This is an episode of HawkTalk, datacenterHawk’s series of candid one on one conversations with executives and leaders in the data center industry. If you enjoyed this episode, you can check them all out on our blog. If you’d like to know when we release future episodes, you can subscribe here.

Dan Scarbrough, Lead European Analyst at datacenterHawk, got the chance to sit down with Michael Winterson, the Managing Director at Equinix Services and Jens-Peter Feidner, Managing Director Germany at Equinix to discuss the Frankfurt data center market and Europe as a whole.

Below are some of our take aways from the discussion.

How COVID has changed business as a whole

COVID has changed so much in our world from a business standpoint. In the above video, Michael explains that the biggest issue for Equinix and their customers is how difficult it has been to transition to a socially distanced world.

Before the pandemic, Equinix had about 2,000 visitors per day across all their facilities. when the pandemic hit, they severely limited the number of people that could come into their facilities to avoid locking down any of their locations. Michael and the Equinix team are grateful for their customers who adjusted to these new security measures, including having all appointments scheduled and booked in advance.

The other major change that Equinix noticed related to COVID was the need to rapidly shift network. Networks have had to adapt quickly to the demand that was produced when so many people shifted to working from home and utilizing virtual meetings.

The trend of Asian capacity coming to the Frankfurt market

Equinix has seen a good amount of interest and deployment from Asian data center users in the Frankfurt market. These users not only are coming to Equinix but also building their own smaller footprints in the Frankfurt market.

Germany is a Central European country and has good commercial relationships beyond the digital industry. Specifically in manufacturing and importing and export. country and that there are good commercial relationships beyond the digital industry. These relationships, alongside the access to the digital industry is a big reason for Asian data center users to enter the Frankfurt market.

New entrants and demand growth in the Frankfurt market

There is a surge of demand growth in the European markets right now and specifically in Frankfurt.

As Jens-Peter Feidner puts it in the above video, “[Providers] wouldn’t enter a market if there’s not enough demand. Everyone looks at where to invest the dollars. Even if money might be cheap and it’s a good industry to invest, you still don’t want to lose money. So that proves that there’s enough demand.”

Feidner goes on to say that Equinix and other data center providers who have been in the Frankfurt market for a long time, benefit because they have the name, brand, and service that prove they have been able to deliver quality to their clients in the past. The newer entrants in the market have yet to gain that same level of credibility.

Frankfurt is a data center market to keep your eye on moving forward so be sure to stay tuned to datacenterHawk for more up to date content on it and other major US and European markets.