3. Dan Thompson, S&P Global Market Intelligence

The data center colocation industry is witnessing increasing competition from existing and emerging industry players. Reporting from Edward Gately shows that there are several trends impacting data centers. This includes the pandemic, which was actually a net positive for data centers.

Dan Thompson is principal research analyst at S&P Global Market Intelligence. He made waves for his judgment about the pandemic’s influence on the industry.

“When all the workers got sent home, companies had to scramble to figure out how to support them and how to keep business moving forward. Colocation and other managed services were a way forward. At the same time, services offered by the hyperscalers (Amazon, Microsoft, Google, etc.) were also being heavily leveraged, which forced those companies to grow their infrastructure. This, too, had a positive impact on the wholesale end of the data center industry in that companies that had space in the large markets saw a lot of initial demand,” Thompson said.

Now that people are slowly heading back to the office, companies aren’t abandoning any of those platforms, he said.

Learn more from Gately’s reporting here.