Scotland has made a series of clear, ambitious commitments to building prosperity on a foundation of digital business. It has unequivocally nailed the colours of economic growth to the mast of information technology.

The stated ambition of Scotland’s National Strategy for Economic Transformation is to create: “a nation of entrepreneurs and innovators, with resilient supply chains and competitive advantages in the new industries generated by technological change…”

Recent results have been impressive. In Q1 2024, high-growth companies in Scotland participated in 31 fundraising deals, equating to 6.4% of all deals in the UK. The £224m of funding secured is 9.4% of the amount invested across the UK. This is the biggest percentage outside of London and the South East — the two regions which typically have the highest investment.

The determination to drive Scottish growth has been backed by a keen awareness of – and investment in – digital infrastructure. More than one million homes in Scotland now have broadband connectivity, and the R100 programme to connect homes in the most rural areas exceeded 50,000 connections.

Scottish digital skills and expertise has led to more than 40 gaming companies establishing headquarters or operations North of the border.

These range from disruptive independents like Firebrand to titans of the industry such as Rockstar North.

Elsewhere, blockchain forms another part of these plans. There is a huge opportunity for growth as the technology has the potential to contribute more than £4bn to Scotland’s economy by the end of the decade.

As a result, Scottish Enterprise has launched a Blockchain and Digital Trust Taskforce to drive the development of decentralised technologies to deliver economic and societal benefit in Scotland.

Not just numbers

As owners and operators of three facilities across Scotland, including the critical South Gyle data centre, Pulsant has already made a huge commitment to Caledonian digital development.

We realise that it is not enough to simply help realise these ambitions. It needs to be done in the right way.

This means giving keen consideration to the environment. Every single strategy document, right up to the recent Scottish AI Alliance playbook, prioritises sustainability.

Translating this policy into action means maximising the use of brownfield sites rather than building on greenfield plots. It also mandates the updating of existing property and facility portfolios. And it demands a commitment to transparency on sustainability.

We have pledged to reach Net Zero by 2050 and our work in Scotland is a key part of this. Doing digital in the right way also means aligning the technology to those industries in which Scotland already leads the world. Oil and gas extraction are immediate candidates for such consideration. But Scotland is also becoming a dominant player in fintech and the creative industries.

Across all of these examples, connectivity and digital infrastructure are the foundation needed for growth. The proximity of edge datacentres – and the reduced latency and real-time analytics they offer – will be a core part of that development.

The last consideration of this respect is that digital infrastructure must enable Scotland to ‘leapfrog’ previous iterations and move directly into a leadership position. There are some encouraging initiatives underway in this regard. For example, the recently announced £3m, South of Scotland Enterprise (SOSE) entrepreneur pilot programme to provide tailored support to help under-represented groups.

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The digital ambitions for Scotland embrace a diverse array of such leadership positions, from making Edinburgh an AI hotbed 9 to the pioneering creative and computer games work at Abertay University.

The infrastructure that acts as a foundation for this excellence needs to be equally Scottish.

Pulsant has invested recently in this by connecting The Crichton Trust’s 85-acre campus to our South Gyle data centre. As the leading digital infrastructure force and colocation provider in Scotland, Pulsant connects Scotland to the UK and beyond. Our regional presence has been designed to offer local expertise, backed up by national connection and access to global cloud and exchanges.

This flexibility offers Scottish businesses the opportunity to realise their own digital ambitions.