Description
The Internet infrastructure market continues to evolve and a persistent dynamic is the ongoing separation that has emerged within the data centre colocation category. There was a time when there were only a few ways to use outsourced infrastructure and the deployment models were simple and straightforward. Colocation was a case in point. But that is clearly no longer the case. The competitive landscape has become increasingly complex, with different entities across real estate, capital, energy, construction and operations involved in data centre development. There are varied business models and new and unique areas of specialisation. Given this context, it should come as no surprise that the data centre colocation market has started to separate, and those lines have become even more pronounced in just the last few years. This report takes a closer look at the separation that has happened specifically in what we have known as the wholesale data centre colocation side of the market. We initially drew a map of the landscape in late 2021 as the sector began to split along hyperscale and wholesale lines, and have provided a detailed update in this report to account for what has happened in the two years since. Alongside the updated landscape map, we have drawn more lines to identify and define the lines of separation that continue to become more visible and update our commentary. The perspectives articulated here are both historical and forward-looking.
