With the demand for digital services increasing as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, Mumbai registered the sharpest increase in supply of data centres with 56MW supply added in Q1 2021, recording a total supply at 753MW, a new report has said.
With respect to take-up, Q1 2021 recorded 8MW, compared to 44MW in all of 2020. Cloud companies are continuing to develop a substantial cloud network in Mumbai, which is aided by an ongoing stream of demand. This has facilitated the creation of multiple new hyper-wholesale colocation facilities, said Knight Frank’s Data Centre Report 2021, published in partnership with leading data centre research and analytics platform – DC Byte.
Globally, Hong Kong added significantly to capacity in Q1, with 50MW (compared with 80 added in all of 2020) and take-up of 10MW, more than a third of the take-up in all of 2020. Kuala Lumpur made gains in 2021. Total capacity expanded by 8MW. This is a third of 2020’s supply increase, bringing the total aggregate supply to 89MW.
Expansion in other markets in India, notably Chennai, is gaining attention.
“Mumbai is amongst the better-established data centre hubs in the APAC region. The city’s location has a strategic importance as a landing destination for undersea data-cables connecting the east and west. The presence of an established telecom industry in India and the push for digital services during the pandemic has further fuelled the growth of data centres in Mumbai,” said Shishir Baijal, Chairman and Managing Director at Knight Frank India.
The rise of emerging markets in APAC has brought Mumbai under the focus of multiple international operators, who wish to establish themselves in this region.”
The data centre market has experienced strong momentum in 2021. The report cited that EMEA (Europe, The Middle East and Africa) markets have seen rise of 4% in uptake in the Q1 2021, to 120 Mega Watts (MW) with a 10% increase in new supply overall, totalling to more than 180MW.
In Asia Pacific markets, total supply increased by about 200MW in Q1 2021, reflecting a similar pace to 2020 take up – recorded just over 800MW, making a total supply of 5800MW across the region.
The Q1 report 2021, which provides comprehensive coverage of 28 key markets, has closely tracked the significant pandemic-driven data usage shift in 2020, which in turn magnified the traditional “buy” cycle and led to record developments in the global data centres market.
This year the data shows it is apparent that whilst some markets have kept up with this pace others, mostly Tier II cities, have reported little supply growth in early 2021.
In EMEA, the core markets of Amsterdam, Frankfurt, London, Paris and Dublin continued their momentum, yet the trend is towards expansion outside of these markets with Africa poised to become a significant hyper-scale region; highlighted by the level of supply coming online in South Africa and Kenya.
Istanbul and Warsaw are also noted as “edge” markets to watch. Development in EMEA’s leading markets has been most notable in Q1 in Dublin with 108MW added which represents 75% of 2020’s new supply. London and Moscow both saw 40MW added, whilst Zurich added 33MW.