Nearly one-quarter of data center operations in North America are now outsourced, as the amount invested in data center outsourcing and colocation increased 13%, to $8.8 billion, over the past 12 months, according to the latest from DCD Intelligence.
Data center and colocation investment will increase another 15% across the U.S. and Canada in 2014, according to DCD’s, “North America Data Center Key Trends Report 2013-2014.”
Reduced budgets and the need to make use of new technologies, along with increasing IT capacity requirements, is fueling the rise in colocation, according to DCD Intelligence managing director Nicola Hayes.
“The sectors that are the highest users of colocation services are currently public administration, IT services and financial services, but we are witnessing an increase in the uptake of outsourced data center solutions across all industry verticals. This demand is fueling further growth in the colocation sector in terms of build and this section of the market is expected to continue to show healthy growth through 2014.”
North America is the world’s largest data center market, accounting for some 10 million square meters of “data center white space,” DCD notes, up 3.5% year over year. DCD forecasts growth will continue at about the same rate out to 2016, with a large part of this growth being fueled by new colocation facility builds.
Some 11.55 gigawatts (GW) of electrical power were used by North American data centers in 2013, up 6.8% from the previous year. Increased focus on power consumption and energy management has led DCD to reduce its data center power consumption forecasts through to 2016 from a previous 8% year-over-year growth to 6%, a power saving of 1 GW by 2016.
