Hyperscale datacentre build-outs hold firm in face of Covid-19

The Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic is having “little noticeable impact” on the continued growth of the hyperscale cloud datacentre sector, with 26 new server farms going live in the past six months alone.

That’s according to Synergy Research Group’s latest hyperscale datacentre market tracker data, which tracks the datacentre footprint of 20 of the world’s largest cloud and internet service providers, which includes the likes of Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter and IBM.

Its data revealed there are currently another 176 facilities on course to be built in the coming months, as demand for enterprise cloud and consumer-grade internet services continues to soar on the back of the Covid-19 pandemic.  

At the halfway point of 2020, its data shows there are currently 541 datcentres in operation around the world, which is more than double the number that were online at the same point in 2015.

A further breakdown of its data shows that 100 of these hyperscale facilities came online within the past two years, with Amazon and Google name-checked by Synergy as being the most active of the hyperscalers in terms of bringing new capacity online in the past year.  

“Covid-19 has had little noticeable impact on the growth of the hyperscale datacentre footprint,” the market watcher said, in its research note.

Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and the Asia-Pacific (APAC) regions are the fastest growing, in terms of where new datacentres are being built, but the US remains the largest geographical market overall, in that it is where 40% of all major cloud and internet firms have their datacentres.

“The US remains by far the leader in terms of hyperscale datacentre locations, followed at a distance by China, Japan, the UK, Germany and Australia. Together these six countries account for 67% of the worldwide total,” the Synergy Research Group note added.

John Dinsdale, a chief analyst at Synergy Research Group, said the market continues to go from strength to strength, in the face of the ongoing challenges posed by the global coronavirus pandemic.

“Covid-19 has caused some logistical issues but these are robust numbers, demonstrating the underlying strength of the services that are driving these investments,” he said.

“We have visibility of a further 176 datacentres that are at various stages of planning or building, which is good news for datacentre hardware vendors and wholesale datacentre operators.”