The Norwegian leased data centre market is set to grow by nearly 100MW by 2024, according to a report released by CBRE Data Centre Solutions Consulting. This would take total market supply to 216MW for both retail and wholesale colocation. The market continues to be driven by enterprise and cloud deployments with companies benefitting from access to renewable and low-cost energy supply.
Many of the deployments include high-density use cases such as artificial intelligence (AI) compute and high-performance computing (HPC) which require large amounts of processing equipment and power. In a number of cases companies are able to move these functions where they don’t involve sensitive data into lower-cost locations and this is driving international interest in the market.
The data centre market has seen 36MW of take-up over the last two years. Companies taking data centre supply included Microsoft which has deployed an availability zone to serve the Nordics. Many other hyperscalers are showing continued interest in the market, however, are yet to fully deploy their own offering.
“Historical latency issues are becoming less of a constraint and the continued investments from data centre operators is placing Norway in an extremely competitive position with neighbouring markets,” Henry Gray, analyst at CBRE EMEA Data Centre Solutions Consulting, said. “Power is still the main attraction to the market where cost saving and environmental, sustainability and governance (ESG) targets can be met with ease. Our figures are just starting to tell the story of the real importance of green energy in the data centre industry.”
