Media production and the data center – opportunities at our London 1 Data Center

The British film industry is booming, and East London is right in the middle of the action. Companies in the immediate vicinity of our London 1 Data Center in Dagenham are in media production. Formally known for Ford production, another production line is emerging. The borough, now dubbed ’Digital Dagenham’, hosts film studios, media production companies and a college offering media-related studies. And construction is ongoing: more and more of the old factory sites and warehouses are getting converted into new industry production sites.

Processing huge amounts of data

Motion pictures that deliver photorealistic animation and online games that blur the lines between reality and fantasy – it’s truly amazing what developers in the media industry can do with the latest technologies. Both the creativity and the technology needed – for planning, filming, drawing and postproduction – are astonishing. However, the market is insatiable, wanting more and more innovative productions on ever-shorter time scales. This is also reflected by the numbers the British Film Institute published in November 2021: the total spent for film and HETV production in the UK within 12 months reached the new record of GBP 5.9bn. Imagine the amount of data created by all those productions! From an IT perspective, it’s crucial to keep pace with that growth and ensure having reliable, secure and scalable infrastructure, as well as premium interconnections to cloud services or dedicated service providers. Although these requirements are common to many industries and represent the most important benefits for most of our data center clients, there is one main difference: media companies generally process massively larger quantities of data.

High-density computing

One technology that has been around for some time and is especially of interest for data processing in media production is high-density computing. It offers significantly higher compute power from the same size rack. Whereas typical racks in a data center offer compute power ranging between 3 and 8kW, high-density racks start at a compute power of 10kW and can exceed 30kW. Clients require less rack space while gaining the flexibility to scale compute power according to their needs. Plus, the solution is more sustainable: even though the higher density leads to greater overall power consumption per rack, it can be lower per user when calculated based on the compute power.

Part of the media community

The utility of high-density computing isn’t limited to media production. We built our London 1 Data Center, knowing the local government strategy to drive a digital Dagenham hub, that would need future-proof, sustainable high-density rack spaces. Features include:

• Specially dimensioned power supplies
• Concrete floors, to carry racks with greater weight
• More efficient, high-end cooling systems, since high-density servers produce more heat

Interested in a tour of our London 1 facility to check out our high-density racks? Please get in touch with our data center experts by phone at +44 20 8016-9118, send an email to dc.emea.sales@global.ntt, or use the contact form.