Data Centre and Infrastructure Services Dinner

On Wednesday 18th October we hosted our annual Data Centre and Infrastructure Services Dinner. Attendees were drawn from Operators, Investors and Managed Service Providers.

The diversity of thought in the room led to some very interesting discussions on the current and future state of play of the sector; most notably the hype surrounding ‘edge computing’ and whether this will create a paradigm shift in the industry. Specifically the impact of IOT, 5G, ‘edge’ data centres and ultimately where the compute processing will take place is at the heart of the issue. Predicting this trend against the backdrop of large capital investments and returns on capital invested is a key focus area for the entire eco-system.

Nevertheless market confidence remains buoyant with extensive demand from the ‘GAFA’ companies: Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple (a new acronym for me!) and other hyper-scale players. This does not look set to diminish but there is a possibility of big winners and big losers, with product fit, pricing and relationships being the determining factors. Further, the expansion of tier 2 European Markets and areas further afield such as Russia and Western Africa will become the new norm as investors and operators continue to seek interesting growth options.

In summary it was an excellent evening with fascinating opinions from across the board.