Nearly half of cloud, internet data centers located in U.S.

Data center location-synergy

U.S. now accounts for 46 percent of major cloud and internet data center sites, Synergy Research Group said in its new report. The next most prominent locations are China and Japan, with 7 percent and 6 percent, respectively.

The three leading countries are then followed by Australia, Singapore, Germany, UK and Brazil, each of which accounts for 3-5 percent of the total.

The research is based on an analysis of the data center footprint of 17 of the world’s major cloud and internet service firms, including the largest operators in IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, search, social networking and e-commerce. In aggregate the companies now have over 230 major data center sites.

On average each of the 17 firms had 14 data center sites. The companies with the broadest data center footprint are the leading hyperscale cloud providers – AWS, IBM and Microsoft.

Each has 40 or more data center locations with at least two in each of the four regions – North America, APAC, EMEA and Latin America.

Google, Oracle and Rackspace also have a notably broad data center presence. Synergy said the remaining firms tend to have their data centers focused primarily in either the U.S. (Apple, Twitter, Salesforce, Facebook, eBay, Yahoo) or China (Tencent, Baidu).

Previously Alibaba also was focused mainly in China but it has now opened data centers in the US, Hong Kong and Singapore.

“Given that explosive growth in cloud usage is a global phenomenon, it is remarkable that the US still accounts for almost half of the world’s major data centers, but that is a reflection of the US dominance of cloud and internet technologies,” said John Dinsdale, a Chief Analyst and Research Director at Synergy Research Group.

“The other leading countries are there due to either their scale or the unique characteristics of their local markets. Perhaps the biggest surprise is that the UK does not feature more prominently, but that situation will change this year with AWS, Microsoft and Google all opening major data centers in the country.”

Most recently, Synergy said HPE and Cisco have maintained their close competition in the cloud infrastructure equipment market.

The report showed that HPE maintained its leadership of the burgeoning cloud infrastructure equipment market, though Cisco narrowed the gap. Dell and Microsoft also presented tight competition for third place in the market.

Synergy said all four leading vendors saw sequential market share declines as IBM benefitted from its strong year-end and ODMs continued to take away business from more traditional vendors.

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