International. The top 35 cloud and colocation service providers opened 10 million square feet of data center capacity in the second half of 2020, according to Omdia's latest cloud data center building tracker and colocation, despite the lingering impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Approximately 51% of new capacity was brought online by colocation service providers and 48% by cloud service providers.
By 2021, Omdia estimates approximately 20 million square feet of capacity for new data centers, despite adjustments for data center construction projects that may flow into later periods.
Physical capacity of the data center under construction by region
In Omdia's recent N.A. Business Survey of Placement Services and Leadership Strategies, 2020, 49% of respondents who used placement indicated that the pandemic has encouraged them to accelerate the use of placement services.
COVID-19 demand response measures taken
Both cloud and colocation service providers have experienced steady growth in recent years, but the new demand drivers created by the pandemic are accelerating long-term data center capacity expansion plans. A Microsoft executive, quoted recently in a post on Microsoft's website, said they expect to open 50 to 100 data centers per year for the foreseeable future.
Alan Howard, Principal Analyst of the data center and cloud research practice at Omdia, commented, "With each update to the data center construction portfolios for the service providers we track, we make adjustments to their anticipated opening date if necessary. Cloud and colocation service providers have quite different construction schedules. Colocation providers are often right to open data centers as scheduled, which is a function to meet customer demand. Cloud data center build cycles, on the other hand, can range from 12 months to 30 months, and occasionally longer."
"Colocation, of course, is a critical piece of the puzzle, as businesses of all types not only need rack capacity for IT infrastructure, but also the extensive interconnection capacity needed to reach their multi-cloud vendors and partners. This is a requirement for digital transformation initiatives that is difficult for many companies to achieve on their own due to their complexity and cost."
Source: Omdia.
