The global colocation market will reach $US33.2 billion by 2018, with Equinix and Digital Realty established market leaders among more than 1,200 worldwide colocation suppliers.
In tracking nearly 4,800 datacentres operated by 1,286 companies worldwide, 451 Research reports that during Q4 2015, the datacentre colocation market saw $US27 billion in annualised revenue.
As such, the majority of this revenue (54.6 percent) continues to be derived from local providers with sub-$US500 million in annualised colocation revenues.
“2015 was a record year for the datacentre, hosting, and managed services sector, with the highest number of deals since we began tracking it,” says Kelly Morgan, Research Director of Datacentres, 451 Research.
“But there are still hundreds of datacentre providers around the world that will continue to consolidate, either to gain scale or add services or both.
“This is not because the industry is in trouble; the move to Cloud continues to drive strong demand for leased datacentre space.
“It is because the industry is maturing, and providers are becoming more strategic in their approach to customers.”
Among the largest providers, Equinix is the market leader in the combined wholesale and retail colocation market with a share of 8.1 percent of global annualised wholesale and retail colocation revenue.
Meanwhile, Digital Realty, primarily a wholesale provider, is the second largest supplier in terms of revenue at 5.6 percent, but leads the global market in terms of operational square feet with a 7.8 percent share globally.
451 Research estimates that the global colocation market will grow in terms of total operational square feet from today’s 132.4 million square feet to 176.5 million by the end of 2018.
“Colocation is quickly becoming the nexus of both Cloud and enterprise IT,” adds Katie Broderick, Research Director, 451 Research.
“The colocation market is serving as datacentre arms dealer to both enterprises and the Cloud. In this process, colocation is often becoming the strategic connection point between the two.”
451 Research estimates that today, the world’s largest region in terms of total operational space for colocation (space supporting IT equipment) is Asia Pacific (40.1 percent).
Growth in APAC has been fuelled by the “sheer size of the economy” and a less entrenched installed base of enterprise facilities with which colocation providers must compete.
In addition, some Asian countries have been supporting their colocation industries with special zones and tax treatment.
Devlin deeper, North America is second largest with 33.7 percent of total, global operational square feet, while Europe, Middle East and Africa accounts for another 22.1 percent - the remaining 4.1 percent of space is in Latin America.
