Data Center Investment Tracker: 1Q22
The data center boom continues in 2022 with capex growth and surging interest from money managers
By Matt Walker and Arun Menon

Multiple types of companies are investing heavily in data center assets. Two years ago, the data center market was already vibrant, but COVID-19 gave this a boost as enterprises accelerated digital transformation efforts, and multiple sectors (enterprise, government, education…) moved many activities to the cloud. As a result, data center investment has boomed. This investment is coming from multiple sources: webscalers, carrier-neutral operators, telcos, a broad range of asset management specialists aiming to benefit from growing DC demand. With this investment, the market is seeing consolidation and the emergence of new business models. Meanwhile, the technologies deployed in the data center are evolving rapidly. Vendors are creating new products and customizing old ones in order to cater to the data center. Even if you’re steeped in the data center world, it can be hard to keep up. This “Data Center Investment Tracker” provides an up-to-date synthesis of this investment and technology activity.
 
This is the second edition of our data center investment tracker, covering developments through April 2022. The scope of coverage has been expanded considerably since the first edition, and we have added a new section addressing energy topics. The report includes the following sections:
 
Footprint: a summary of the data center footprint, energy usage, and major projects underway of all key webscale and carrier-neutral network operators, and a few large telcos with data center holdings. In total, 52 companies are included, from 27 last quarter.
 
Capex: capital expenditures (capex) recorded from 1Q11-4Q21 by the big spenders driving the data center market – webscale and carrier-neutral operators. In total, capex information is included for 31 companies with data center holdings. Capex for these companies was $177.3 billion (B) in 2021, up 29% from 2020. A large portion of this capex was dedicated to data center construction and operation.
 
Vendor contracts: a database of 281 contracts between data center operators and vendors, cutting across many different categories of technology, in particular: servers (and the chips that run them), switches, routers, storage, security, optical interconnect, software, and power/cooling. The database attempts to be comprehensive for January 2020 through early May 2022.

Asset management: mini-profiles of 40 (from 30 last quarter) asset management & real estate companies with active interests in data centers, summarizing their approach to data center investment, major holdings, and recent developments.
 
Mergers & acquisitions: a summary of 73 significant M&A transactions involving the data center market, focusing on 2020 to early May 2022. The database includes 15 deals announced in 2022, which account for total deal value of $16.8B. The largest three deals in 2022 to date are: the joint bid by DigitalBridge and IFM Ventures to take Switch private, for $11B; Digital Realty’s $3.5B acquisition of 55% of Teraco, a South Africa-based CNNO; and, Equinix’s $705M acquisition of 4 data centers from South American telco, Entel.
 
Energy: for most of the large data center operators, this tab addresses overall energy consumption, energy spending, the shift to renewables, and data center efficiency (i.e. PUE).

All information is current as of early May 2022, with one exception: capex data is through the December 2021 reporting period (4Q21). However, when available we have summarized more recent guidance from each company on 2022 capex plans.

Table Of Contents

  1. ABSTRACT
  2. DC Footprint: Data center footprint of major operators
  3. DC Capex: Capex of major data center operators
  4. VC Summary: Data center operator contracts with technology vendors
  5. Vendor Contracts: Data center vendor contracts database
  6. AM: Asset management firms active in data centers
  7. MA: Data center mergers & acquisitions – summary
  8. MA Data: Data center M&A database
  9. Energy: Energy usage by major data center operators
  10. About

Figures & Tables

  1. Figure (dynamic): Data center footprint (for 52 companies)
  2. Figure: Annualized capex by segment, CNNO & Webscale (US$M)
  3. Figure: Top 15 providers based on 4Q21 annualized capex (US$M)
  4. Figure: 4Q21 annualized capex ($M) and cumulative % WNO/CNNO total
  5. Figure: YoY changes in annualized capex, 4Q21 vs. 4Q20
  6. Table: Summary of vendor contracts included
  7. Table: Major announcements between technology suppliers and data center operators/builders
  8. Figure (dynamic): Asset management firm approach to DC investing, major holdings, and recent developments (for 40 companies)
  9. Table: Summary of M&A deals included
  10. Table: Significant M&A deals involving data center operators and assets
  11. Figure: Total electricity consumption by major data center operator (terawatt-hours)
  12. Figure: Estimated electricity spending as % of revenues by major DC operator*
  13. Figure: Average power usage effectiveness (PUE) for owned* data centers
  14. Figure: Renewable energy* as % of total consumption by operator

Coverage

Partial list:

365 Data Centers
AARNet
Aesler Group
Africell
Airtrunk
Alibaba
Alphabet (Google)
Altaba
Altibox Carrier
Amazon
Angola Cables
Apple
Aqua Comms & Telia
ARC Solutions
Asia Pacific Telecom
AtlasEdge Data Centres (Liberty/DigitalBridge)
AWS
Azercell Telecom
Baidu
BCE
Beyond.pl
BitNAP Datacenter
BroadBand Tower
ByteDance
C3ntro Telecom
Capital Online
China Media Group
China Mobile
China Telecom
China Telecom Global
China Telecom Guangdong
China Telecommunication Tech Labs
China Unicom
ChinaCache
ChinData
CITIC Telecom
CityFibre
CNT
Cogent
Cognizant
Colocation Australia
Cologix
Colt Data Centre Services
Colt Technology Services
Comcast Business
CoreSite
CRT Informatique
CyrusOne
Cyxtera
DataBank (including Zayo/zcolo)
DC BLOX
DEWA (Moro Hub)
Digital Realty
DISH
Djibouti Telecom
DT Global Carrier
DuPont Fabros
eBay
EdgeConnex
Equinix
Espanix
everyWAN
Evoque Data Centers
FirstLight
Flexential
Fujitsu
GDS
GigeNET
Global Switch
GlobalNet
Green Mountain
Greenergy Data Centers
Hanoi Telecom
Hetzner Online
HPE
Huawei Cloud
i3D.net
IBM
i-Data
IKOULA
Interxion
IP Telecom
Iron Mountain
Iusacell
Japan Network Access Point
JD.com
Jolera
KDDI Telehouse
Keppel DC REIT
LG CNS
Lightstorm Telecom Ventures
LinkedIn
Lumea
M1
Marcatel
Mercantil do Brasil
Meta (Facebook)
Microsoft
Munich Re
National Security Agency
National Supercomputing Center
NAVER
Neos Networks
NEXTDC Limited
NICT Japan
Ningxia Cable TV
Nipa Cloud
NL-ix
NorthC Datacenters
Northwest Access Exchange
NTT Communications
NxtGen Data Centers
Nxtra by Airtel
Omantel
Ooredoo Qatar
OpenColo
Oracle
PAIX data centres
PeaSoup
PIT Chile
PLDT
Prime Data Centers
QTS Realty
Rakuten
RETN
Salumanus (SI)
SAP
Serverius
Shinsegae I&C
Sichuan Unicom
SMC Corporation
Southern Cross Cable Limited
SpaceDC
Sparkle
SSE Enterprise Telecoms
Stack Infrastructure
StarHub
stc
Steel Authority of India
Sunevision
Swiss National Supercomputing Centre
Switch
team.blue Denmark
Telefonica
Telefónica del Perú
Telstra
Tencent
Teraco
Thésée DataCenter
Three Gorges Group
T-Mobile Polska
Togocom
Turkcell
Twitter
UK Crown Commercial Service
Uninett
US Department of Energy
Vantage Data Centers
Verizon
VNET Group (21 Vianet)
Vocus New Zealand
Vodacom South Africa
Vodafone Infrastructure Partners
Vodafone New Zealand
Vodafone Turkey
WIN Technology
Windstream
XData Properties
XDC+
Yandex
Zayo Group Holdings
Zenlayer
Zoom

Visuals

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