The UK data centre sector risks being unable to meet demand when the recession ends if it fails to invest now. So says Digital Britain, the report into how the UK will take advantage of digital technology.

London is the largest data centre market in Europe and a location for international businesses looking to expand into Europe it says, and the report raises concerns about supply of data centres capable of delivering "a crucial part of the underlying infrastructure and a vital foundation block of much of the digital economy."
It urges the private sector to invest more heavily in data centers: "The current demand for highly-connected data centres in the UK points to constraints in supply which is of concern as these facilities can take up to two years to build from initial inception. The private sector needs to look beyond the current recession since the up-turn in the economy will not be the only driver of expanding demand - the quantity of information to be stored continues to rise exponentially across the world."
The report details its views of what constitutes a data centre: "All of the information on the global Internet, whether for commerce, industry or consumer consumption, has to be stored somewhere in digital form on servers. This is the function of the data centres."
These data centres can be operated by the owner of the digital content themselves or outsourced to a third party provider. Some of these third party data centres have become major Internet hubs or home to a significant proportion of the UK's most online intensive organisations - both Government and enterprise, it says.

Elsewhere the report points to the rationalisation of UK government data centres saying a "G-cloud" route map will mean fewer public sector data centres has highlighted a strategy of government data center rationalisation in "government and the wider public sector."
Under the section on taking advantage of cloud computing, the reports says: "The strategy study has established a route-map towards the creation of a G-Cloud, as part of the rationalisation of data centres used by Government and the wider public sector. This would both allow Government to benefit from the core attributes of Cloud Computing e.g. enhanced user experience, flexible pricing, elastic scaling, rapid provisioning, advanced virtualisation while also maintaining the appropriate levels of security, accountability and control required for most Government systems, and lead to substantial savings in costs."
The report calls for continuous downward pricing pressure to maintain the UK as an attractive market for data storage.
"Storage technology is almost in a continuous state of revolution and this, together with the state of the telecommunications networks, can impact where it is most economic to store data. The most appropriate Government and Ofcom action is to ensure competitive pressure continues to drive down the price of long distance transmission. Data and information are the lifeblood of the knowledge economy. It is monetisable: businesses are built around the gathering, control and manipulation of data. But it is also a public good, and availability in data on the web has led to an explosion in user-generated, non-profit content and collaboration," it says.

The report was issued by the Department for Business Innovation and Skills.