Emma Fryer, associate director of data centres at industry body TechUK, said the reality has been less dramatic.
Synergy Research Group chief analyst John Dinsdale said that over the next five years"the number of operational hyperscale data centres in Europe will grow at 8-10 per cent per year and we expect UK growth to be in the same range." Demand for UK-based sites has been driven by enterprise cloud and software-as-a-service utilities - such as office productivity and file storage - as well as e-commerce, social networking, search, streaming video services, gaming and mobile apps.