United Kingdom Data Center Market - Investment Analysis & Growth Opportunities 2025-2030

MARKET OUTLOOK

The UK data center market will witness investments of USD 22.65 billion by 2030, growing at a CAGR of 13.33% during the forecast period. The growing adoption of cloud computing in the country is driving the UK data center market. For instance, in September 2024, AWS announced its plans to invest around USD 10 billion in data center infrastructure development across the UK over the next five years. Most of the enterprises across the public and private sectors are migrating their workloads to the cloud to enhance their operations. In January 2024, the Department of Work and Pensions in the UK migrated its entire workloads to the AWS cloud with an investment of around USD 119.4 million.

District heating systems are being developed across various regions of the UK with growing investments in sustainable energy solutions to enhance heating efficiency and reduce carbon emissions. For instance, in August 2024, the UK’s Green Heat Network Fund and Heat Network Efficiency Scheme announced their plans the invest around USD 1.46 billion to expand heat networks across England, Wales, and Scotland between 2022 to 2028. Also, the country is increasingly promoting renewable energy generation to support sustainability and reduce carbon emissions. The UK has generated around 43% of its total electricity from renewable sources as of September 2024 in 2024 and the nation is aiming to generate around 95% of the overall electricity from renewables. The operators are increasingly signing Power Purchase Agreements to promote sustainability. For instance, Amazon signed a PPA to procure over 159 MW of renewable energy annually from East Anglia Three offshore wind farms.

The UK data center market is advancing the development of its submarine cable connectivity to enhance its digital infrastructure, and the country has been involved in the development of around two submarine cables in 2024. The Beaufort sub-marine cable owned by Amazon Web Services connects the UK with Ireland and the IOEMA project, which is being developed by IOEMA Fiber spanning 994 miles connects the country with Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, and Norway. Also, the country consists of around eight free trade zones across various regions including East Midlands Airport, Felixstowe and Harwich, Humber, Liverpool city region, Plymouth and South Devon, Solent, Teesside, and Thames, which provides tax reliefs to enterprises along with duty exemptions and enhanced allowances and the country also hosts over 48 enterprise zones across England to promote economic growth and attract local and foreign investments.

Liquid cooling adoption is increasing significantly in the UK data center market, driven by the AI and HPC workloads. For instance, in July 2024, the first liquid cooling lab and data center facility was launched by Iceotope in Sheffield, UK in collaboration with Efficiency IT, to support liquid cooling technologies for data center facilities.

KEY HIGHLIGHTS

1. The UK is witnessing a rapid increase in digitalization driven by the continuous surge in technological advancements including 5G deployments, Cloud computing, artificial intelligence, big data, and IoT. In March 2024, the Digital Development Strategy 2024-2030 was launched by FCDO to promote digital transformation, digital inclusion, digital responsibility, and digital sustainability across diverse sectors in the country.
2. The UK government has introduced the Digital Economy Skills Action Plan 2023-2028 to boost the digital skills of the country’s workforce to address the concern of workforce shortage for technical roles in the country focusing on expanding access to digital skills training to individuals and improving collaboration between businesses, education and government sectors.
3. Operators across the UK data center market are prioritizing Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil as an alternative to diesel for fuelling their generators aligning with sustainability and carbon neutrality to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. In December 2024, around 500 HVO-ready generators were deployed by AVK, a UK-based infrastructure provider in collaboration with Rolls Royce supporting sustainable energy solutions across the UK.
4. The UK data center market growth is fuelled by government support to enhance digitalization across the country and the government is implementing several initiatives to promote this transformation. In September 2024, the government of the UK announced that the data center facilities would be considered as Critical National Infrastructure (CNI), designating these facilities as the most crucial component such as energy, water, and other emergency services highlighting their importance in maintaining economic stability and national security.
5. The construction of AI-ready data centers is increasing significantly in the UK data center market t with ample growth in AI workloads. In November 2024, Latos, a UK-based data center operator announced its plans for the development of around 40 data centers across the UK to respond to the rising demands of AI workloads by 2030.
6. The government of the UK is expanding the power infrastructure of the country by focusing on grid development to provide uninterrupted power across the country. For instance, in November 2023, the government of the UK announced its plans to invest around USD 1 billion in green industries for the development of power infrastructure to reduce delays in grid connections.

WHY SHOULD YOU BUY THIS RESEARCH?

1. Market size available in the investment, area, power capacity, and UK colocation market revenue.
2. An assessment of the data center investment in the UK by colocation, hyperscale, and enterprise operators.
3. Data center investments in the area (square feet) and power capacity (MW) across counties in the country.
4. A detailed study of the existing UK data center market landscape, an in-depth industry analysis, and insightful predictions about the UK data center market size during the forecast period.
5. Snapshot of existing and upcoming third-party data center facilities in the UK
6. Facilities Covered (Existing): 227
7. Facilities Identified (Upcoming): 39
8. Coverage: 34+ Counties
9. Existing vs. Upcoming (Data Center Area)
10. Existing vs. Upcoming (IT Load Capacity)
11. Data center colocation market in the UK
12. Colocation Market Revenue & Forecast (2021-2030)
13. Retail vs Wholesale Colocation Market Revenue & Forecast (2021-2030)
14. Retail & Wholesale Colocation Pricing
15. The UK data center landscape market investments are classified into IT, power, cooling, and general construction services with sizing and forecast.
16. A comprehensive analysis of the latest trends, growth rate, potential opportunities, growth restraints, and prospects for the industry.
17. Business overview and product offerings of prominent IT infrastructure providers, construction contractors, support infrastructure providers, and investors operating in the industry.
18. A transparent research methodology and the analysis of the demand and supply aspects of the industry.

VENDOR LANDSCAPE

1. Some of the important colocation data center investors in UK data center market include Ark Data Centres, Colt Data Centre Services, CyrusOne, Datum, Digital Realty, Echelon Data Centres, Equinix, Global Switch, Green Mountain, Iron Mountain, Kao Data, nLighten, NTT DATA, Pure Data Centres, Telehouse, Vantage Data Centers, VIRTUS Data Centres, Yondr Group and others.
2. The increasing demand and vast growth opportunities have attracted numerous new entrants to invest in the UK data center market, including several emerging players like Ada Infrastructure, CloudHQ, Digital Reef, Global Technical Realty, Humber Tech Park, J Mould Reading, SEGRO, Latos, QTS Data Centers, EdgeNebula and others.
3. The UK data center market includes several global support infrastructure vendors including ABB, Airedale, Caterpillar, Cummins, Delta Electronics, Eaton, Kohler, Legrand, Mitsubishi Electric, Pillar Power Systems, Rittal, Rolls-Royce, Riello Electronica Group, Schneider Electric, Socomec Group Siemens, STULZ, Vertiv, AF Switchgear, AVK and others. This results in a significant increase in competitiveness in the infrastructure offerings and solutions available in the UK data center market.
4. The UK data center market consists of numerous local and global construction contractors operating in the market such as AtkinsRéalis, BladeRoom Data Centres, Bouygues Construction, Deerns, Future-tech, HDR Architecture, INFINITI IT, ISG, JCA Engineering, Kirby Group Engineering, MiCiM, StudioNWA, Sweet Projects, RED Engineering Design, SPIE, Skanska, STO Building Group, Sudlows, TTSP, Waldeck and others, which have been offering their construction, engineering, commissioning and infrastructure installation services in the market. For instance, Skanska has provided the building, designing, testing, fit out, and commissioning services to VIRTUS Data Centres for the construction of the London 11 data center in the UK.

EXISTING VS. UPCOMING DATA CENTERS

1. Existing Facilities in the Region by Counties (Area and Power Capacity)
2. Greater London
3. Berkshire
4. Greater Manchester
5. Other Counties
6. List of Upcoming Facilities in the Region by Counties (Area and Power Capacity)
7. Greater London
8. Berkshire
9. Greater Manchester
10. Other Counties

REPORT COVERAGE:

This report analyses the UK data center market share. It elaboratively analyses the existing and upcoming facilities and investments in IT, electrical, mechanical infrastructure, general construction, and tier standards. It discusses market sizing and investment estimation for different segments. The segmentation includes:

1. IT Infrastructure
2. Servers
3. Storage Systems
4. Network Infrastructure
5. Electrical Infrastructure
6. UPS Systems
7. Generators
8. Transfer Switches & Switchgears
9. PDUs
10. Other Electrical Infrastructure
11. Mechanical Infrastructure
12. Cooling Systems
13. Rack Cabinets
14. Other Mechanical Infrastructure
15. Cooling Systems
16. CRAC & CRAH Units
17. Chiller Units
18. Cooling Towers, Condensers & Dry Coolers
19. Other Cooling Units
20. General Construction
21. Core & Shell Development
22. Installation & Commissioning Services
23. Engineering & Building Design
24. Fire Detection & Suppression Systems
25. Physical Security
26. Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM)
27. Tier Standard
28. Tier I & Tier II
29. Tier III
30. Tier IV
31. Geography
32. Greater London
33. Other Counties

VENDOR LANDSCAPE

1. IT Infrastructure Providers: Arista Networks, Atos, Broadcom, Cisco Systems, Dell Technologies, Fujitsu, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Huawei Technologies, IBM, Juniper Networks, and NetApp.
2. Data Center Construction Contractors & Sub-Contractors: 2bm, AECOM, Arup, ARC:MC, AtkinsRéalis, BladeRoom Data Centres, Bouygues Construction, Deerns, Future-tech, HDR Architecture, INFINITI IT, ISG, JCA Engineering, Kirby Group Engineering, ACIES Civil and Structural, Mace Group, Mercury, MiCiM, StudioNWA, Sweet Projects, RED Engineering Design, SPIE, Skanska, STO Building Group, Sudlows, TTSP, and Waldeck.  
3. Support Infrastructure Providers: ABB, Airedale, Caterpillar, Cummins, Delta Electronics, Eaton, Kohler, Legrand, Mitsubishi Electric, Pillar Power Systems, Rittal, Rolls-Royce, Riello Elettronica Group, Schneider Electric, Siemens, Socomec, STULZ, Vertiv, AF Switchgear, and AVK.
4. Data Center Investors: Amazon Web Services, Ark Data Centres, Colt Data Centre Services, CyrusOne, Datum, Digital Realty, Echelon Data Centres, Equinix, Global Switch, Google, Green Mountain, Iron Mountain, Kao Data, Microsoft, nLighten, NTT DATA, Pure Data Centres, Telehouse, Vantage Data Centers, VIRTUS Data Centres, and Yondr Group.
5. New Entrants: Ada Infrastructure, CloudHQ, Digital Reef, Global Technical Realty, Humber Tech Park, J Mould Reading, SEGRO, Latos, QTS Data Centers, and EdgeNebula.