The era of ‘cat videos’ has ended. Data centres are rightly designated as critical infrastructure.

The ‘mystic’ or misunderstanding of data centres and their role has long been an issue the sector has had to work hard against. In part, this is a problem of our own making – for too long our industry has kept its head below the parapet, our buildings, operations, workloads and customers have remained secretive, by design. 

You can walk through Slough, past numerous large ‘sheds’ and most people will be completely unaware that behind the fences lays the infrastructure that makes Slough the second largest data centre hub in the world, and importantly, where the technology resides that keeps our country ticking. 

Compounding this issue is the fact that when trying to fill in the blanks, public perception has defaulted to data centres essentially powering and hosting ‘frivolous compute’ – cat videos on YouTube, billions of downloads of Justin Bieber’s latest music video epic or online gaming applications. 

On the face of it, data centres don’t seem to be relevant to much of the population – and if you want a quiet night in, tell people you work in the data centre industry, and you’ll never be invited to a party again!

In reality, however, data centres underpin our modern, digital lives – everything from how we communicate, shop, manage our finances, access health care, travel, entertain ourselves, the compute systems our companies rely on, share knowledge and insight and, essentially, make the impossible, possible.  

Take their impact during the pandemic – it’s data centres that provided the horse-power behind our record-breaking vaccine response which has enabled the world to move on from Covid-19 and get back to normal. In the 21st century, data centres have become fundamental to every one of our futures and they are the industrial-scale machines of the digital-age.

Within our data centres in Harlow, for example, we have customers undertaking life-saving cancer drug discovery, warning communities in sub-Saharan Africa of incoming locust storms, and cataloguing key biological data across the UK and Europe so that as plant species are impacted by a changing climate, we as a community can respond. This is fundamental work that safeguards our green spaces, not only minimising impact on food production but ensuring action can be taken ahead of time. 

Ultimately, there isn’t a cat video to be seen, anywhere… and today’s news marks an important milestone in our industries ambitions to change the public’s perception. 

Within the UK, data centres are also responsible for an estimated £4.6 billion in revenues per year, and they have enabled the UK to become a top 3 global nation for artificial intelligence (AI). They have also fostered Europe’s largest and fastest growing tech and AI start-up communities, and while it’s true the UK has lost many industries to markets abroad over the years, data centres are something we excel in, and they should be recognised, championed and safeguarded.

So, it is welcome news today to hear that the Technology Secretary, Peter Kyle, has announced the government has now classed data centres as ‘Critical National Infrastructure’.

This isn’t a small step – it’s the first Critical National Infrastructure (CNI) designation in almost a decade, since the Space and Defence sectors gained the same status in 2015.

But, what does this mean in reality? 

It means data centres are now at the same designation as other critical infrastructure and assets - our water supply, energy production and emergency services. This brings with it greater government support, coordination and monitoring to help safeguard data centres from adverse weather incidents, power outages and cyber attacks – providing prioritised access to security agencies including the National Cyber Security Centre in the case of the latter.

The recent Crowd Strike incident caused a significant IT outage that reverberated globally. The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) estimate that this impacted 60% of GP practices across the country with disruption to software holding patients’ appointment details, prescriptions, and health records. With our lives so dependent on computing and connectivity infrastructure, CNI designation is an excellent step forward from the new administration to prevent these types of issues happening again.

The other knock-on benefit of CNI designation is it raises awareness of data centres, their requirements, importance and value to the wider network of local authorities in the UK. Hopefully this designation will inspire the creation of a national policy framework on data centres outlining areas of the country where they can be developed and supported. These frameworks exist in other countries like the Netherlands and Germany and it’s time the UK looked at data centres more holistically.

Ironically with the CNI designed to safeguard data centres and reduce risk, we in the UK have predominantly put all our eggs in one basket, with almost 90% of the countries data centres in-and-around West London and Slough. 

Having the majority of your country’s critical infrastructure within the same postcode isn’t a great idea and our situation is in direct contrast to countries who have diversified their compute across multiple hubs, like our neighbours in France (Paris, Marseille and Lyon), Germany (Frankfurt, Berlin and Munich) and Spain (Madrid, Zaragoza and Barcelona).  

As a nation and industry our next challenge following the CNI designation is to ensure this doesn’t also lead to sustainability being compromised, and for greenbelt land to be threatened by new industrial-scale data centre developments.

I firmly believe there are multiple locations across the UK that can offer expansive brownfield land in need of regeneration, world-class connectivity, access to plentiful power supplies and a talented workforce – helping the UK diversify our computing footprint into all four corners of the UK. This is exactly why Kao Data has invested £350M in building our latest and most sustainable data centre to-date – and one which is set to be the largest in the north of England, in Stockport, Greater Manchester.

These are certainly exciting times for our industry and we at Kao Data look forward to continuing our work and policy consultancy with government. Later this month we will be hosting a workshop on the critical role of data centres at the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool, and today’s CNI designation couldn’t be more timely.