Scandinavia dominates data center location list

The latest Data Center Risk Index, published by the American property management company Cushman & Wakefield, lists the safest worldwide locations to host data centers.

This report is based on a survey of 4,000 clients and takes into account ten factors including energy cost, water availability, Internet bandwidth, ease of doing business, level of corporate tax, and political stability.

The top five countries are all Northern European, underlining the region’s preeminence as a location for data centers.

The top 10 are:

• Iceland
• Norway
• Switzerland
• Finland
• Sweden
• Canada
• Singapore
• Republic of Korea
• United Kingdom
• United States

The five riskiest markets for data centers are:

• Nigeria
• India
• China
• Turkey
• Indonesia

Ireland is placed 20th on the list though the authors state that the country’s critical mass leads to a much higher level of investment/occupancy with corporate clustering and co-location remaining ever important. Ireland has the second lowest corporate tax environment on the entire list.

Commenting on the list Neil Vaughan, Project Management Director with Linesight, said:

'Although Scandinavia scores highly on this list it’s important to remember that for some companies latency is the most important issue. The speed at which data requests are returned is crucial for financial and gaming sectors. That’s why there will always be pros and cons to where data centers are located.'

According to Neil Vaughan the main reasons for deciding where a data center should be located are:

• Cooling: temperature and access to water
• Power availability: can the host electricity provider supply 120 megawatts?
• Fibre connection: the faster the connection the less latency will be an issue