Wednesday’s schedule continued with the “Finding Your Footprint” panel, which included representatives from several data center real estate firms – ViaWest, Jones Lang LaSalle, Grubb and Ellis and Stream Realty.
The panel agreed that power availability and cost is the number one criterion for hosting companies looking for new data center space, with the availability of space and the availability of carriers being other key factors.
The question was raised about whether the recession would have the result of making data center space available to be acquired for a reduced rate the way it was in 2001 after the expansion and overcapacity of the dot-com era turned into bankrupt data center companies trying to sell extra space.
Panelists across the board agreed that this wasn’t happening now. There’s a tremendous interest in acquiring data center space, and generally any quality space that comes on the market is seeing a lot of interest from at least a few providers.
Part of the reason for the demand in data center space, as has come up throughout the event, is the fact that with the lending crunch, data center builders haven’t been actively creating facilities. The lack of new construction is definitely contributing to demand.
Microsoft and Google have been able to coax tax incentives out of certain states in constructing data centers. These kinds of incentives are available to data center builders of any size. And some data center users are eligible for some of these too.
Tax incentives obviously aren’t the only thing to take into account when building or acquiring data centers. Ultimately, it’s about the total cost of occupancy, which can take into account things like the personal property tax placed on servers, for instance.
While power and cost is important –and while there might be less expensive opportunities available in the central US and the Midwest – price isn’t the only important thing to data center customers. There will always be customers who want to hug their servers, and building close to where your customers are is a key consideration in operating data centers.
Demand for data centers right now, according to the panel, outpaces supply by three times. And they don’t see supply arriving to meet demand until about 2011.
