Hosting company says London power shortage is a myth

A hosting company has poured scorn on the received wisdom that data centres in London are struggling with shortages of power.

Greg McCulloch, managing director of Interxion, said that the company recently expanded its Brick Lane facility, close to the City of London and is currently assessing two more London locations.

He said that the company had had little problem in supplying power to its facilities. "We've actually got the reverse problem," he said. "We have more power than we can use." He said that the bigger problem that the company had faced was with wayleaves rather than electricity supply. "There's plenty of power in the Grid in London," he said.

There are many companies looking to set up data centres in the capital who would be surprised to hear that. Earlier this year, a survey by Vanson Bourne found that data centres in the south east were struggling with capacity and last month NGD announced that it was building a massive data centre in Wales to supply companies struggling for capacity in London.

McCulloch said that many organisations made the mistake of asking for too much capacity all at once, amounts that the electricity companies struggle to cope with. "We go in and ask for 6mVA (megavolt ampere) and then ask for 6mVA more a few months later and more a few months after that It's no good asking for massive amounts in one go because you're not going to get it."

Interxion is experiencing healthy growth at the moment, said McCulloch. He said that many organisations that might have been expected to run their own data centres had been looking to outsource to the company. "I think there's a definite trend to reduce capital expenditure," he said. "We get companies taking a three-year contract and waiting to see if the financial crisis passes.

"But," he added, "I'm not sure that all are necessarily going to take things back in-house."