Report: Amazon, Microsoft and Google account for half of all major hyperscale data centers

Amazon, Microsoft and Google account for more than half of the owners of hyperscale data centers, according to a report.

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The total number of large data centers owned by hyperscale providers grew to 597 at the end of last year, double the number of data centers in 2015, according to the latest data from Synergy Research Group.

Amazon and Google opened the doors to the most data centers in the past 12 months, while accounting for half of new data centers in 2020. Synergy Research Group (SRG) noted that Oracle, Microsoft, Alibaba and Facebook were also particularly active.

“A total of 111 new hyperscale data centers opened over the past eight quarters, with 52 set to come online in 2020 despite some logistical issues caused by COVID-19,” said John Dinsdale, principal analyst at SRG, in a statement. “This is a testament to the continued strong growth in digital services that are driving these investments – particularly cloud computing, SaaS, e-commerce, gaming and video services.”

“Indeed, we did see some older hyperscale data centers close in 2020, but these numbers are dwarfed by the number of new sites that were opened or planned for construction. In addition to the nearly 600 operational data centers, we can see another 219 data centers in various stages of planning or construction, which is really good news for data center hardware suppliers and wholesale data center operators.”

The United States continues to lead the pack with nearly 40% of the major cloud computing and internet data center sites. The next most popular countries are China, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom and Australia, which together account for 29% of the total.

Over the past four quarters, new data centers have been opened in 17 different countries, with the United States, South Korea, China, Canada, the United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, Italy and South Africa having the most data centers.

Not surprisingly, the companies with the broadest data center footprints are the leading cloud providers; Amazon, Microsoft, Google and IBM. Each has 60 data centers or more, with at least three in four of the regions: North America, Asia Pacific, EMEA and Latin America.

Oracle and Alibaba also have extensive data center operations, according to SRG. The rest of the companies tend to have data centers primarily in the U.S. (Apple, Facebook, Twitter and eBay) or China (Tencent, Baidu and JD.com).