AWS and Google Cloud lead the way, followed by Microsoft and Oracle
The total number of large data centres operated by hyperscalers increased to 541 at the end of the second quarter, more than doubling the mid-2015 count with a further 176 in the pipeline.
According to Synergy Research findings, Asia Pacific and EMEA continue to experience the highest growth rates, despite the US accounting for almost 40 per cent of major cloud and internet data centre locations. Next up in terms of popular locations is China, Japan, the UK, followed by Germany and Australia which collectively account for another 30 per cent of the total.
Over the last four quarters new data centres were opened in 15 different countries, with the US, South Korea, Switzerland, Italy, South Africa and Bahrain having the largest number of additions.
From a hyperscaler perspective, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud opened the most new data centres during the past 12 months, accounting for over half of the total, with Microsoft and Oracle following as the next most active vendors.
“There were 100 new hyperscale data centres opened in the last eight quarters, with 26 of those being the first half of this year,” said John Dinsdale, chief analyst at Synergy Research. “Covid-19 has caused some logistical issues but these are robust numbers, demonstrating the underlying strength of the services that are driving these investments.
“We have visibility of a further 176 data centres that are at various stages of planning or building, which is good news for data centre hardware vendors and wholesale data centre operators.”
As outlined via Synergy research, more than 70 per cent of all hyperscale data centres are located in facilities that are leased from data centre operators or owned by partners of the hyperscale operators.
Findings are based on an analysis of the data centre footprint of 20 of the world’s major cloud and internet service firms, including the largest operators in SaaS, IaaS, PaaS, search, social networking, e-commerce and gaming.
The companies with the broadest data centre footprint are the leading cloud providers – AWS, Microsoft, Google Cloud and IBM. Each runs 60 or more data centre locations with at least three in each of the four regions – North America, Asia Pacific EMEA and Latin America. Meanwhile, Oracle also has a “notably broad” data centre presence.
