BT Plans $27M London Data Center

British telecom giant BT Group will spend $27 million on a new south London data center to strengthen its hosting infrastructure, the company said Thursday. The 10,000 square foot (930 square meter) facility should be complete by September and has additional room for expansion, BT said.

BT isn't alone, either. A recent study by UK consultancy BroadGroup predicted that data center space in London will increase by 45 percent between now and 2012. London continues to be one of the most attractive markets in Europe, BroadGroup said, as the city's data centers are "approaching full utilisation." New outside investors are entering the UK market, and are prepared to take larger risks on development, the study predicts.

BT is revamping many of its 70 data centers across the U.K., Rajiv Abeysinghe, BT's data center transformation manager, said at a conference in London on Wednesday hosted by Intel. The company is seeking to boost utilization on servers, and considering virtualization technology. BT said it would like to increase its CPU virtualization rate from around 7 percent to 10 percent to 80 percent.