Case study overview
STL Partners supported a multi-site regional UK colocation provider with a pre-vendor due diligence (pre-VDD) market assessment as it prepared to go to market. The work gave the company an independent, evidence-based view of its addressable market, competitive position and customer demand to anchor its equity story and inform its information memorandum (IM).
The engagement combined a 200-respondent enterprise survey, an eight-interview programme with senior IT decision-makers, detailed competitor benchmarking of the regional market, and bottom-up TAM and SAM modelling across the client’s catchment areas. STL synthesised the findings into a board-level read-out, prioritised recommendations and drafted IM-ready messaging.
What was the approach?
STL designed a three-part programme spanning competitor analysis, customer landscape research and market sizing.
1. Competitor analysis
- Key-player profiling of national and regional providers across the catchment, covering footprint, capacity and ownership
- Strengths and weaknesses, including SWOT-level deep dives and commercial outlook for each priority competitor
- Technical and commercial benchmarking of site specifications: tier certification, resilience (N+1 / 2N), PUE, rack density, scalability and vertical focus
- Capacity mapping of supply versus modelled demand across the region to identify the gap available to the client
2. Customer landscape
- Eight in-depth stakeholder interviews with senior IT leaders (CTO, CISO, Heads of IT and Infrastructure) across financial services, manufacturing, healthcare, technology and fintech
- A 200-respondent enterprise survey across the region, segmented by company size, vertical, primary hosting model and colocation adoption
- Customer needs analysis, covering hosting-model mix, demand drivers, decision criteria, provider selection, switching triggers and barriers to adoption
3. Market sizing
- Bottom-up TAM built from a filtered, de-duplicated enterprise database, applying ICT and data centre spend assumptions by vertical
- Survey-led SAM, normalising the hosting mix to addressable workloads and applying in-region share and growth assumptions through to 2030
- Segment breakdown and growth projections, including a translation of spend into MW and rack demand, benchmarked against regional supply
Key results from the project
- Surveyed 200 enterprises and completed 8 senior stakeholder interviews across the region’s priority verticals
- Benchmarked the full regional competitor set across commercial and technical specifications, identifying three structural market gaps the client could exploit
- Built TAM and SAM models: a regional colocation SAM forecast to grow at roughly 12% CAGR to over £100M by 2030, against an addressable base of c.11,700 businesses
- Quantified a regional supply-demand gap of around 10MW, evidencing the case for near-term capacity expansion
- Delivered prioritised recommendations and IM-ready messaging, spanning hybrid positioning, resilience-led differentiation, regional advantage, vertical targeting and brand awareness
