Global hyperscale datacentre growth boom set to continue into 2019, Synergy Research shows

Amazon and Google opened more new datacentres in 2018 than any other internet or cloud service providers, according to Synergy Research Group’s year-end market review.

The analyst house’s 2018 datacentre market tracker shows there are now 430 hyperscale facilities in operation throughout the world, which is up 11% on 2017.

This is based on the company’s analysis of the server farm footprints of 20 of the world’s biggest cloud and internet service providers, which revealed each one operates an average of 22 facilities.

Synergy’s data suggests the majority of the new builds originated in the US and Hong Kong in 2018. The Asia-Pacific (APAC) and Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) regions were also called out in the report for being hives of new-build activity over the past 12 months.

Overall, the US is home to around 40% of the world’s hyperscale datacentres, with the country being favoured by many of the internet giants – including Apple, Facebook, Twitter, eBay and Yahoo – as the prime location for their server farms.

Meanwhile, China (8%), Japan (6%), the UK (6%), Australia (5%) and Germany (5%) are collectively where the 30% of the world datacentres are based, the data further shows.

From a supplier standpoint, Amazon and Google brought more new datacentres online in 2018 than anyone else, with Synergy claiming – between them – the pair are responsible for more than half of the new sites that came online last year.

They are also – along with Microsoft and IBM – name-checked in the report for being among the providers operating the broadest datacentre footprint, with Synergy’s findings suggesting each has 55 or more datacentre locations.

These companies also operate at least three facilities in each of the four major geographic regions, including North America, APAC, EMEA and Latin America.

John Dinsdale, chief analyst and research director at Synergy Research Group, said the ongoing global demand for cloud and internet services is what is driving datacentre investments up worldwide, and its findings show there are many more on course to go live this year.  

“Hyperscale growth goes on unabated, with company revenues growing by an average of 24% per year and their capex growing by over 40% – much of which is going into building and equipping datacentres,” he said. 

“In addition to the 430 current hyperscale datacentres, we have visibility of a further 132 that are at various stages of planning or building. There is no end in sight for the datacentre building boom.”