As we close the doors on yet another record-beating year at Netwise, we can now take a look back at the last 12 months of change and development, which have been host to major leaps forward in a wide range of areas within the organisation.

We always knew that 2024 would be a big year, and we were not wrong. In the last 12 months, we have made great strides in the development of our London East facility, which continues to grow into one of London’s most compelling independent data centre offerings.

Here are some of the headlines from 2024:

• Netwise turned 15 – having been founded in 2009, Netwise turned 15 in 2024, which is a great milestone and a testament to the unwavering stability of the organisation.
• We fully deployed Data Hall 4 – Data Hall 4 reached completion in early 2024, allowing for continued client deployments throughout the year. The build process for Data Hall 4 can be found on our #BuildBlog.
• The deployment of Data Hall 3 began – in the closing stages of 2024, we began pre-stage works on Data Hall 3, which is the final hall for deployment in the current footprint at London East (ahead of the large-scale expansion in 2025). This will be the final hall as part of the Phase 2 development cycle, and will be documented on our #BuildBlog in the coming months.
• We closed NLC in the summer – the summer of 2024 saw the closure of our legacy site in Bermondsey, Netwise London Central. This was a very large project that had been under planning for many months prior to execution, resulting in an extremely smooth closure process once the work schedule began. This included extensive decommissioning works, while also continuing with the Phase 2 development schedule at London East.
• We migrated all live systems from NLC to NLE – as part of the NLC closure, we migrated all client systems from NLC to NLE. This was a very complex operation spanning eight evenings in total, with the entire operation being completed extremely smoothly, thanks to the extensive planning phase, and the in-house expertise of our world-class team. In total, 126 enclosures were moved out of NLC.
• We upgraded our core network – all of our on-net nodes received an extensive upgrade in the first half of the year, increasing overall capacity and improving performance for clients that utilise our world-class transit network.
• Lee Smith joined as Junior Engineer – in Q4, we expanded our team with the joining of Lee, our new Junior Engineer, who is already and integral part of our in-house electrical engineering team. Expect a full introductory post very soon.
• The NLE expansion project officially started in Q4 – very late in 2024, we broke ground on the next phase of development at NLE. The installation of the mezzanine structure within the new footprint began in December – you can expect plenty of #BuildBlog updates as Phase 3 progresses in 2025.
• Works began on the full redevelopment of our customer portal – we have big plans for our customer portal in 2025 and beyond, as we begin a full rework of the UI/UX. We’ve teamed up with the same outfit behind our company rebrand and main website redesign from 2019 for this project, and we hope to have more news on this later in the year. The design of this new portal began in the closing stages of 2024, as a collaborative project including our development team.

Aside to the somewhat unique task of closing NLC, the main focus of the year has absolutely centred around the continued expansion of our flagship data centre, NLE. This likely comes as no real surprise, given the pace at which our services are being taken up in the market, and the unabating growth within the sector as a whole. Our current forecasting sees no slow up in this ongoing trend, and as such we will continue to invest heavily in our future at NLE and beyond.

Looking past the more tangible projects in 2024, financial performance has again been exceptionally positive, which further solidifies our position as a leader in the market, providing unmatched stability for our growing roster of clients, and of course enabling our expansion in the years ahead. Base revenues for the year have grown by 21% – despite the distraction of closing NLC in the summer – which in our fifteenth year of operation is all the more remarkable.

In short, 2024 has been another incredible year for Netwise, setting us up for another truly exceptional year in 2025.

So, how are things looking for the year ahead? We’re expecting more of the same, with a major focus on the completion of Phase 2 (Data Hall 3), and the larger expansion project as part of Phase 3, which will run in tandem throughout the first few months of the year (Data Halls 5 and 6, plus amenities). While we can’t comment too far in advance on other plans for the year, we do have some very exciting developments in the works, that could see further expansion plans confirmed before the end of 2025 – watch this space!

Another 12 months in the books, and another record-breaking period for Netwise, which we’re immensely proud to share with our clients and stakeholders as we look ahead to another equally exciting year.

As we step into 2024 for the first time this week, we’ll take a moment to look back and appreciate the year gone by; the first full year of live operation at Netwise London East.

The headline is that development works have continued at pace at our London East facility, as we prepare to bring Data Halls 3 and 4 online in early 2024, enabling our next phase of growth and expansion.

At the point of closing out 2023, we’ve pushed development works into all corners of our London East facility, with upstairs now fully deployed (Data Halls 1 and 2), and downstairs deployment underway (Data Halls 3 and 4). The site has been a hive of activity over the past year, and we have plenty to show for it.

Notable projects from 2023 include:

• We fully deployed Data Hall 2 – the second active Data Hall within NLE welcomed its single long-term tenant in 2023; a major milestone for both parties. We enjoyed watching the space fill out with a wide range of cutting-edge hardware in Q4 2023.
• Phase 2 works have ramped up – while we technically included the build of Data Hall 2 in the Phase 2 works schedule, the real meat of this phase comes in the form of Data Halls 3 and 4. These two new halls are being readied for occupation in early 2024, with the closing stages of 2023 seeing real traction in this area; Data Hall 4 now has its primary cooling system deployed, as well as much of the core electrical distribution infrastructure.
• Josh Carvalho joined as Engineering Manager – in September, we expanded our team with the joining of Josh, our new Engineering Manager. Expect a full introductory post very soon.
• NLC again exceeded its design PUE, reaching a remarkable 1.09 – back in 2022, London Central achieved a real-world PUE of just 1.11, beating the design PUE target of 1.12. In 2023, we managed an incredible 1.09. We’re extremely excited to see where we can get NLE as occupancy rates rise rapidly, looking towards the design target of just 1.05.
• We added a range of niceties and features to NLE – we rolled out a range of new features at our London East site, such as on-site EV charging, recycling and general waste points, Dyson hand dryers throughout the building, improvements to lighting, additional Naturewall cladding; all of which we hope will improve customer experiences inside the facility.
• Our next round of software development works began – in the closing stages of the year, we set in motion a wide range of software development works, including improvements to our customer portal (for power and bandwidth monitoring), an in-house IP management tool, and the roll-out of our own QR code check in system, the latter of which has been working well for us since its full roll-out in the summer.

The general focus over the past 12 months has been to expand into the current footprint at NLE more completely, moving from the initial deployment phase of a single hall, to making use of all four halls within the current building. We now have active works underway across every sector of the site.

London Central has also seen its fair share of input, largely in the form of ongoing maintenance operations, with activity across many critical systems. NLC is also now home to our significant stock of APC racks, which are being pre-staged there before heading to NLE for active service.

Beyond the exciting physical development works, we’ve posted exceptional financial growth metrics again in 2023, which will support our ongoing expansion aspirations, and of course contribute to continued rock-steady reliability for clients all around the world. Base revenues for the year grew by just over 30%, which for our fourteenth year of trading is something we’re extremely proud of.

We have some very exciting news to share about additional future expansion at London East very soon – enabling Phase 3 of development – taking us to new heights at our ever-evolving Canning Town address.

As we head into another exciting year here at Netwise, we would again like to take pause in January to appreciate the year gone by. 2022 was another important year for Netwise, most notably for seeing live client services deployed inside of our new Netwise London East (NLE) data centre for the first time.

We also began development on Phase Two of the London East development cycle in the very same year, just six months after our first anchor tenant entered Data Hall 1.

As seems to be the recurring theme for all Netwise annual retrospectives, 2022 again represents a huge year for us in terms of investments. We’ve continued with our build-out of NLE, following on from Phase One completion earlier in the year.

We’ve seen a fantastic range of new client installations across our entire estate, along with the continued expansion of existing client systems, as our roster of exemplary customers leverage their critical deployments to grow and thrive.

Notable projects from 2022 include:

• We soft-opened NLE to client installations – without question, our largest single project achievement in 2022 has been the introduction of live client systems to Data Hall 1 for the first time. You can catch up with the build, from start to finish, on our Build Blog.
• We deployed Pod 2, Data Hall 1 at NLE – almost as quickly as we got Pod 1 online, it was time to get Pod 2 deployed to keep pace with new installations at NLE. The containment system for Pod 2 landed with us in the summer, and saw the first new system installed in September, across seven of the 28 new enclosures.
• Phase Two of development at NLE began – in the closing stages of the year, we made great strides towards the next stage of development at London East. Data Hall 2 will form the first part of this next phase, with the cooling and extraction pathways now cut into the fabric of the building.
• Nathan Desmond joined as Technical Manager – in November, we expanded our team with the joining of Nathan, our new Technical Manager. Expect a full introductory post very soon, to do full justice to this very important milestone.
• We expanded our European locations in Marseille and Amsterdam – we’ve deployed new systems in both Marseille, FR and Amsterdam, NL, as we continue to support international clients with their pan-European installations. This takes our global spread of live deployments to 15 locations around the world, from our five PoPs in London, to as far away as Kuwait and Singapore.
• NLC exceeded its design PUE, reaching an impressive 1.11 – our London Central facility officially beat its design PUE of 1.12 in early 2022, achieving a real-world annualised PUE of just 1.11 across 12 months. That makes NLC one of the most efficient data centres in the UK (and the world), particularly when coupled with our wider sustainability measures, such as our exclusive purchase of 100% renewable energy. In fact, our own London East facility will likely be the only data centre in the UK to beat this, with a design PUE of just 1.05 – a truly impressive figure.

As is clear to see, 2022 has certainly been dominated with all things NLE, following the soft-opening in May, and the continued investment in the space as we expand into our newest facility.

This doesn’t mean that our London Central facility (NLC) hasn’t seen its fair share of developments alongside, with some key monitoring upgrades deployed onto our generator system, amongst other minor upgrades and improvement works. With NLC running at near-capacity, it’s fantastic to see the natural efficiencies that come with taking a facility to its true design capabilities, a position many data centres rarely reach.

From a wider perspective, we’ve enjoyed another brilliant year in terms of growth, which is driving our rapid expansion into all corners of the new data centre. We pride ourselves on our stable, predictable growth trajectory, which is how we maintain our rock-solid reliability for clients around the world.

2022 also saw unprecedented changes in the global energy market, resulting in a noteworthy upswing in wholesale rates. This has been felt across both domestic and commercial sectors of the market, and has certainly been the most difficult aspect of the year to deal with. The future is still uncertain, however we are seeing positive indicators in the wholesale market which point towards more stability in 2023, which we’re very much hopeful for.

We’re looking ahead to a very exciting year in 2023, as we continue to develop NLE (with be the deployment of Data Halls 2, 3 and 4), and even begin exploring options for campus-level lateral expansion to maintain our ever-important growth ambitions.