Dublin confirmed as world’s third-largest hyperscale datacentre hub

Dublin in Ireland is the world’s third-largest hyperscale datacentre hub, according to a study by US-based analyst Synergy Research Group.

This conclusion is based on the company’s analysis of the datacentre footprint of 19 of the world’s largest cloud and internet service providers, with Dublin reportedly home to just under 5% of the globe’s hyperscale server farms.

Rounding out the top three is Beijing, China, in second place, while Northern Virginia in the US holds the top spot, with these regions accounting for 22% of the world’s hyperscale datacentres.

Dublin is one of only three European cities to make it into Synergy’s top 20 list of regions that are home to the largest amounts of hyperscale datacentre capacity, along with Frankfurt in Germany and Amsterdam in the Netherlands. The former is the last region to make it onto Synergy’s list, while Amsterdam is ranked as the 18^th-biggest hyperscale datacentre region in the world.

The vast majority of the other locations filling out the top 20 list are based in the US, with a handful also in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region, including Shanghai in China, Tokyo in Japan and Singapore.

“[What the data] shows [is] just 20 state or metro markets account for 62% of the world’s current hyperscale datacentre capacity,” said Synergy, in a research note.

“Northern Virginia and the Greater Beijing Area alone make up 22% of the total … [and] after the top 20, the next 20 largest state or metro markets account for another 18% of the market, with Europe and the APAC region featuring more prominently in that batch.”

The reason why the US dominates the top 20 list so much, continued Synergy, is mainly because almost 60% of the world’s hyperscale operators have their headquarters in the US, and the market also accounts for almost half of the world’s cloud market revenue.

“Looking ahead, the US and China will continue to dominate the numbers, though countries like Malaysia, India and Spain start to feature much more prominently,” Synergy added.

Synergy’s data also confirms that Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google and Microsoft have the broadest datacentre footprint, in geographical terms, of all the hyperscalers, as each one has multiple datacentres in other countries. “In aggregate, the three now account for 60% of all hyperscale datacentre capacity,” said Synergy. “They are followed in the ranking by Meta/Facebook, Alibaba, Tencent, Apple, ByteDance and then other relatively smaller hyperscale operators.”

Looking ahead, Synergy said its forecast data suggests there are now an additional 510 hyperscale datacentre developments in the pipeline around the world that are either in the process of being planned, built or fitted out.

And the factors governing where these sites will be built are largely cost-based, said John Dinsdale, chief analyst at Synergy Research Group.

“[They also include] proximity to customers, availability and cost of real estate, availability and cost of power, networking infrastructure, ease of doing business, local financial incentives, political stability and minimising the impact of natural hazards,” he said. “When you weigh up those factors, it tends to mitigate against some of the world’s biggest economic hubs, like London and New York, while favouring some sparsely populated US states like Oregon, Iowa and Nebraska.

“That makes for a different mix of leading markets compared with retail colocation datacentres, which hyperscale companies often use to house their edge-oriented infrastructure,” said Dinsdale.