CW Data Center Global Market Comparison 2020

L o w M i d H i g h

CLOUD AVAILABILITY

CATEGORY WEIGHT

Cloud computing has pushed the full capabilities of the data center and online applications into the hands of small- and medium-sized companies that were previously unable to afford such beneficial technology. Enterprises no longer must maintain their own data center if it is not cost effective or efficient to do so, eliminating the constant upgrade and migration costs. Three major cloud platforms - Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud - have continued a relentless expansion in recent years, with an ever-increasing number of availability zones. They have driven the creation and adoption of hyperscale technology, with massive, dense and infinitely scalable data centers acting as the home for this high-level purpose. Amazon, Microsoft and Google have spent billions of dollars developing their own campuses, with millions of square feet of buildings constructed and hundreds of megawatts of power utilized. The result of this explosion is a new industry standard for a large data center take-up, with 20-50 megawatt leases becoming more commonplace. This has also led to the development of another nuanced ecosystem, with cloud on-ramps at colocation campuses providing fastest access to major cloud platforms. Today’s modern technologies including the Internet of Things (IoT), self-driving cars and 5G connectivity will only thrive across large networks. All related applications also need somewhere to live, most likely on one of the three main platforms.

For this report, markets that were in availability zones of all three platforms received the highest scores. Though several traditionally large data center markets fall in these zones (Northern Virginia, Silicon Valley, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Amsterdam, Frankfurt), several secondary markets now have access and can provide regional competition (Zurich, Sao Paulo, Portland, Seattle). This category will have increasing weight in future as the importance of cloud computing continues to grow.

The three major cloud providers (Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud) represent two-thirds of the market, though this may change as other large software companies build out their platforms. In an increasingly cloud-based world of compute, these companies will drive growth both in hyperscale builds and at the edge. WHAT TO WATCH

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