Deployed data center capacity grew 4.6% globally in all regions in the first half of 2018, compared to the second half of 2017. The greatest growth occurred in Europe, Middle East and Africa, with an 8.2% increase in the first half of 2018 over the previous half year. North America grew at 4%, followed by Asia-Pacific (APAC) at 3%. Growth in in the Caribbean and Latin America (CALA) was flat. Growth is expected to continue at this pace until the middle of 2021.

All told, 49 new buildings were brought online, with 4.4 million sq ft of capacity in the first half of 2018. The task of bringing such a large amount of capacity online in such a short time shows how service providers have fine-tuned their construction processes and supply chains, in order to accelerate the time to market to meet customer demand. With 60% deployed capacity, North America leads global regions, followed by EMEA at 21%, APAC at 18% and CALA at 1%.

“Repeatable processes, reusable designs, standardized infrastructure architecture and a close working relationship with infrastructure equipment suppliers drive just-in-time data center capacity delivery,” said Alan Howard, senior analyst, IHS Markit.

Average data center building capacity was 121,000 sq ft, as of the first half of 2018. The average capacity by segment is 172,000 sq ft for cloud service providers, 139,000 sq ft for colocation service providers, 114,000 sq ft for telco service providers and 80,000 sq ft for the privately owned segment.

More Data Center Building Market Highlights

Less than one-quarter (21.8%) of total owned data-center building capacity is owned by cloud service providers, 45.8% by colocation service providers, 9.9% by telco service providers, and 22.5% is privately owned.

Average owned data-center power density remained stable at 114 watts per sq ft from the second half of 2018 to the first half of 2018.

Total IT infrastructure operated hit 42.5 million sq ft in the first half of 2018, dispersed across 518 owned or leased data centers.

Cloud and Colocation Data Center Building Report

Part of the IHS Markit Cloud and Colocation Intelligence Service, this biannual tracker provides worldwide and regional data center building capacity in square feet and kilowatts (kW). Data is also reported by market segment: cloud service providers, colocation service providers, telco service providers, and private. The report also covers data center ownership, physical infrastructure operators, and IT infrastructure operators. Providers tracked in this first release included Amazon Web Services, China Telecom, Coresite, CyrusOne, Digital Realty, Equinix, Google, IBM, Interxion, Microsoft, NTT, Oracle, Salesforce, SAP, and Telehouse.