If the internet can be said to have a geographic location, then perhaps it is Northern Virginia, which has the largest share of the hyperscale datacenter capacity within which the world's data is stored.

Hyperscale companies accounted for 41 percent of the entire global bit barn presence last year, and this share is increasing, as The Register reported recently.

Figures from Synergy Research Group show that Northern Virginia - close to Washington DC, and where the CIA is headquartered, FYI - accounts for nearly 15 percent of that entire hyperscale capacity - at least double that of where the next largest concentration can be found in Beijing, China.

Third on the list is Dublin, which might be surprising until it is remembered that many of the biggest Internet companies, including the cloud giants AWS, Microsoft's Azure and Google Cloud, have sited massive bit barn campuses around Ireland's capital.

Next are US states of Oregon and Iowa, and then Shanghai. Some 13 of the top 20 locations to be found in the US, 4 in the APAC region and 3 in Europe. Those top 20 together make up 62 percent of the world's hyperscale capacity.

The prevalence of US regions in that top 20 is largely due to two factors, according to Synergy: The majority of the world's hyperscale operators are headquartered in the US, including the four biggest; and the US market accounts for almost half of all cloud revenues.

Synergy's data is drawn from an analysis of the data dormitory footprint of 19 of the world's major cloud and internet service firms. Not surprisingly, the largest are AWS, Azure and Google, which between them now account for about 60 percent of all the hyperscale capacity thanks to the global web of facilities each operates.

Behind these bit barn behemoths come Facebook parent Meta, Alibaba, Tencent, Apple, ByteDance and then other smaller hyperscale operators.

UK readers might be wondering why London does not figure in this top 20, despite being the largest datacenter market in Europe.

Synergy Research Chief Analyst John Dinsdale explains that the choice of location for hyperscale infrastructure is influenced by a range of factors, which includes proximity to customers, but also availability and cost of real estate, power, network infrastructure, and local financial incentives, among others.

"When you weigh up those factors it tends to mitigate against some of the world's biggest economic hubs, like London and New York, while favoring some sparsely populated US states like Oregon, Iowa and Nebraska," he said.

"That makes for a different mix of leading markets compared to retail colocation datacenters, which hyperscale companies often use to house their edge-oriented infrastructure," he added.

And demand for space in these colocation facilities continues to grow apace, at least in Europe, according to an update from commercial real estate firm CBRE.

It says that bit barn vacancy rates dropped below 10 percent for the first time ever in Q2 2024 in the largest Euro datacenter markets - Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris and Dublin (FLAPD).

An earlier update from CBRE partly blamed those hyperscaler operators snapping up much of the available capacity for the shortage, along with difficulties in getting hold of land and access to power.

This has led to a rise in pre-leasing, where clients bid to secure datacenter space while the facilities are still under construction.

This remains the case, with hyperscaler interest in colocation facilities particularly high, driven by the need to deliver digital services, as well as keeping sought after supply away from their competitors.

CBRE says that take-up of capacity during Q2 (44MW) exceeded new supply brought online (30MW) for the fourth straight quarter in a row. Because of this, it expects the vacancy rate in FLAPD to fall to 7.9 percent by the end of the year. If that happens, it will be the fifth consecutive year the vacancy rate has declined.

Providers are finding it increasingly difficult to build new capacity, given a lack of available power and appropriate land in the primary markets of Europe, CBRE says, with construction increasingly difficult in markets such as Frankfurt and Amsterdam.

"Datacenter capacity is an increasingly precious commodity given the considerable demand for space and competition for it," commented CBRE's Head of European Datacenter Research Kevin Restivo. "Providers that can secure the necessary resource and build datacenters are able to command higher prices for the space." ®

https://www.theregister.com//2024/08/15/hyperscale_capacity_global_research/