41 percent of global data center capacity is owned by a handful of large players. On-premise data centers remain strong at 37 percent, although this represents a significant decline.

41 percent of the world’s data center capacity is located in just over 1,000 data centers, all of which are owned by hyperscalers. A handful of large parties thus control a very large portion of the total capacity, expressed in megawatts. Synergy Research knows this.

Less own infrastructure

Local infrastructure accounts for 37 percent of global capacity. Six years ago, it was 60 percent. In between are the colocation specialists, who control around 22 percent of capacity.

The total capacity of data centers worldwide continues to grow. According to Synergy, the colocation share will decrease in the coming years, but the available MW from colocation data centers will increase. The research group estimates that the share of on-premises infrastructure will decrease by three percentage points per year.

Especially in the USA

The results are consistent with previous Synergy research, which showed that the total capacity of hyperscalers doubles every four years. For example, the infrastructure of AWS, Google, Azure and, more recently, Oracle is growing faster than the industry as a whole.

It is striking that hyperscalers generate the majority of their share in the USA. The large American companies convince more customers there than in Europe or Asia, for example, where alternatives are more likely to prevail. According to Synergy, the trend is the same worldwide.

According to Synergy, AI will only reinforce the trend and increase demand for hyperscaler capacity. Capacity concentration in just a few players also has a downside. They are increasingly struggling to find space for their new data centers where both network and power are sufficiently available. Therefore, distributed, smaller and more localized sites are likely to still play a role.