Data centres may not seem like a sexy topic but they’re the 21st-century equivalent of the mines, mills and factories that powered the economic growth of the world over the last 500 years.

In Nice this week, over 1,000 delegates gathered to discuss the latest issues in the sector and celebrate its successes at the DataCentres Europe conference – and V3 was on hand to cover everything from discussions on the best locations for data centres to the costs of running ever-growing sites.

Attending various panel sessions and keynote speeches, we also heard some interesting, quirky and strange facts and thoughts on the world of data centres, and here’s our pick of the bunch.

10. The data centre market is rosy (for banks at least)

Given the huge growth of data being stored in the cloud, and therefore in data centres, the market is one that the banking sector is looking on with pound signs in its eyes.

Barclays head of telecoms, Sean Duffy, said lending to data centres is the largest part of the tech team’s balance sheet.

He said any firm operating in this space should have confidence that new funding will be available if needed, given the clear long-term drivers that will keep the data centre market buoyant.

This view was backed up by data centre consulting firm BroadGroup, which said it sees the growth of the market at between 12 to 15 percent in the coming year, driven by the demand for cloud services.