a fifth of
data centre capacity globally.”
Companies and REITs have typically built
their reputations for uptime and security
by providing critical infrastructure at scale
through Tier 3+ facilities, usually with 2N or
N+1 UPS and N+1 or 2 backup generators
and dual-path infrastructure as standard. In
power terms, redundancy was king.
But in an increasingly competitive market
where high capital expenditure is needed
to maintain market share and which is
experiencing downward margin pressure,
hyperscale, wholesale and colocation
players need to squeeze costs and
improve income wherever possible.
One way to do this is to address power
infrastructure inflexibility.
The growth of the wholesale data centre
colocation industry proves it has done a
fantastic job of securing and deploying
grid power capacity for customers across
the globe. But having secured and paid
for many megawatts of grid capacity,
data centre owners should face up to
the constraints of traditional static power
topologies which restrict their access
to the available power, leaving costly
stranded capacity unused and pushing
costs onto customers. This is exactly
where Adaptable Redundant Power (ARP)
from i3 Solutions Group comes in.
Data centre power cost and
service questions
ARP addresses key questions faced by
the data centre sector:
• Are data centre owners being forced
to look for ways of improving margin
and growing the top line?
• Are they maximising their use of
available (and paid for) power?
• Is the current model where customers
pay for capacity irrespective of
whether they use it or not sustainable,
or will it have to change?
• Are data centre operations being held
back by inflexible power infrastructure?
• Is unused stranded capacity pushing
up power prices as a cost of business?
• Do data centres have the ability to
align the power SLA with IT when the
workload is continually changing?
Ed Ansett, Chairman, i3 Solutions
HYPERSCALE,
WHOLESALE AND
COLOCATION
PLAYERS NEED
TO SQUEEZE
COSTS AND
IMPROVE
INCOME
WHEREVER
POSSIBLE.
• Can they meet the inevitable nearterm
customer requirement for power
on a pay-by-use basis?
• Are requirements for outage
mitigation without additional
premiums possible in order to meet
increased competition from cloud
service providers?
• How can data centre owners respond
to market changes?
Large hyperscale customers inside
wholesale colocation facilities are buying
massive amounts of space and paying for
huge chunks of dedicated power capacity.
They may not be able to name their own
price, but their scale certainly gives them
leverage in pricing negotiations. For the
provider, this makes power cost efficiency
of paramount importance.
Smaller customers, those drawing below
1MW from shared infrastructure, want
guaranteed access. In order to maintain
profitability, data centre owners can
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