Economic and Environmental Aspects of the Walloon Colocation Data Centre Industry in Early 2021
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- Data centres are key infrastructures in the digital economy era. They play an important role in supporting cutting-edge technologies such as cloud computing and the internet of things, in a rapidly changing landscape. These digital infrastructures are constructed almost anywhere around the world and aim to and process data on the Internet. This qualitative study aims to understand the data centre industry offering B2B hosting in Wallonia, called colocation data centres. This analysis starts by selecting several assets for an attractive data centre market as the key success factors. These factors are the cloud offer, fibre connectivity, market importance, ecosystem, sustainability, and government incentives. Then, there is an analysis of these factors in the Walloon colocation data centre industry. In addition, the analysis uses the Porter diamond model composed of four main attributes (factor conditions, demand conditions, related and supported industries and firm strategy, structure and rivalry). This model brings together the assets of Wallonia that constitute the national environment in which companies compete. The conclusion is not advantageous. Wallonia does not have enough key success factors to attract investors wanting to install a data centre. The results show different assets acquired such as a favourable tax system, the presence of Google which invests a lot in the region, optic fibre network, availability of land. However, negotiations and obtaining building permits take time in a weak ecosystem. The main limitations of this study are the state of an industry in a short period, a geographical area that does not have much scientific research due to the small size of the Walloon market. Some future research can be done, mainly about another category of data centres such as enterprise or micro data centre which is a promising technology.