In the second quarter of this year, there was exceptional demand for additional data center capacity. 114 MW capacity was added in the largest European markets.

Research from JLL suggests that demand for cloud capacity in Europe has broken records over the past six months. According to a company report, 144 MW of capacity was awarded in the second quarter alone, up from 51 MW in the first quarter. There was demand for capacity across Europe, but Frankfurt clearly grabbed most of the pie.

There, 69 MW of power was connected to the grid, enough to expand the market by twelve percent. London remains the largest data center hub, although Frankfurt is growing faster. The capacities in Amsterdam, Paris and Dublin are also increasing.

All at the same time

According to JLL, the record growth is now due to unique market conditions. During the pandemic, many companies have signed up for data center space under construction. Both the construction and the delivery of the hardware did not always run smoothly. Due to these problems, the delivery was delayed. Now the situation seems to have normalized somewhat and planned projects are suddenly being implemented collectively. This ensures high growth figures in the past quarter, while normally the same capacity would probably be connected to the grid in a more distributed manner.

The report only looks at the large data center hubs and therefore does not provide an overall picture of the market. After all, data center capacity is also being worked on diligently in our country. Two trends are important: On the one hand, there are workloads that are less sensitive to latency. Data centers in regions with access to renewable energies are becoming increasingly important. On the other hand, there are also workloads that need to run close to the customer, which increases the importance of local data centers. Questions and rules on data center sovereignty also play a role. Previous research has already indicated that the demand for data centers in the EU will increase significantly.