Offices left vacant by coronavirus could become the residential towers of the future, according to the architect Lord Norman Foster, but there may be just as much demand for the space from data centres.
London’s Docklands is as well known for its warehouses of servers providing connectivity as for its office space for banks and other companies, but the balance may be shifting.
Reach, publisher of the Daily Mirror and Daily Express newspapers, said on Friday that about three-quarters of its staff would permanently work from home and it will significantly reduce its office space, cutting the size of its Canary Wharf headquarters from two floors to one.
George Hammond reports cloud providers often use data centres in much the same way that co-working companies such as WeWork use offices: leasing whole buildings from owners and then subleasing portions of the centre to other businesses.
Demand for cloud applications has