Telehouse Global Spotlight: Telehouse Paris Data Centers
January 18, 2017
C’est Magnifique! The Paris Data Center and Colocation Market Is Thriving
Given a growing population of approximately 2.3 million inhabitants, with surrounding suburbs that are home to around 10.5 million, Paris, the most populous urban area in the European Union, offers enough opportunity to keep its multi-tenant data center and hosting markets growing. A large number of multinational corporations are headquartered in the city, among these, 29 of the Fortune 500, including Sanofi, BNP Paribas and Orange. Paris is home to many other healthcare, financial services, and telecommunications companies, as well as some of the world’s most recognized luxury retail brands, pushing greater and greater demand for colocation, hosting and cloud services to meet French business requirements. Indeed, Paris is the third-largest multi-tenant data center and fourth-largest hosting market in Europe.
While some Paris-based companies seek to lower costs through renewable energy as well as cheaper land prices that would necessitate a move away from the highly competitive city center, many businesses find a presence there is still required for connectivity into Paris’ major carrier hotels. So much so that Paris dominates as France’s data center hub, accounting for over 70 percent of the country’s total data center footprint.
The Paris region is an attractive location for data center operators for several reasons, including its economy (31 percent of the national GDP), geographical position, which shelters it from natural risks and flood-prone areas, and abundant electricity supply at attractive prices. Additionally, the uncertainty following Brexit could mean that the data center and hosting market in Paris could stand to gain from customers or service providers looking to move their digital assets or data centers out of the UK.
The City of Light is also forecast to become increasingly cloudy. Amazon Web Services (AWS) recently announced plans to add new cloud data centers in Paris, and Microsoft will add a new Azure data center there that is projected to come online this year. The Renault–Nissan Alliance, a Franco-Japanese automobile manufacturing partnership between Paris-based Renault and Yokohama-based Nissan, will employ Microsoft Azure at its Parisian data center to develop advanced predictive maintenance and remote monitoring of cars, among other IoT/M2M automotive applications.
Telehouse has been operating data centers in France for over two decades, beginning with Telehouse Jeûneurs, the first neutral colocation facility in Paris. Today, Telehouse offers colocation services within three French data centers, all located in the greater Paris metro area. Of these, Telehouse Voltaire, home to France-IX, the country’s leading internet exchange, is a key hub for 80 percent of France’s live internet traffic.
