Data centers are vital to the modern tech ecosystem and will become even more necessary thanks to AI and cloud computing developments. As massive data centers are being constructed worldwide, one unsuspecting town has emerged as Europe’s capital, apparently, as far as data centers go.
The Importance of data centers
Data centers have become the unseen backbone of the internet, storing and disseminating almost every page online. Every site needs a server to host from, and individual and corporate interests often use a data center to meet their hosting demands. Centers have also become very important for delivering content quickly through CDNs so that you can access a server closer than the host server a continent away.
Not all data demands are the same. That’s why many companies build and maintain their own data centers, most commonly in the tech space. Some public-facing sites also use them, especially sites that process transactions. As a result, everyone from banking companies to sites where people play blackjack for real money uses private data centers. Other services rent out these buildings to the highest bidder instead, saving businesses the costs of building one for themselves. Of course, government entities have to build their own data centers to maintain utmost secrecy.
Read more: The Best Locations for Data Centers [Infographic]
As mentioned, the rise of new tech, like generative AI, has caused a feeding frenzy in the data center industry. AI models must process a lot of training data, which means those models can grow exponentially, demanding more and more processing power. It’s unreasonable to expect the user to crunch those numbers. So many current AI runs from massive data centers accessed by apps and websites. That said, companies like Google are trying to crack on-device AI that can run natively on the phone, though it’ll be in a reduced capacity compared to larger models.
Europe’s data center capital?
As the demand for data centers increases, companies are investing in large private estates to house their servers. These massive tech spaces attract a lot of external investment into the area. If the company is public-facing, having many host servers closer to home also provides better regional service.
In Europe, one unsuspecting town is home to more data centers than any other place on the continent – Slough, in the UK. With just over 140,000 people, it’s a small town compared to larger urban sprawls in the country, but it has the highest concentration of globally operating companies outside of the capital. With that comes a lot of data center investment.
The reason isn’t that complicated. It’s right by the capital without being in the middle of it. Business spaces prefer to be connected to but not distracted by urban environments. That’s why the largest data center cluster in the US is in northern Virginia, close to the American capital but not directly inside it.
Slough Trading Estate is close to Heathrow Airport and on the primary fiber-optic cable connecting London to Ireland and the USA. The 600-building estate is owned and managed by SEGRO and is one of the largest trading estates that remains under single ownership. That’s another point in its favor, as expanding companies can move into the area without negotiating with multiple business entities.
Among its 600 buildings, the estate has now built 34 multi-story data centers that cater to massive tech companies like Virgin Media and O2. Other customers include Mars Confectionary, Ferrari, and GSK, so it’s not just tech companies that use the space. The estate is also growing, so more data centers are likely to appear there in the future. With more data centers being constructed globally, it remains to be seen if Slough will keep its position as the second-largest data center capital in the world.
Photo credit: The feature image is symbolic and has been done by Taylor Vick. The picture in the body of the article was taken by Giammarco Boscaro.
