The widespread adoption of cloud computing has transformed the data centre landscape and, although it significantly cut the number of organisations operating their own data centres, it has also fueled a surge in the global data centre count.
Still, no market is even close to the US when it comes to the total number of data centres, according to new research from Stocklytics.com, which says that the US counts 5 388 data centres – or 70% more than the next 10 largest markets combined.
Over the past decade, the once niche piece of IT infrastructure – the data centre – has become the talk of the investment world and a massive revenue driver for tech giants like Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Nvidia. The surging use of AI technologies which require significant computing power and storage has only fuelled the data centre boom, helping the entire market to grow by 52% since 2017 and hit a $416-billion value.
Most of that figure comes from the US, the single largest player in the global data centre landscape. According to Statista Market Insights, the US data centre market will generate over $120-billion – or roughly 30% of total market revenue – in 2024. However, the US dominance is also shown in the total number of data centres which is much higher than in any other market.
According to data from the Cloudscene platform, currently, there are more than 11 800 operational data centres worldwide – and 45% of them are in the US. Statistics show the US has 5 388 data centres – 10 times more than China and most European countries. For instance, the second-ranked Germany counts 520 data centres. The UK is close to that figure with 512 data centres as of March this year. Statistics show China is the fourth largest player in the global data centre landscape with 449 listed data centres. Canada, France, and Australia follow with 336, 315, and 307 respectively.
The Cloudscene data also showed Japan is the last country on the top 10 list with 219 operational data centres.
Despite the apparent US dominance in revenue and the number of data centres most of these countries will see impressive double-digit growth in the coming years – helping the global data centre market to hit record valuation.
After reaching a $416-billion value in 2024, the data centre market will grow by a CAGR of 8,45% in the next few years and become a half-a-trillion-dollar industry by 2027. This impressive growth will continue even after that, with the market value rising to almost $625-billion by the end of the decade.
Most of that figure will come from network infrastructure – the market`s largest and fastest-growing segment. Statista expects network infrastructure to bring in $315-billion in revenue in 2029, or 31% more than this year. Although far below in total revenue, servers will see much bigger growth in this period jumping by 76% to $207-billion. The data centre storage segment will see similar growth with revenue rising by 71% to $101-billion in the next five years.