"But in an era of ever improving telecoms, cloud and fundamental transformation of the data centre and integration with IT, the logic for placing a data centre in London becomes far less compelling."

Power supply remains a concern across all markets in the report, but some new locations are aggressively marketing their competitive advantage. The report cites Norway, Ireland, Switzerland and other locations with renewable energy resources which are seeking to attract data centres.

The report also found that, while procurement requirements are becoming smaller, shorter and more integrated, pricing of data centres will be driven upwards from 2013 onwards. This means that existing players will be focused on maximising returns from their existing assets.

Some companies are planning to re-position themselves in the cloud value chain, which offers significant growth potential and allows them to maximise the value from their existing data centre space. It has been argued that cloud could generate five times the revenue of co-location per square foot.

However, the report warns that there are some dangers in this strategy.