Where are we building data centers? Why? What markets are primed for interconnectivity glory? Which ones are getting left in the dust?
We've heard these questions again and again. So we did what any reasonable telecom data provider would do: we developed an interactive tool to rank the world's best-connected and fastest-growing cities, scored on a scale of 0-100 across nine key categories.
Honestly, you would have done the same thing if you were in our shoes.
If I'm being truthful, I didn't develop a single thing. But the infrastructure team down the hall here at TeleGeography sure did, and that's why this week's guest on TeleGeography Explains the Internet is our resident data center expert Jon Hjembo.
Jon walks me through how (and why!) we developed the Market Connectivity Score and reveals what initial rankings tell us about the interconnectivity landscape and metro areas to watch like Kuala Lumpur.
We've shared a peek at our conversation below. Keep scrolling to listen to the whole data center-fueled episode.
Greg Bryan: Data centers are such a hot topic. So is AI.
When other people talk about AI, Jon, they're talking about: how is it gonna affect the economy, replacing jobs and all this?
What you and I think about is: what is it gonna do to bandwidth demand? What is it gonna do to power demand? What is it gonna do to data center location?
Because, to me, one of the biggest impacts of AI is the amount of data that has to be stored somewhere and move around and be close enough to work in the latency that's required on whatever AI application.
A lot of folks out there in our industry are thinking of it this way and thinking about where data centers get built. Why do we decide to build data centers in a particular location versus another?
How does that get connected to fiber? That's all a huge topic, and we're going to take a slice of that today by looking at something that you and some of our colleagues at TeleGeography have developed called the market connectivity score.
So, Jon, first, just what is the market connectivity score?
Jon Hjembo: So in a nutshell, the market connectivity score is our answer to the question that everyone wants to know. Where's the next big hub going to be?
So, of course, it's a lot more than that. But what we're really getting at is: what are the health indicators of markets around the world?
So we take information from TeleGeography's research along with some macroeconomic indicators and provide scores of market health for 3,000 cities globally, looking across the spectrum at different aspects of the connectivity market.
Greg: And so when you say market health, just to get specific, you mean the health in terms of locating data centers in that market, having those data centers connected, what all are you talking about?
Jon: Yeah, sure. Yeah. And it goes deeper than that. So by way of background, there's a lot of incredible research out there on data centers, as we all know.
TeleGeography is unique in its coverage of the network market. The data center market—there's a lot more competition out there. But what the market connectivity score lets us do is harness the full power of TeleGeography's unique research base.
The basic premise is data center markets don't develop in isolation. You hear all this news about where data centers are going...it's because there's a complement of different types of communications and infrastructure verticals that are working together to create a better interconnection ecosystem.
To give a broader picture of why you develop what you do, where you do, and to give you a picture of where the gaps are in the market. The basic premise is data center markets don't develop in isolation. You hear all this news about where data centers are going; they're not going there just because these are where these buildings are and people are following each other into these specific places because their competitors are there. It's because there's a complement of different types of communications and infrastructure verticals that are working together to create a better interconnection ecosystem.
So you have to look at the data centers, the internet exchanges, the cloud, on-ramps and regions, the network competition, the overall transparency in the markets. And this is what the MCS does.
Listen to the full episode below.
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From This Episode:
Greg Bryan
Greg is Senior Manager, Enterprise Research at TeleGeography. He's spent the last decade and a half at TeleGeography developing many of our pricing products and reports about enterprise networks. He is a frequent speaker at conferences about corporate wide area networks and enterprise telecom services. He also hosts our podcast, TeleGeography Explains the Internet.
Jon Hjembo
Senior Research Manager Jonathan Hjembo joined TeleGeography in 2009 and heads the company’s data center research, tracking capacity development and pricing trends in key global markets. He also specializes in research on international transport and internet infrastructure development, with a particular focus on Eastern Europe, and he maintains the dataset for TeleGeography’s website, internetexchangemap.com.