Global real estate services firm, Cushman & Wakefield, has released its 2022 Global Data Center Market Comparison, the third edition of this annual report which identifies and ranks the top data centre markets globally and covers key emerging trends in the sector.
For 2022, this report has been expanded to 55 global markets, including 1333 data centres. The study shows that construction totals continue to grow globally, with 4.1 gigawatts (GW) currently underway in the markets covered, up from 2.9 GW in the previous study and 1.6 GW in the year before that. The largest clients continue to require larger builds, with 100-megawatt campuses becoming increasingly common.
Kevin Imboden, Cushman & Wakefield’s director of research for the Data Center Advisory Group, said: “The changes that began throughout 2020 with companies and government agencies alike moving to the cloud or determining their hybrid IT strategy became permanent during 2021. Major cloud service providers continue to battle for market share in large and small markets alike, with an ever-growing number of markets becoming hubs.”
Cushman & Wakefield assessed data centre markets across the globe within 13 different categories, including fibre connectivity, market size, cloud availability, and more to determine the top overall markets as well as the top performers in each of the 13 categories.
According to the report the top ten data centre markets are:
- Northern Virginia
- Silicon Valley and Singapore
- Chicago and Atlanta
- Hong Kong
- Phoenix
- Dallas
- Sydney
- Seattle and Portland
Meanwhile, the top ten data centre markets to watch in the future are:
- Cape Town
- Moscow
- Athens
- Abu Dhabi
- Vienna
- Istanbul
- Hyderabad
- Bangkok
- Auckland
- Mombasa
One of the key takeaways of the report is the fact that markets that offer multiple cloud services have become increasingly important, as early adopters and now diversifying their workloads to create a true hybrid IT strategy. Of the 55 markets profiled in the report, 28 now offer all three major cloud services, with considerable further expansion planned and land already acquired in several locations.
Additionally, the report also highlights the fact that analyses of data centre costs often focus on the initial capital expenditure, which includes costs of planning, permitting, acquiring land, and the construction of the building alongside substations and fibre extensions. These initial costs end up as a small fraction of the overall operating expenditure over the life of the building, as the consistent need for increasing power of several phases of expansion can lead to spiralling power needs. Power costs can tally will into nine figures over the life of the largest assets, providing an operational cost advantage to markets with cheaper power.
