The main trends in the global data center market

2024: Top 10 Global Data Center Market Trends in 2025

Artificial intelligence and the growing need for intensive computing require increasingly powerful and energy-efficient infrastructures. Data center operators (DPCs) and hyperscalers are investing immensely in creating new sites, and one of the main priorities is to reduce the harmful impact on the environment. The Data4 company, which operates a large network of data centers in Europe (in France, Italy, Spain, Poland, Germany and Greece), at the end of November 2024 named 10 main trends in the global data center market in 2025.

1. Deployment of large-scale data center complexes

Companies are investing in large projects to build data centers, which are often located near renewable energy sources, which reduces the carbon footprint. The capacity of such facilities can be at a gigawatt level. These sites are designed to handle vast amounts of data and meet the growing need for intensive computing, including real-time analytics.

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Freepik

2. Explosive growth in energy demand

Data center energy consumption is growing rapidly worldwide. AI, especially for generative applications, requires a revision of the architecture of data centers. As a result, companies are forced to look for innovative ways to power their infrastructures while reducing emissions of harmful gases into the atmosphere.

3. Advanced Cooling Systems

The problem of efficient heat removal from powerful data center equipment is becoming more and more acute. Against this background, data center operators and hyperscalers are introducing innovative solutions such as direct liquid cooling (DLC) and immersion (immersion) cooling.

4. Increasing Data Center Energy Autonomy We are talking about the use of small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) to provide stable power supply, which is especially important in isolated and remote areas. Other market players are investing in energy storage systems such as high-capacity batteries.

5. Digital Modeling (Digital Twins)

These technologies can be used to model the operation of data centers and find solutions aimed at reducing energy consumption while optimizing the performance of cooling and power supply systems.

6. Diversification of sites

Operators are paying more and more attention to the construction of new data centers in industrial areas or away from conventional infrastructure facilities. Such sites may be located near renewable energy sources.

7. Heat reuse

If a number of criteria are met, such as proximity to heat networks, heat from powerful data center equipment can be directed to heating buildings or to industrial needs.

8. Life Cycle Analysis

The authors of the study say that, in addition to energy management, it is necessary to optimize the global environmental footprint of data centers. We are talking about choosing the most suitable materials and systems, predicting construction work and plans for decommissioning the facility.

9. Creating Shared Value

It is important for data center operators to adopt transparent, sustainable approaches, promoting local employment and forming connections and partnerships with local organizations or businesses.

10. Human resources

One of the main tasks of data center operators in 2025 will be to attract and retain highly qualified specialists, including from other industries. The availability of the necessary human resources, among other things, will provide a competitive advantage.^[1]

2018: Intel vs. All. A war has begun over the network interconnect between processors and memory

How does Intel and other market players address memory coherence as opposed to memory coherence? Read more here.

2017

IDC: 10 key trends in the global data center market

In December 2017, analysts at research company IDC prepared a forecast for 10 main trends in the global data center market for 2018-2021. Among the key trends, experts listed the modernization of data centers, the further transition to a software-defined infrastructure, the spread of autonomous IT infrastructure and a shift towards a payment model based on consumption.

1. Data Center Upgrades

Due to the increased workload generated by the next generation of applications and the new IT architecture, 55% of enterprises will be forced to upgrade their data centers by upgrading existing resources and/or commissioning additional capacity by 2020.

2. Load Rationalization

By 2019, 50% of organizations will take action to streamline the load and accelerate the next generation of applications, which will require radical changes in terms of infrastructure construction and placement, as well as IT operation models.

Dallas Data Center

3. Hybrid IT Operations

By the end of 2019, 70% of companies engaged in digital transformation will have difficulty translating business needs into effective IT investment projects and action plans. This will force companies to adjust staffing policies in a way that ensures they have the skilled staff they need to build digital supply chains.

4. Modular Data Center Principle

By 2021, the expanded use of energy-intensive computing technologies will force most leading data center operators to switch to the modular principle when placing resources for energy supply and cooling at their facilities.

5. consumption-based IT

By 2020, the scheme for purchasing data center resources based on consumption will overshadow traditional procurement models due to the greater flexibility and transparency of such a payment structure.

6. Data management

By 2021, a quarter of large enterprises will turn in their favor the costs of ensuring compliance with the mandatory requirements of regulatory bodies, using them to introduce automated data control tools in their cloud capacities, main data centers and border (peripheral) facilities.

7. Software-Defined IT Infrastructure

By the end of 2019, the need for improved dynamism, manageability and efficient use of resources will force companies switching to digital technologies to transfer more than half of the entire IT infrastructure of their data centers and peripheral facilities to a software-defined work model.

8. Smart edge data centers

By 2021, the key infrastructure in half of the corporate data centers will operate autonomously, and on peripheral computing nodes, the use of autonomous IT infrastructure will be even wider due to the desire of organizations to connect core and boundary resources to support the implementation of digital transformation initiatives.

9. Peripherals ready for digitalization

By 2021, over 50% of companies operating in consumer-oriented industries will spend more money on upgrading network, computing and storage resources at peripheral facilities than on upgrading their main data centers.

10. Service Quality Control

In 2019, 60% of digital services will have lower adoption rates among consumers due to the fact that providers of these services will not be able to properly monitor their quality, efficiency and cost and respond quickly to changes in these parameters.^[2]

Hyperconvergence and disaggregation

It is no secret that for better use of resources, in any systems, information is no exception, resources should be collected into common pools so that they can be expediently redistributed. In computing, optimization in terms of resource use began a long time ago, even with time distribution systems. Then it was the turn of virtualization. In the second decade of the 21st century, the focus naturally shifted to hyperconvergence and disaggregation, because at this level of technology development, resource pools can be created in these two alternative ways.

A new resource-centric approach to building data centers - server disaggregation - can increase scalability and load adaptation, as well as reduce the provider's capital and operating costs (more).

This approach is made possible by the development of silicon photonics.

Hyperconvergence allows you to create software-centric infrastructures in which a variety of "commodity hardware" is closely integrated, but such infrastructures are brought to the market under the brand of one vendor.

2015: Migration to Open Source

In early August 2015, CRN published excerpts from an interview with Brocade CEO Lloyd Carney, who, among other statements, expressed his opinion on the ability of Cisco and other network equipment manufacturers to successfully operate in the open solutions market, in which the top manager sees the future of the data center market

According to Carney, the revenues of traditional vendors such as Cisco are tied to closed architectures, so it is extremely difficult for them to adapt to work on Open Source projects, which are more focused on software management.

According to the head of Brocade, Cisco will not be able to adapt to work on Open Source projects

At the same time, the head of Brocade set his company as an example of a successful transition of the manufacturer to a new generation of network products for data centers, which are distinguished by ease of operation, a high degree of automation, a focus on software and, more importantly, the openness of architectures.

Lloyd Carney drew attention to the fact that the Cisco architecture is tailored only for servers and solid-state storage systems of its own production, while the Brocade architecture is optimized for any client equipment.

"Our focus is on attracting new customers, and the best way to do this is through an open approach that is highly cost-effective and scalable. As for Cisco, they are trying to grow outside of the network business. They sell servers, disk storage, analytics for the Internet of Things, hoping to become a new large computer company. We remain a clean network player in the field of data centers, we are not going to sell storage systems, servers, etc., since our partners offer these solutions, "said the head of Brocade

When asked by a journalist about Brocade's accents in 2015-2016, Carney listed the following: software-defined networks, Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) and various software solutions.^[3]

2014

Data Center Growth Forecast

The total number of data centers of all types in 2017 will grow to 8.6 million, and then begin to slowly decline: such conclusions are drawn by IDC in the Worldwide Datacenter Census and Construction 2014-2018 Forecast ^[4]. The changes will be caused by the fact that in 2016-2017 companies will begin to reduce the number of server rooms and cabinets in their internal data centers - but all other categories of data centers, especially those owned by service providers, will continue to grow. A decrease in the number of data centers does not mean a decrease in demand: with fewer facilities, the total area of ​ ​ data centers worldwide in 2018 will reach 1.94 billion square meters. feet (180 million square meters) - against 1.58 billion square meters. feet (147 million square meters) in 2013.

Consolidation

Globally, the number of data centers in 2018 will decrease as a result of consolidation, but their area will grow, they believe. IDC Consolidation is taking place at all levels of service provision today and will only increase:

• Vendors - suppliers of servers, racks for data centers

The combination of companies such as HP and Foxconn (Hon Hai Precision Industry), whose main goal is to jointly optimize overall developments, expertise and technologies related to cloud computing, shows the desire of server providers for data centers to combine each other's strengths to meet the rapidly growing cloud technology sector and data centers.

• Service providers

Strategic cooperation between data centers and telecom operators will continue in the commercial data center market aimed at improving the efficiency of providing data storage and processing services. Data center operators will combine their strengths in different business models, thereby satisfying a larger number of customers. And cooperation with telecom operators will solve the problem of connection and high-speed information exchange. Thus, striving for a vertically integrated structure.

Modular Data Centers

Main Article: Modular Container Data Centers

The modular principle of building data centers is used by almost all players on the market. Vendors offer improved versions of steel containers. Mobile data centers have a number of advantages over fixed data centers. World Data Centres are more efficient: they do not require special infrastructure, the construction period is about 2-3 months, they are mobile and can be located with sources of cheap energy. In addition, they can be used to expand the power of stationary data centers.

MegaData Centers Are Coming

In the Worldwide Datacenter Census and Construction 2014-2018 report, Forecast IDC believes that construction data centers mega-data centers, the sites where servers large colocation service providers will be located, will come to the fore. By cloud services 2018, their share (by area) in the new construction of data centers of service providers will be 72.6%, and 44.6% of the area of ​ ​ all new high-end data centers in the world (in 2013 - 19.3%). IDC does not explain what criteria megaData Centers should meet, but the^[5] Data Center Institute^[5] them as having at least 9,000 racks or with an area of ​ ​ approximately 21 thousand square meters. m

Source: Data Center Institute, 2014

Virtualization and Green Data Centers

See also: Virtualization See also: Green Data Center (global market)

According to the Uptime Institute, 20% of all IT equipment does not perform any useful functions and only "warms the atmosphere" (spring 2014 data). So those data centers (data centers) that go to dismantle such equipment are achieving significant savings. According to Pike Research's forecast, the green data center market will reach $45.5 billion by 2016 compared to today's $25.5 billion.

Green Data Center Technology Market Growth by Region

Source: Pike Research

Virtualization remains one of the key trends in the global data center market, it will remain so in 2015. Managers see investments in both server and network virtualization. According to the Gartner Magic Quadrant for x86 Server Virtualization ^[6] report ^[6] & st=sb, more than 70% of servers are already virtualized as of July 2014. More and more large companies use several hypervisors at once in private or public hybrid clouds.

Gatner magic square for server virtualization x86 architecture

Source: Gartner, 2014

Innovative Materials and Color Cabinets

Along with virtualization, one of the most pressing issues of modern data centers is energy efficiency. The vast majority of data center owners are puzzled by energy efficiency issues. To ensure energy efficiency, new methods will be used in the design of data centers (for example, modular data centers), new materials for lockers, rack acceleration and even new colors of these lockers.

Like the search for better data center architecture, modularity, etc., a significant number of recent innovations indicate that the metal structures of locker racks can have a significant impact on data center density and cooling. Previously considered "simple pieces of hardware," racks and cabinets are becoming increasingly important components of the data center. The choice of their design ultimately depends on its characteristics such as infrastructure flexibility, cooling efficiency and electricity consumption. And the density of equipment and ports, along with the architecture of the data center infrastructure, is mainly determined by the choice of cabinets and racks. In view of such a large-scale influence, the selection of these steel structures should be based on the most comprehensive information, take into account the proposed advantages for installation in the context of capital expenditures, and do not lose sight of the impact on future operations and subsequent expenses.

All industry organizations responsible for the standardization of equipment, in particular ISO/IEC, TIA/EIA and BICSI, recommend providing a reserve for future growth when installing the data center cable infrastructure. This allows for free cabling space and optimal routes, and minimizes movement, addition, and change to the cable infrastructure that must support two to three generations of active electronics. The data center environment is more dynamic than ever: data processing and storage requirements are growing rapidly, and for power, they have increased from a few kilowatts (an average of 5.5-6 kW) to 20 kW per rack. Consequently, the tendency to provide mobile and compact racks is growing.

A number of manufacturers, in addition to traditional black cabinets, offer gray and white constructs. In addition, the white cabinets that appeared in the data centers of the companies HP and Cisco fueled interest in this topic.

In the data center of these companies, when choosing the color of cabinets, they primarily sought to improve visibility. If white and gray surfaces reflect up to 80% of the light, then black absorbs up to 95%, therefore, rooms forced by dark objects need more lighting. However, a reasonable approach is necessary everywhere, otherwise the advantage will turn into a disadvantage. Glossy, snowy white colouring can blind and cause eye pain, so matte, muted tones are better suited to cupboards. In addition, white helps to save electricity.

Of course, lighting the data center premises is not the largest graph of electricity costs, it accounts for less than 5% of the total energy consumption in the data center. However, in the case of large data centers, every percentage of savings - and even a fraction of a percentage - translates into significant amounts. Studies have shown that painting cabinets white can reduce lighting energy costs by a third. So, in the case of a data center with a capacity of 1 MW, five percent of the total consumption is 50 kW, and a reduction of this value by 30% gives a savings of 15 kW. Accordingly, in the case of white cabinets, the number of lighting fixtures during the construction of new sites can be reduced by the same amount (by a third). Finally, less energy will be required for cooling, because black cabinets absorb more heat. Consequently, there is a tendency to find alternative solutions for greater efficiency even when choosing the color of the lockers.

Acceleration: increase of racks

According to the results of the Global Data Center Rack Market ^[7], conducted by the analytical company TechNavio, the racks will "grow year after year" - over the past 10 years, they have stretched from an average of 36 to 42U, and their volume has almost doubled. At the same time, about 60% of the total global market for mounting structures falls on 42U-high racks, and even higher racks are popular. According to Faisel Gaus, vice president of TechNavio, already 48 and 51U racks account for about 10% of the market, and in the near future their share will grow to 20%. More and more data center owners, when choosing a room for new data centers, pay attention to the height of the room.

Business Drivers for Data Center Upgrades

Source: Veeam Data Center Availability Report 2014

Data centers are faced with the urgent challenges of increasing bandwidth, ensuring reliable data protection, and implementing effective energy solutions. This overview describes the major global trends in the data center market.

Key areas that data center owners are planning to invest in

Source: Veeam Data Center Availability Report 2014

Data centers today serve as the main point of interaction and information exchange with employees, partners and customers, as well as the basis for building new business models in which the efficient use of large amounts of data and the elasticity of computer resources are critical.

Customers and customers are active around the clock, employees need constant access to data. Downtime is unacceptable, because this is lost money. Most companies invest in virtualization, the latest DSS technologies, cloud technologies, and this trend is growing. But there is also a tendency to address limited availability or improve RPO and RTO (or just RTPO), key backup metrics.

• RPO - Recovery Point Objective
• RTO - Recovery Time Objective

RPO defines the rollback point - the point in time in the past to which the data will be restored, and RTO determines the time it takes to restore from the backup.

The company Veeam Software in the Veeam Data Center Availability Report ^[8], which assesses the availability of IT resources of companies, notes that a global survey of IT managers found that 82% of them admit that they are not able to meet the need for constant access to IT infrastructure. The issue of limited availability leads to a direct loss of profit - the annual loss of enterprises from application failures is more than 2 million dollars USA- as well as a decrease in performance and data loss due to the inability to restore them from backups.

The main directions that would like to improve in the data center

Source: Veeam Data Center Availability Report 2014

Experts predicted that 2015 year the trend will show itself to reduce these indicators (RTPO) to 15 minutes or less for all applications. This is the Always-On Business concept for a new level of data availability in modern data centers, aimed at improving backup performance, verifying file recovery capabilities, preventing data loss, fast file recovery, and comprehensive infrastructure control.

DCIM - Data Center Infrastructure Management Technologies

In conjunction with environment virtualization, DCIM (Data Center Infrastructure Management), data center infrastructure management technologies, are tightly used. According to 451 ^[9], the global turnover of DCIM systems will grow from $886 million to 1.2 billion in 2015.

Global DCIM Market Dynamics

Source: 451 Research, 2014

DCIM is driven by significant growth in the number of corporate data centers and consolidation in the commercial data center industry. The main goals of the solutions in this direction are to maximize the use of data center resources, improve operational efficiency and, as a result, achieve the best data center cost of ownership indicators. In the context of DCIM, data center resources mean both IT assets: servers, storage systems, network equipment, and data center resources that ensure the operation of IT assets: construction (server premises), engineering systems, power supply systems and electricity itself, systems for maintaining the necessary environmental parameters of data center premises.

SDN/SDDC - software-configurable data center

In the IT world, many believe that the entire IT infrastructure needs to be virtualized and delivered as a service, and control over the data center should be fully automated programmatically. This concept is called SDDC (Software-Defined Data Center) in VMware. SDDC means a complex of technologies that allow virtualizing not one computer, but the entire complex of technical means in order to create a software-configurable data center. However, in the data center market, there are disagreements in the description of these terms: someone considers this only a marketing term, someone a simple continuation of SDN (Software-defined Networking SDN, also a software-defined network), and someone a new concept.

Be that as it may, the technology does go in conjunction with SDN, which was also not initially widely accepted by the industry. However, today centrally configurable or programmable networks are one of the most current network technologies. It is no coincidence that last year Gartner analysts included SDN (although not yet considered mature enough) in the top ten most promising technologies, and SDN-related messages often flashed in the news stream. According to IDC forecasts, by 2016 the turnover of the global SDN market will reach $2 billion. So one of the main visionaries will continue to promote his idea of ​ ​ SDDC.

A similar vision from Intel. Trend towards the determined data center through one application

Source: Intel

Thus, the tendency to link environment virtualization, SDN, DCIM and SDDC will lead to the concept of a data center as some IT ecosystem. However, in practice, most of these concepts have not yet been implemented.

SDN Market Dynamics

Source: IDC, 2013

Source: Infonetics Research

According to IDC forecasts, by 2016 the turnover of the global SDN market will reach $3.7 billion. We add that, according to Infonetics ^[10], the global SDN/NFV market will amount to $11 billion by 2018. SDN ^[11] forecast ^[11] the SDN solutions market could reach $35 billion by 2018.

Source: SDN Central

2013

Cooling technologies

The IHS report'World Market for Data Center Cooling - 2013 ^[12] new cooling technologies aimed at reducing data center operating costs will have the highest CAGR of any cooling technology, at 13.1 percent over the next five years. Reaching a market volume of more than $2.5 billion in 2017.

Cooling Technology Market Dynamics

Source: IHS, 2013

Natural cooling

Many of the key components of data centers, recently introduced or under development by major service providers such as Amazon, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, will penetrate almost every new project of especially independent data centers for multiple leases.

Such equipment includes natural cooling, which is used (to reduce costs) instead of air conditioning with outdoor air intake, new ways to organize hot and cold air flows without using expensive raised floors and replacing most, if not all, branded servers and DSS with inexpensive custom-built equipment, part of which will not even be enclosed in the chassis.

This latter component, non-proprietary hardware, may also attract interest from solution providers seeking to offer low-cost hardware alternatives to customers expanding their corporate data centers.

It is also worth noting here that the level of projects is growing instead of increasing the requirement of service providers for the level and infrastructure environment of data centers. For example, according to a study by Emulex, 54% of IT administrators expect that by 2016 their data centers will have 100-Gb/s Ethernet networks, and 81% called the growing demand for bandwidth one of the most important tasks. The need for increasing bandwidth will continue to grow along with the growing demand for a wide range of cloud services covering Big Data, backup, disaster recovery, streaming, and more.

See also

• TAdviser Overview: Commercial Data Centers
• Data Center (Data Center)
• Key Data Center-Based Services
• Colocation
• Russian Data Center Market
• Trends in the Russian data center market
• Cloud services (Russian market)
• Russian IaaS market
• What is a "green" data center?
• Data Center Economy Measurement
• Container Data Centers
• Data Center Technologies: Solid State Drives (SSDs)
• Global Data Center Market

Notes