Amsterdam, January 29 2020 – With the rapid growth of data and the ever growing dependence on IT, having a solid digital infrastructure is increasingly important; never before were IT trends and business changes so closely linked as they are now. This offers enormous opportunities, however also challenges in terms of sustainability, energy, education, legislation and security. No wonder that 1000+ visitors – from connectivity, cloud and data center experts to developers, investors and policy officers – gathered in Amsterdam yesterday to kickstart the year at KickStart Europe 2020. During this conference, the annual European Outlook report was presented as well.
All-out tech war
What’s ahead for Europe’s digital infrastructure industry? The KickStart Europe conference published its annual European Outlook report during a day full of Strategy and Networking sessions. One of the developments is the economic uncertainty coming from overseas. Not necessarily from the looming Brexit, but more from the ongoing global trade wars between global economic superpowers. Since Europe is highly dependent on foreign technology, many EU countries want to reduce that dependence and provide more European alternatives. Recent cases show that trade wars are more and more intertwining with cyber wars, reaching an overarching tech-war. The European answer aims towards the support for open source initiatives and a more conservative approach towards the cloud in the public sector.
Sustainability
Another global trend, identified in the 2020 European Outlook report, is sustainability. specially in Europe, energy efficiency and green power will be a key priority for the digital infrastructure industry. “In the digital world, telcos and data centers are major energy consumers,” says Peter Vermeulen, Analyst at Pb7 and research partner of the Outlook Report. “This means that they both will need to continuously invest in energy efficiency and green power – if they haven’t done so already.”
Where next
Mitul Patel, Associate Director at CBRE and the second research partner of the report, anticipates that the total capacity of data centers in the so-called FLAP-markets (Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris) will increase with 15% in 2020. Cloud is again the dominant driver behind the data center growth; which represented 80% of the growth in 2019. As discussed during his keynote presentation at the conference, Mitul Patel states: “the question ‘where next’ is more important than ever; getting ahead of the competition in increasingly popular growth markets can prove extremely fruitful”. At the conference, visitors were able to meet and discuss what’s ahead in 2020. Prepared for the coming year and ready for more insights at the next KickStart Europe conference on January 25 and 26 2021!
Report available
All visitors of the KickStart Europe Conference have received the Outlook 2020 report at the conference day. The report, with key insights into the data center and digital infrastructure industry, is freely accessible via www.kickstartconf.eu/outlook2020.
About KickStart Europe
KickStart Europe is the Annual Strategy & Networking conference on trends and investments in tech and digital infrastructure. By bringing together an array of industry professionals at the start of the year, KickStart Europe helps to explore the emerging trends and technology shaping the digital industry and digital infrastructure of cloud, connectivity and data centers. The conference has the aim to foster collaboration, the exchange of ideas and explore opportunities and threats, right at the start of the year. By the industry, for the industry.
See www.kickstartconf.eu or contact info@kickstartconf.eu