Data centre market to generate US$ 279 bn in ten years

The global datacenter market is expected to be worth around US$77 billion by the end of 2022. And it is projected to grow at a CAGR of 13.8% to reach US$279 billion by 2032, according to a study published by Fact.MR. United States, Japan, China, and India are the top four countries that will drive demand.

In part, datacenter CAPEX is being driven by the growing prominence of Artificial Intelligence (AI/ML) systems. Whether for system maintenance purposes – detecting and fixing network problems automatically, for example – or for some operational use, the need for computing resources to drive AI/ML is increasing demand for servers.

Other relevant factors are the advance of cloud and edge computing, government regulations related to the location of datacenters, and the growing demand for data.

All data flows through datacenters, and with the accelerating transition to a more automated and digital world, it is crucial for datacenters – large and small – to support the increased demand efficiently and sustainably, as well as provide resilience.

The biggest change in datacenters between 2021 and 2022 is that organizations have started to think about their infrastructure requirements in terms of workloads. With most workloads remaining on-premise for the foreseeable future, organizations must modernize infrastructure to handle modern data and workload requirements, regardless of supply chain issues and chip shortages. 

The association of on-premise and multi-cloud platforms has been confirmed as a more assertive strategy to cope with processing demands that are increasingly intense and diversified. Not by chance, 90% of the businesses will adopt this strategy by the end of this year, according to an IDC report.

“Let’s get one thing straight right off the bat: there is no cloud versus data center. It’s a false dichotomy. The reality is that the cloud and data centers are critical parts of the digital infrastructure. More than that, their relationship is one of symbiosis,” says Steven Lim, SVP Product & Marketing for Global Data Centers Americas, a division of NTT. Advances in data center technology (think high-speed connectivity, efficient power, and more) increase the effectiveness of the cloud and vice versa. This synergy has the potential to help customers drive unlimited product innovation and service optimization for their customers.

As the demand for data and computing grows, so does the realization that organizations need more flexibility than a cloud-only strategy can provide. This, in particular, is where colocation data centers are still thriving. They are expected to move US$68.6 billion this year.

As a result of increased demand, the data center industry will need to be equipped to store ever-increasing amounts of data. At first glance, one solution to this may seem like building more data centers – however, the blockades in 2020 have meant that over 60% of new data center construction has been delayed.

Today, while server CPUs are still plentiful, recent supply chain shortages continue to worsen the data center construction situation as the industry deals with sky-high prices for building materials. In turn, it will likely take years for data center construction to reach pre-pandemic levels, which would still not match current demand.

Businesses require new applications to interact with customers, manage supply chains, process transactions and analyse market trends. These applications and data must be hosted in secure, mission-critical facilities. How much data centre capacity they will need and when, however, will depend not only on underlying business growth, but also on a series of decisions about business designs, application architectures, and system designs spread across many organizations.

“For example, from this year, technologies such as Metaverse, Artificial Intelligence, IoT (Internet of Things), Cloud Computing, among others, will demand a high level of connectivity coming from data centers, not least because the more data is generated, more space is needed to accommodate them,” opines Victor Sellmer, Commercial Director and Marketing of ODATA. There are some factors at stake, such as interconnectivity, agility, and accessibility.