Servers at Netwise London East – Netwise
Walking through the Datapoint Business Park where Netwise’s East London data center is, the facility almost blends in with the other warehouse containers, set apart perhaps by its security features.
The building is not what immediately comes to mind when you think of a data center in 2026, and is a far cry from the huge AI campuses featuring futuristic architectural design being proposed by the hyperscalers. With headlines increasingly featuring large, AI-configured, high-tech data centers, it may even be easy to forget Edge colocation facilities like this exist.
With hyperscale facilities grasping significant attention, especially in the current era of AI growth, the importance of low-latency, small-scale, and low-power-density retail colocation data centers is often overlooked.
Yet, these facilities play a crucial role in the data center ecosystem. As Netwise co-founder and director Matt Seaton tells DCD during a tour of the London facility: “There's a certain client profile that we work with that just want a quarter or a half rack." As such, Edge facilities are critical for “businesses that want somewhere off-premises to house their critical infrastructure,” Seaton says, particularly when this enables low latency.
