Assessing the Competitive Colocation Market

Cloud companies are fueling the growth of the colocation market. So are enterprises pushing more of their IT infrastructure off-premises.

New data from Synergy Research Group shows that, as of the second quarter, six colo providers now account for 37% of the market, thanks to demand from cloud and internet firms. Equinix, Digital Realty, NTT, CyrusOne, DigitalBridge and KDDI lead the charge.

Operators from China follow with 13% market share. Combined, colo providers from the United States and China account for almost half of the world’s totals, according to Synergy. Vendors from Japan, the U.K., Germany, Singapore and India are next.

“The competitive landscape is a mixture of a small number of companies [that] are building a global footprint and a large number of national or regional specialists,” said John Dinsdale, a chief analyst at Synergy. Equinix, Digital Realty and NTT continue to expand globally by a combination of organic growth and by some aggressive M&A activity, but theirs is not the only path forward. Smaller data center companies can also build growing and sustainable operations by focusing on specific countries or geographic regions.”