ITS FIRST OWNED UK DATA CENTER SITE

Google has just acquired a plot of land north of London, precisely in Broxbourne, Hertfordshire, which could house its first owned data center in the UK.

In Europe, Google has five data center campuses across Ireland, Netherlands, Denmark, Finland, and Belgium. The company also leases wholesale data center space from infrastructure providers such as Global Switch and Equinix, this includes the UK where Google operate 3 cloud zones.

“We have acquired a 33 acre property North of London for potential data center development. While we do not have a confirmed timeline for development for the site, we want to ensure that we have the option to further grow, should our business demand it. We don’t expect to take any decision on this in the near future,” said Google Spokesman, as reported by City A.M.

In July, Google announced a new subsea cable Grace Hopper, which will establish a direct connection between the United States, the United Kingdom and Spain. Scheduled to be commissioned in 2022, the Grace Hopper cable will be one of the first new cables to connect the US and UK since 2003, it also marks Google’s first investment in a private subsea cable route to the UK, and the company’s first-ever route to Spain.

Hence, the development of the newly acquired 33-acre site has the potential of giving Google its first owned data center facility in the UK and leverage the Grace Hopper cable connectivity to establish a dedicated network with the company’s US facilities.

As announced last month, UK is expecting NTT Ltd.’s Hemel Hempstead 4 Data Center located about 24 miles northwest of London. The project is part of NTT Ltd.’s £500 million expansion plan in the UK market. This facility will join the company’s other UK expansion project such as London 1, which is expected to open this year.

Another UK data center project underway is a 13MW facility that will span about 5,500 square meters and located in the Slough campus of Virtus Data Centres. This announcement was made about 2 days ago with the facility expected to go live in November 2022.