The US and China continue to account for more than half of the major cloud and internet data center sites.
The total number of large data centers or data centers operated by hyperscale providers increased to 659 at the end of the second quarter of 2021, having more than doubled since mid-2016.
In terms of location, the US and China continue to account for more than half of the major cloud and internet data center sites. The next most popular locations are Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Ireland and India, which together account for another 25% of the total, details Synergy Research Group.
Only in Quebec (Canada), which has cheap and renewable electricity mainly from hydroelectric dams, currently 50 operate when two years ago there were only 39, indicates Afp. Many of these centers are owned by multinationals such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Google and IBM.
In any case, Quebec’s capacity remains small compared to rivals such as Data Center Alley in Ashburn, Virginia, which houses 70% of all global Internet traffic; while the Ile-de-France region surrounding Paris has 120 data centers.
Synergy details that among hyperscale operators, Amazon, Microsoft and Google collectively account for more than half of the data center footprint, although in terms of data center growth rate in the last four quarters, companies stand out. ByteDance, Tencent and Alibaba.
Taking into account both the new data centers and the upgrade of existing facilities, the biggest spenders in the second quarter of this year were Amazon, Google and Microsoft, followed by Facebook, Apple, Alibaba, ByteDance and Tencent.
The companies with the largest data center presence are the major cloud providers: Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and IBM. Each has 60 or more data center locations with at least three in each of the four regions: North America; Pacific Asia; Europe, the Middle East and Africa; and Latin America.
Oracle, Alibaba and Tencent also have a remarkably large data center presence, Synergy says. Other companies tend to have their data centers primarily focused on the US (Apple, Facebook, Twitter, eBay) or China (Baidu, JD.com).
“Hyperscale data center growth is on a straight line path, with an average of 16 new data centers online each quarter for the past three years,” said John Dinsdale, chief analyst at Synergy Research Group.
Dinsdale adds that in addition to the construction of the new data centers, hyperscale operators are also adding capacity to existing facilities and are regularly dismantling and replacing server hardware that has reached the end of its operational useful life. (I)
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