Data centers to increase capacity by 20 million square feet in 2021: Omdia

Globally data centers are set to increase capacity by 20 million square feet in 2021, accelerated by the demand created by the pandemic, according to Omdia’s latest Cloud & Colocation Data Center Building Tracker report.

In the second half of 2020, the top 35 cloud and colocation service providers opened 10 million square feet of data center despite the lingering effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, according to the report.

“Both cloud and colocation service providers have experienced consistent growth over the last few years, but new demand drivers created by the pandemic are accelerating long-term data center capacity expansion plans,” the report noted and added that a Microsoft website post said the technology company expects to open 50-100 data centers per year for the foreseeable future.

Approximately 51% of the new capacity was brought online by colocation service providers and 48% by cloud service providers, it said.

Citing separate survey findings, the report underscored that 49% of colocation using respondents indicated that the pandemic has led them to accelerate their use of colocation services.

“Cloud and colocation service providers have rather different building schedules. Colocation providers are usually right on the money opening data centers as scheduled, which is a function of meeting customer demand. Cloud data center build cycles, on the other hand, can span anywhere from 12 months to 30 months, and occasionally longer,” noted Alan Howard, principal analyst in the Cloud and Data Center Research Practice at Omdia.

“Colocation, of course, is a critical piece of the puzzle as enterprises of all kinds need not just rack capacity for IT infrastructure, but also the broad interconnection capability needed to reach their multi-cloud providers and partners,” Howard said and added that this a requirement of many enterprises for their digital transformation initiatives.